Mossynoeci

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Mossynoikoi, latinised Mossynoeci, is a Greek compound noun meaning "dwellers in wooden towers". The Greeks of the Euxine Sea applied it to the peoples of the northern Anatolian coast just west of Trebizond.

According to Xenophon's Anabasis, the Mossynoeci were "fair-complexioned and white-skinned", "with their backs variegated and their breasts tattooed with patterns of all sorts of flowers". The Mossynoeci accepted the rule of a common metropolis.

Writing soon after 430 BCE, Herodotus in Book 3 cites the "wooden-tower dwellers" alongside the Moschoi, the Tibareni, and the Macrones. The passage's context concerns the 19th satrapy established by Darius of Persia. The satrapy as a whole was to yield three hundred talents.

Xenophon described that he had led his troops through Mossynoeci territory during the spring after the battle of Cunaxa, so 400 BCE. During this time the Mossynoeci also ruled over the Chalybes. When Xenophon was at Trebizond, those Mossynoeci in the vicinity had fallen out of favor with those of the metropolis; so Xenophon's army attacked the metropolis and defeated its king.

It is possible that the town Mossyna was named for them.