Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/261

 TAUEIC CHERSONESE. 243 Bagette and the Jurksc, tribes of hunters, and even a bc-ly of Scythians who had migrated from the territories of t/ie regal Scythians. The Issedones were the easternmost people respect- ing whom any definite information reached the Greeks; beyond them we find nothing but fable, 1 the one-eyed Arimaspians, the gold-guarding Grypes, or Griffins, and the bald-headed Argip- prci. It is impossible to fix with precision the geography of these different tribes, or to do more than comprehend approximative^ their local bearings and relations to each other. But the best known of all is the situation of the Tauri (per- haps a remnant of the expelled Cimmerians), who dwelt in the southern portion of the Tauric Chersonesus (or Crimea), and who immolated human saci'ifices to their native virgin goddess, identified by the Greeks with Artemis, and serving as a basis for the affecting legend of Iphigeneia. The Tauri are distinguished by Herodotus from Scythians, 2 but their manners and state of civilization seem to have been very analogous. It appears also that the powerful and numerous Massagetas, who dwelt in Asia on the plains eastward of the Caspian and southward of the Issedones, were so analogous to the Scythians as to be reckoned as members of the same race by many of the contemporaries of Herodotus. 3 This snort enumeration of the various tribes near the Euxine and the Caspian, as well as we can make them out, from the seventh to the fifth century B. c., is pecessary for the comprehen- sion of that double invasion of Scythians and Cimmerians which laid waste Asia between G30 and G10 B. c. We are not to expect irom Herodotus, born a century and a half afterwards, any very clear explanations of this event, nor were all his informants unanimous respecting the causes which brought it about. But it is a fact perfectly within the range of historical analogy, that accidental aggregations of number, development of aggressive 1 Herodot. iv, 80. 2 Herodot. iv, 99-101. Dionysius Periegetes seems to identify Cimme- rians and Tauri (v, 168: compare v, 680, where the Cimmerians are placed on the Asiatic side of the Cimmerian Bosphorus, adjacent to the Sindi). 3 Herodot. i, 202. Strabo compares the inroads of the Sakse, which was the name applied by the Persians to the Scythians, to those of the Gimme rians and the Treres (xi, pp. 511-512).