Tauris

“ All this part of the coast is sterile and desert: a wall of rock extended before us, and seemed to shut us out from the peninsula so often conquered and ravaged by warlike and commercial nations. Richly endowed by nature, the Tauris, Chersonese, or Crimea, has always been coveted by the people of Europe and Asia. Pastoral nations have contended for possession of its mountains; commercial nations for its ports and its renowned Bosphorus; warlike peoples have pitched their tents amid its magnificent valleys ”

“ The old rude image of Tauropolis had come from the Tauri, and the strange ritual was descended from their bloody rites. So the Taurian goddess must be Artemis too. The tendency of ancient polytheism, when it met with some alien religion, was not to treat the alien gods as entirely new persons, but assuming the real and obvious existence of their own gods, to inquire by what names and with what ritual the strangers worshipped them. ”

“ We proceeded thence, travelling up the river called pontem inidignatus Araxes, leaving Persia and the Caspian mountains on our left hand, towards the south, Curgia and the great sea on our right hand, towards the west [8] . Going all the way southwards [9] , we passed through the meadows of Bacchu- khan, the general of the Tartar army on the Araxes, who has likewise subjugated the Curgi, the Turks, and the Persians. There is another Tartar governor of Persia at Tauris, named Argon, who presides over the tribute. ”

“ SHOWING HOW OUR TRAVELLERS CROSSED THE ANCIENT TAURIDA, AND WITH WHAT TEAM THEY QUITTED IT.
The Crimea! the Taurisian Chersonese of the ancients; a quadrilateral, or rather an irregular lozenge, which seems to have been lifted by enchantment from the Italian shores; a peninsula which M. de Lesseps would transform into an island with two strokes of his knife; a corner of the earth which has been the coveted possession, and the objective, of all the jealous peoples who dispute for the empire of the East ”

“ Nothing is certain as to their affinities. They probably represent an old population perhaps connected with some Caucasus stock; in spite of the resemblance of the name Taurisci they are not iikely to be Celts. They were famous in the ancient world for their maiden goddess, identified by the Greeks with Artemis Tauropolos or Iphigeneia, Whom the goddess was said to have brought to her shrine at the moment when she was to have been sacrificed at Aulis. ”

“ The Taurians are savages who kill all strangers, and if ever a Greek shall land in the wild place it will be her task to prepare him for sacrifice. She lives with this terror hanging over her, and the first Greek that comes is her unknown brother, Orestes. Their recognition of one another is, perhaps, the finest recognition-scene in all Tragedy; and with its sequels of stratagem and escape forms a thrilling play, haunted not, like a tragedy, by the shadow of death but rather by the shadow of homesickness. ”

“ We however sometimes meet with sacred towers, which were really denominated Tauri from the worship of the mystic bull, the same as the Apis, and Mneuis of Egypt. Such was probably the temple of Minotaurus in Crete, where the [236] Deity was represented under an emblematical figure; which consisted of the body of a man with the head of a bull. In Sicily was a promontory Taurus, mentioned by Diodorus Siculus; which was called also Tauromenium. ”

“ But still they cry and cry. Fireflies no good! Then Tarioa very sad, so she call out. ‘O god of Rain, Ora, Tane, Maker-of-flowers and birds and nicer things, I have sin in thy sight, but now I do offer prayer. I will, O gods, be as sacrifice to thy altars, and my children shall worship thee if they do live.’
“The great god Tane, hearing her prayer, did walk out of forest. Seeing so beautiful a goddess before his eyes, he say: ‘You wanter food, milk for babies?’ Then he put forth his big hand and held babies up on tip of one finger—and looker much pleased! ”

“ There was perfect silence among the mountains, and the place was as lonely as it was sublime. The night was cool and fresh; but I could not sleep until towards morning. When I opened my belated eyes, the tall peaks on the opposite side of the glen were girdled below their waists with the flood of a sparkling sunrise. The sky was pure as crystal, except a soft white fleece that veiled the snowy pinnacles of Taurus, folding and unfolding, rising and sinking, as if to make their beauty still more attractive by the partial concealment. ”

