In the AD 130s, Arrian – the Roman governor of Cappadocia – paid a visit to what is now the Black Sea coast of Georgia. Arrian’s role was to inspect the military garrisons tasked with securing this far-flung corner of the empire. Fortunately, Arrian was also an author, whose account of the journey still survives. As befits a region where precipitous hills sometimes drop directly into the sea, complicating communications over land, Arrian travelled by sea. Among the forts he visited was that of Apsaros, where Arrian reported ‘five cohorts are stationed, to whom we delivered their pay, and inspected their arms, the walls, and the ditch, their sick, and their present stock of provisions’.
Alongside these practical details, Arrian also dabbled in mythology when he noted that ‘Apsaros, it is said, formerly bore the name of Apsyrtus, from the person who was murdered by Medea, and whose sepulchre is still shown there. Its present name was corrupted by the barbarians…’. Both Medea and her brother Apsyrtus figure in the story of Jason and the Argonauts, while the Roman fort of Apsaros lay on part of the coast of Colchis, whose riches were epitomised by the fabled Golden Fleece. This connection seems to have captured the imagination of Heinrich Schliemann, who applied to work in the region in 1882, although nothing came of it. By then, the location of Apsaros had been correctly linked with ruins at the village of Gonio by another European with a keen eye for ancient sites: F Dubois de Montpéreux.
Today, wealth remains readily apparent at Apsaros, which lies just 15km south of the high-rises and casinos of the Black Sea resort at Batumi. The fort is perched on a slender shelf of ground between the sea and hills, with the river Chorokhi a short distance to the north. There is no mistaking the military nature of the site, as the final set of defences still stands tall. Although these are generally referred to as late Roman and Byzantine, their present form owes much to the Ottoman army, who also took advantage of the site. Various excavated structures are visible within the walls, but the footprint of this final iteration of the fort only partially overlies the area of the base that Arrian visited during the reign of the emperor Hadrian (AD 117-138). Even this was not the first Roman base to occupy the site. Pliny the Elder mentions a fort at Apsaros in his Natural History, indicating a military presence in the 1st century AD.
Last Word: Neil Faulkner