Tomis (Constanta, Romania today) was a Greek colony founded on the Black Sea shore around 600 B.C. for trade with the local Getic populations. In 29 B.C. the Romans captured the region, which they called Limes Scythicus, from the Odryses. The Roman poet Ovid was banished by Augustus to Tomis in 8 A.D. and died there eight years later. By his account, Tomis was "a town located in a war-stricken cultural wasteland on the remotest margins of the empire." The city was later in the Province of Moesia, and, from the time of Diocletian, it was the metropolis of Scythia Minor. During Maurice's Balkan campaigns, in the winter of 597/598, Tomis was besieged by the Avars. Tomis was within the Bulgarian Empire for over 500 years, later in the independent principality of Dobrotitsa/Dobrotici, in Wallachia under Mircea I of Wallachia, and under Ottoman rule from around 1419. Tomis was renamed "Kwnstantia" ("Constantia") in honor of Constantia, the half-sister of Constantine the Great sometime before 950.