People
Bosforani
Licania Bosforaniae
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The Bosforani, the Bosporans, are set on the narrow land bridge between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. The name was not strictly a tribe. The Greek geographer Strabo explains that everyone living under the rulers of the Bosporus was called a Bosporan, whatever people they belonged to, so it marked subjects of the Bosporan kingdom, with its capitals at Panticapaeum and Phanagoria. Older research suspected a copyist's slip, a lost final letter turning a regional name into a people, as in a list of places compiled in Ravenna; later research points to the many ancient texts that simply speak of the Bosporans.