History of Crimea - Early History

Early History

Taurica (Greek: Ταυρίς, Ταυρίδα) also known as Tauris, Taurida, Tauric Chersonese and Chersonesus Taurica was the name of Crimea in antiquity.

The earliest inhabitants of whom we have any authentic traces were the Cimmerians, who were expelled by the Scythians during the 7th century BC. The inland regions were then inhabited by Scythians and the mountainous south coast by the remaining Cimmerians, who became known as the Tauri.

According to Greek legends, Tauris is the place to which Iphigeneia was sent after the goddess Artemis rescued her from the human sacrifice her father was about to perform. The goddess swept the young princess off to Tauris where she became a priestess at her temple. Here, she was forced by the Taurian king Thoas to perform human sacrifices on any foreigners who came ashore. According to other historians, the Tauri were known for their savage rituals and piracy and were also the earliest indigenous peoples of the peninsula. The land of Tauris and its rumored customs of killing Greeks are also described by Herodotus in his histories, Book IV, 99–100 and 103.

The Ancient Greeks in turn named the region after the Tauri. As the Tauri inhabited only mountainous regions of southern Crimea at first the name Tauris was used only to this southern part, but later it was extended to name the whole peninsula.

Sometimes Taurica is referred to as Tauric Chersonese or Chersonesus Taurica. This name is Greek for the "Tauric peninsula" (Chersonese literally means "peninsula"). This variant of the name should not be confused with the city of Chersonesos.

In the 5th century BC Greek colonists began to settle along the Black Sea coast; among them were the Dorians from Heraclea who founded a sea port of Chersonesos outside modern Sevastopol and the Ionians from Miletus who landed at Feodosiya and Panticapaeum (also called Bosporus).

In 438 BC, the Archon (ruler) of the latter settlers assumed the title of the King of Cimmerian Bosporus, a state that maintained close relations with Athens, supplying the city with wheat, honey and other commodities. The last of that line of kings, Paerisades V, being hard-pressed by the Scythians, put himself under the protection of Mithridates VI, the king of Pontus, in 114 BC. After the death of this sovereign, his son, Pharnaces II, was invested by Pompey with the Kingdom of Bosporus in 63 BC as a reward for the assistance rendered to the Romans in their war against his father. In 15 BC, it was once again restored to the king of Pontus, but from then ranked as a tributary state of Rome.