The Taochi, or Taochoi ( ka, ტაოხები, ''Taochebi'') were a people of

Anatolia Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...

in antiquity, known mainly from Greco-Roman ethnography. The Taochoi lived in a mountainous area of the

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Roma ...

to the current borders of Georgia, Armenia and Turkey. Their country bordered by the ''countries of steels and pheasants''. While passing their lands,

Xenophon Xenophon of Athens (; grc, wikt:Ξενοφῶν, Ξενοφῶν ; – probably 355 or 354 BC) was a Greek military leader, philosopher, and historian, born in Athens. At the age of 30, Xenophon was elected commander of one of the biggest Anci ...

faced hostility. He recorded that these people were brave, valiant and self-sacrificing to such extremity that after losing the battle, the Taochoi committed mass suicide along with their wives and their children by jumping off the cliff in order not to be enslaved. Xenophon (400 B.C.) describes a similar practice among the Kartvelian Taochi: “Then there came a dreadful spectacle: the women threw their little children down from the rocks and then threw themselves down after them, and the men did likewise. In the midst of this scene Aeneas of Stymphalus, a captain, catching sight of a man, who was wearing a fine robe, running to cast himself down, seized hold of him in order to stop him; but the man dragged Aeneas along after him, and both went flying down the cliffs and were killed. In this stronghold only a very few human beings were captured, but they secured cattle and asses in large numbers and sheep” (Anabasis IV.vii.13-14). In 1928, a Russian Botanist Woronow published and described an Iris called '' Iris Taochia'' in Fl. Kavkaza. It was found in Turkey.

References

{{Ancient Georgians Ancient peoples of Georgia (country) Tribes in Greco-Roman historiography Anabasis (Xenophon)

See also

References