TAURI

earliest known inhabitants of the mountainous south coast of what is now the Crimea, which itself was known in ancient times as the Tauric Chersonese. The Tauri were famous in the ancient world for their virgin goddess who was identified by the Greeks with Artemis Tauropolos or with Iphigeneia. The Tauric custom of sacrificing shipwrecked strangers to the goddess was the basis for the Greek story of Iphigeneia and Orestes among the Taurians, which became the subject of plays by Euripides (Iphigenia Among the Taurians) and J.W. von Goethe (Iphigenie aut Tauris). The Tauri often pirated on the Black Sea, and toward the end of the 2nd century BC they were dependent allies of the Scythian king Scilurus, who from their harbour of Symbolon (Balaklava) harassed the Chersonese. Their later history is unknown.