The author publishes three fragments of inscriptions discovered in Tanais in 1969 and 1993–1994. They come from the second – first half of the 1st century BC and seem to have been made in the same workshop. All the three inscriptions were ordered by thiasoi. They prove that a considerable barbarian element (the Tanaites) was present in Tanais as early as the Hellenistic period and that the double social and ethnic structure (two communities, the Tanaites and the Hellenes, controlled by archons of the Tanaites and hellenarchai respectively) existed at that time as well. On the contrary, the opinion (which has recently become very popular) that Tanais had its own civic community, democratically governed and independent of Bosporus, does not appear to receive any support in these inscriptions.