“ Passing between these, we ascended to the shelf dividing the waters of the Cydnus and the Sihoon. From the point where the slope descends to the latter river, there opened before me one of the most glorious landscapes I ever beheld. I stood at the extremity of a long hollow or depression between the two ranges of the Taurus — not a valley, for it was divided by deep cloven chasms, hemmed in by steeps overgrown with cedars. On my right rose a sublime chain, soaring far out of the region of trees, and lifting its peaked summits of gray rock into the sky. ”

“ The Taurus range now forms a frontier of your empire, and all within that line ought not to appear distant to you. Wherever your arms have penetrated there should the laws of Rome also penetrate. Let barbarians, who have always the commands of their masters for laws, keep their kings to their joy; the Greeks submit to their fate, but they have the same love of freedom that you have. ”

“ The Tauric Iphigenia is a very beautiful conception of a Greek maiden in exile, compelled by the gloomy rites of Artemis, whose priestess she is, to sacrifice all Greeks that are cast upon the coast—a service which she performs with reluctance and with deep compassion, not without sceptical questioning concerning the morality of her office, or the interpretation of the real demands of the goddess. Her longing for her home and country gives her a special interest in every hapless Greek victim ”

“ According to Decharme, [134] the Taurian Artemis, with her hideous rites, was confused, by an accidental resemblance of names, with this Artemis Tauropolos, whose "symbol" was a bull, and who (whatever we may think of the symbolic hypothesis) used bulls as her "vehicle," and wore bull's horns. Müller, on the other hand, [135] believes the Greeks found in Tauria (i.e., Lemnos) a goddess with bloody "rites, whom they identified, by reason of those very human sacrifices, with their own Artemis Iphigenia." ”

“ Benjamin has written a most interesting monograph on the sun in Taurus which the writer takes the liberty of quoting from, as it reveals much that is enlightening concerning the constellation, and the customs that have survived the ancient worship of this time-honoured star group:
"In all ages of the world the nations have hailed with delight the return of spring and the revivification of nature under the warmth and heat of the sun. This universal festival we know as May Day and it commemorates the entrance of the sun into the constellation Taurus at the vernal equinox 4000 b.c. ”

“ For the Scythians who are called Taurians offer in sacrifice to their Virgin, as they call her, survivors from wrecks, and such Greeks as they catch, going thus far in impiety against men of their own race, and thus exposing the savagery of their gods, in that those whom Providence has rescued from danger and from the sea, they slay, almost fighting against Providence; because they frustrate the kindness of Providence by their own brutal character. ”

“ The Tauric Iphigenia.—Iphigenia, priestess of Artemis among the Tauri, opens the play with a prologue, announcing her miraculous escape from the sacrifice at Aulis, and her grim duty of consecrating for sacrifice the Greek strangers who land on the coast. She then goes out to seek the attendants she had summoned to join the funeral libations for her brother Orestes. For she feels convinced of his death by a vivid dream of her shattered home, and a single pillar standing, endowed with human voice. ”

“ For being desirous to put him to death, not thinking himself, whilst he was alive, to be properly free as a man, much less at liberty to do his pleasure as a king or tyrant, he durst not attempt to do it by open force, but commanded Taurion, one of his captains and familiars, to make him away secretly by poison, if possible, in his absence. Taurion, therefore, made himself intimate with Aratus, and gave him a dose, not of your strong and violent poisons, but such as cause gentle, feverish heats at first, and a dull cough, and so by degrees bring on certain death. ”

“ Still further up, we came to orchards of walnut and plum trees, and vineyards There were no houses, but the inhabitants, who were mostly Turcomans, live in villages during the winter, and in summer pitch their tents on the mountains where they pasture their flocks. Directly over this quiet pastoral vale towered the Taurus, and I looked at once on its secluded loveliness and on the wintry heights, whose bleak and sublime heads were mantled in clouds. From no point is there a more imposing view of the whole snowy range. ”

