Tauri

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Tauri

The Tauri , also Scythotauri, Tauri Scythae, Tauroscythae (Pliny

Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an ancient author, naturalist or natural philosopher and naval and military commander of some importance who wrote Natural History ....
, H. N. 4.85) were a people settling on the southern coast of the Crimea

Crimea

Crimea or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is an autonomous republic of Ukraine located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name....
peninsula, inhabiting the Crimean Mountains and the narrow strip of land between the mountains and the Black Sea

Black Sea

The Black Sea is an inland sea sea bounded by southeastern Europe, the Caucasus and the Anatolia and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean Sea and Aegean Seas and various straits....
. They gave their name to the peninsula, which was known in ancient times as Taurica
Taurica

Taurica also known as Tauris, Taurida, Tauric Chersonese, and Chersonesus Taurica was the name of Crimea in Classical antiquity....
, Taurida and Tauris.

They are thought to have been an offshoot of the Cimmerians

Cimmerians

The Cimmerians or Kimmerians were ancient equestrian nomads who, according to Herodotus, originally inhabited the region north of the Caucasus and the Black Sea, in what is now Ukraine and Russia, in the 8th century BC and 7th century BC....
, whom the Scythians expelled from their original homeland further north in the 7th century BC.

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The Tauri , also Scythotauri, Tauri Scythae, Tauroscythae (Pliny

Pliny the Elder

Crimea

Black Sea

Cimmerians

Abkhaz

Abkhaz and Abkhazian may refer to:* Something of, from, or related to Abkhazia, a de facto independent region with partial recognition as a country, otherwise recognized as an integral part of the territory of the state of Georgia ....
and Adyghe

Adyghe

The Adyghe or Adygs are a people of the northwest Caucasus region, principally inhabiting Adygeya and Karachay-Cherkessia . Shapsug National District, an autonomous district founded for Shapsigh tribe living on the Black Sea coast was abolished in 1943....
tribes, which at that time resided much farther westwards than nowadays.

In book IV of The History
Histories (Herodotus)

The Histories of Herodotus of Halicarnassus is considered the first work of history in Western literature. Written about 440 BC in the Ionic dialect of classical Greek, The Histories tells the story of the Greco-Persian Wars between the Achaemenid Empire and the Polis in the 5th century BC....
by Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture....
, the Tauri are described as living "entirely from war and plundering". They became famous – or perhaps notorious – for their worship of a virgin goddess, to whom they sacrificed shipwrecked travellers and waylaid Greeks. The Greeks identified the Tauric goddess with Artemis Tauropolos

Artemis

In Greek mythology, Artemis was the daughter of Zeus and Leto, and the twin sister of Apollo. She was the Hellenic goddess of forests and hills, child birth/virginity/fertility, the hunt and was often depicted as a huntress carrying a bow and arrows.....
or with Iphigeneia

Iphigeneia

Iphigenia is a daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra in Greek mythology. In Attic accounts, Iphigenia is sometimes called a daughter of Theseus and Helen raised by Agamemnon and Clytemnestra....
, daughter of Agamemnon

Agamemnon

In Greek mythology, Agamemnon / is the son of King Atreus of Mycenae and Queen Aerope, the brother of Menelaus and the husband of Clytemnestra; different mythological versions make him the king either of Mycenae or of Argos....
. The Tauric custom of human sacrifice

Human sacrifice

Human sacrifice is the act of killing human beings as part of a religious ritual . Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals and of religious sacrifice in general....
inspired the Greek legends of Iphigeneia

Iphigeneia

Orestes

Orestes was the son of Agamemnon in Greek mythology; Orestes may also refer to:Drama*Orestes , an Classical Athens tragedy from 408 BCE by Euripides...
, recounted in Iphigeneia in Tauris
Iphigeneia in Tauris

Iphigeneia in Tauris is a drama by the playwright Euripides, written sometime between 414 BC and 412 BC. It has much in common with another of Euripides's plays, Helen , and is often described as a romance , a melodrama or an escape play....
by the playwright Euripides

Euripides

Euripides was the last of the three great tragedy of classical Athens . Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias....
.

According to Herodotus, the manner of their sacrifice was to beat the head with a club and remove the head; then they either buried the body or threw it off a cliff, and lastly nailed the head to a cross. Prisoners of war likewise had their heads removed, and the head was then put onto a tall pole and placed at their house "in order that the whole house may be under their protection".

Although the Crimean coast eventually came to be dominated by Greek

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
(and subsequently Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
) colonies, notably the one at Chersonesos

Chersonesos

Chersonesos was an Ancient Greece colony founded approximately 2500 years ago in the southwestern part of Crimea, known then as Taurica. The colony was established in the 6th century BC by settlers from Heraclea Pontica....
, the Tauri remained a major threat to Greek power in the region. They engaged in piracy

Piracy

Piracy is a warlike act committed by a foreign nonstate actor, especially robbery or crime committed at sea, on a river, or sometimes on shore, either from a vessel flying no national flag, or one flying a national flag but without authorization from a nation....
against ships on the Black Sea, mounting raids from their base at Symbolon (today's Balaklava

Balaklava

Balaklava is a town in the Crimea, Ukraine which has an official status of a district of the city of Sevastopol. It was a city in its own right until 1957 when it was formally incorporated into the municipal borders of Sevastopol by the Soviet Union government....
). By the 2nd century BC they had become subject-allies of the Scythian king Scilurus.