City
Sebastopolis
Sokhumi
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Sebastopolis, the city of Augustus, was the Roman-era name for a settlement on the Black Sea coast at or near modern Sokhumi. It grew up beside the older Greek city of Dioscurias, a colony of Miletus whose founding legend was tied to the Argonauts and the Dioscuri. The place prospered as a market for the Caucasus mountain peoples, who bartered timber, pitch, honey and linen for salt; Strabo counted seventy tribes with their own dialects, and the Roman writer Pliny says the Romans traded there through a hundred and thirty interpreters. The Greek historian Arrian inspected its fort, the empire's last outpost on this coast, and on the map a road from Artaxata ends here.