“ There is every reason to suppose that the constellation Taurus was one of the first to be invented. In ancient Akkadia it was known as "the Bull of Light," and before the time of Abraham, or over four thousand years ago, the Bull marked the vernal equinox. For the space of two thousand years therefore, Taurus was the prince and leader of the celestial hosts. ”

“ Taylor was there. But as the magnificent mountains of the Taurus range loomed up along the northern horizon, his attention was taken from rags, beggary, and ruined fortresses, to snowy cliffs, over which he had a passion for clambering.
Those persons who have ascended the Alps at the Simplon pass, have a very good idea of the Taurus mountains, and can realize somewhat of Mr. Taylor’s satisfaction as he rode up the gorges and peered into the deep valleys. He loved the mountains anywhere. ”

“ The scene is laid at the temple of Artemis in the Tauric Chersonese (the Crimea) —on the site of the modern Balaklava. Iphigenia, who had been doomed to die at Aulis for the Greeks, had been snatched from that death by Artemis, and had become priestess of the goddess at the Tauric shrine, where human victims were immolated. Two strangers, who had landed among the Tauri, have been sentenced to die at the altar. She discovers in them her brother Orestes and his friend Pylades. ”

“ In the Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, and Coptic the word for bull means "coming" or "who cometh," and the lucida of the constellation is a first magnitude star called "Aldebaran," which means the "leader."
The Masonic Tau Cross, , is an expressive symbol of the vernal equinox and of immortality. The emblem is found on many of the ancient monuments of Egypt, and clearly its astronomical significance can be traced to the constellation Taurus, for Brown tells us that the word "Tau" is derived from an Egyptian or Coptic root meaning a bull or cow. ”

“ Dark eyes and wavy hair frequently give them considerable beauty. The eye of the Taurian may never dart bolts of fire such as those wherewith the Arian would annihilate his enemies: it is softer, but under provocation it becomes sullenly expressive of the passive resistance wherewith these people win their battles, It then marks the difference between the impulsive Aries and the stubborn Taurus. ”

“ The Greeks first became acquainted with Tauria by their voyages to Miletus; and they gave it a name already celebrated in their mythology. They found there some sanguinary rites of a goddess, which, by partly softening the name, they called Oreiloche;1603 they also found human sacrifices, which they supposed to be offered to Iphigenia;1604 their own worship of that deity bore so many marks of ancient barbarism, that they were willing to consider the northern barbarians as its authors. ”

“ Striking our tent in the gardens of Tarsus, we again crossed the Cydnus, and took a northern course across the plain. The long line of Taurus rose before us, seemingly divided into four successive ranges, the highest of which was folded in clouds; only the long streaks of snow, filling the ravines, being visible. The outlines of these ranges were very fine, the waving line of the summits cut here and there by precipitous gorges — the gateways of rivers that came down to the plain. In about two hours, we entered the lower hills. They are barren aud stony, with a white, chalky soil ”

“ O little country within a great one! by only hearing the Tarasconese accent, quivering still with the air of that beloved land beneath the azure folds of its banner, behold Tartarin, delivered from love and its snares and restored to his friends, his mission, his glory. ”

“ The great mountain chain of Taurus, which begins from the Chelidonian promontory on the southern coast of Lykia, and strikes [p. 205] north-eastward as far as Armenia, formed the most noted boundary-line during the Roman times,—but Herodotus does not once mention it; the river Halys is in his view the most important geographical limit. Northward of Taurus, on the upper portions of the rivers Halys and Sangarius, was situated the spacious and lofty central plain of Asia Minor. ”

“ From this beginning of the Taurus up to the height of a mile the clouds never pass away; thus we have fifteen miles, that is, a height of about five miles in a straight line; and the summit of the peaks of the Taurus are as much, or about that. There, half way up, we begin to find a scorching air and never feel a breath of wind; but nothing can live long there; there nothing is brought forth save a few birds of prey which breed in the high fissures of Taurus and descend below the clouds to seek their prey. Above the wooded hills all is bare rock, that is, from the clouds upwards ”