Everything about The Tauri totally explained
The
Tauri (Ταῦροι), also
Scythotauri,
Tauri Scythae,
Tauroscythae (
Pliny,
H. N. 4.85) were a people settling on the southern coast of the
Crimea peninsula, inhabiting the
Crimean Mountains and the narrow strip of land between the mountains and the
Black Sea. They gave their name to the peninsula, which was known in ancient times as
Taurica,
Taurida and
Tauris.
They are thought to have been an offshoot of the
Cimmerians, whom the
Scythians expelled from their original homeland further north in the
7th century BC. However, there's another version, according to which Taurians may be related to the
Abkhaz and
Adyghe tribes, which at that time resided much farther westwards than nowadays.
In book IV of
The History by
Herodotus, 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 or with
Iphigeneia, daughter of
Agamemnon. The Tauric custom of
human sacrifice inspired the Greek legends of
Iphigeneia and
Orestes, recounted in
Iphigeneia in Tauris by the playwright
Euripides.
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 (and subsequently
Roman) colonies, notably the one at
Chersonesos, the Tauri remained a major threat to Greek power in the region. They engaged in
piracy against ships on the Black Sea, mounting raids from their base at Symbolon (today's
Balaklava). By the
2nd century BC they'd become subject-allies of the Scythian king
Scilurus.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Tauri'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://tauri.totallyexplained.com">Tauri Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
