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Euripides, in his " Iphigenia in Taurid," has immortalized the name of the cruel priestess who presided over these horrid observances; and both Goethe and Racine have transferred her evil fame to their respective languages. ^Eschylus has bound the tortured Prometheus to some rock of this precipitous coast, and opens his great tragedy with lines which convey to us the distance and loneliness which he attached to the scene of his hero's prison;f and the Tiistia of Ovid has rendered familiar to all readers of Latin, the dismay and despair with which that poet regarded his fate when doomed to dwell on the opposite shore. It might be expected that a region associated with such horrors and dangers, natural and supernatural, should form the poet's favourite scene for adventures and achievements transcending the ordinary experience and prowess of man.
Accordingly, the Crimea occupied of old the place given to enchanted castles, and dragonguarded palaces, in the romances of the middle ages, where the most redoubted heroes were to signalize superhuman Virgil, Georg. lib. iii. v. 349, et ss. Semper hyems, semper spirantis frigora Cauri. Turn Sol pallentes baud unquam discutit umbras. See also Ovid's Metam., lib. viii. v. 788. t X9ONO2, fjt.iv If Till: HISTORY OF THE CRIMEA. bravery, faith, and endurance. Here the Argonauts triumphed over difficulties insurmountable to men of common mould; here Pylades and Orestes met the crowning adventure of their arduous course; and here it was, according to the opinion of many scholars, that Ulysses passed through the severest ordeals encountere<l during his many weary But passing by poetic myth and legend, we find, even long before the historic period, some indications of the habits of the occupants of the Crimea in the rocks ci vail j;ible to-day as they were thousands of y ago.
The strange dwellings excavated in the chalk and universally attributed to the Troglodytes, iy prove that that people belonged to one of tingreat Seyihian families, which at one period overspread A hole north-east of Asia and Kurope. Then written history tells us. that alter the Scythians, the adventurous and colonizing Greeks occupied the Crime, i, carrying with tin-in the enriching power of their commerce, and the ivlinin-inilii.!ieir civilization. Th'- flourishing of the,.Milesians nth coast (B.C. and the powerful republic of 'BOD on the south-west, became the marts where the corn of the Crimean plains then richly productive from careful cultivation- was exchanged for the luxuries and delicacies But, more than this. s, curiously embroidered cloths. e.ted over a wide area, as well as immense.ntitie> rare exported from the harlioiirs. and the arttreasures of Athens and of Corinth eagerly purchased urn. See especially the able work of Dutx>i de resistless progress of Kome towards universal conquest, destroyed the territorial power of Greece, and necessarily weakened her colonies and dependencies, however distant.
We accordingly find that the Greek cities of the Crimea were, shortly after this period, subjugated by the great Mithridates of Pontus, and deprived of their pre-eminence, which for many centuries they did not regain. Mithridates was, after a most heroic and long-continued struggle with Eome in the very zenith of her military greatness, at length overthrown (B.C. 64); and the Crimea, with his other dominions, fell under the sway of the empire. The country enjoyed consideration for a long time thereafter, as guarding the Euxine from the Sarmatians, and other northern tribes, who eagerly sought its waters as the highway to the rich and soft climes along its southern borders. At length, however, the Goths effected what had defied the Sarmatians.
Without dwelling on the romantic story, which says that their great ancestor, Odin, fled from the banks of Azof to escape the fetters of all-conquering Rome, and on the shores of the Baltic, vowed that he would rear a race of warriors who should spoil the spoiler, it is certain that, at the Christian era, the Goths were a powerful people, occupying the modern Prussia and surrounding districts. Year after year, and age after age, they fought with the Romans, always pushing southward and eastward. In course of time, they advanced from the Baltic as far to the south-east as the shores of the Euxine. Many and fierce were their combats with the Romans, but, though occasionally compelled to yield to the remnant of disciplined valour still clinging to the old CK1.MK \. naries, their dauntless l.rnvcry secured to them many victories.