About 480 BC. e. The Greek colonies founded on the shores of the Kerch Strait, then called the Cimmerian Bosporus, united into a single state. Thus began the thousand-year history of the Bosporan kingdom, which included complex, sometimes hostile relations with barbarian tribes, struggles with other ancient cities for the right to rule in Crimea, and even rivalry with the Roman Empire. From here, the last great king of the Hellenistic East, Mithridates VI Eupator, prepared a campaign against Rome, but it ended with the Romans coming to the Bosporus themselves and turning it into an outpost of the empire in the Northern Black Sea region. The authors examine the military history of the Bosporan kingdom against a broad cultural background, drawing on both numerous ancient sources and the achievements of modern sciences - archaeology, linguistics, ethnology. Yuri Vinogradov and Vladimir Goroncharovsky - doctors of historical sciences, employees of the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences, specialists in the field of ancient history archeology.