TO THE HERACLEOTIC CHERSONESUS. 
virgin, as well as to the terrible nature of her 
rites \ It will be noticed in a subsequent account 
of a journey we made along this coast, with 
Professor Pallas, from Balaclava to the extreme 
south-western point of the Minor Peninsula of 
Chersonesus. 
The whole of this little peninsula is marked 
by vestiges of antient buildings. The remains 
of walls traverse it in so many directions, that 
it is impossible to conceive the purposes for 
which they were erected. If we were to 
enumerate the curious relics at Inkerman, the 
ruins of the cities of Eupalorium and Chersonesus, 
(?) “ On that inhospitable shore,” says Gibbon, speaking of the 
7'aurica Chersonesus, “ Euripides, embellishing with exquisite art the 
tales of antiquity, has placed the scene of one of his affecting trage- 
dies. (Jphigen. in Taur.) The bloody sacrifices of Diana, the arrival 
of Orestes and Pylades, and the triumph of virtue and religion over 
savage fierceness, serve to represent an historical truth, that the 
Tauri, the original inhabitants of the Peninsula, were in some degree 
reclaimed from their brutal manners, by a gradual intercourse with the 
Grecian colonies, which settled along the maritime coast. This seems 
to Concede more to allegory than is consistent with the antient history 
of the Greek Drama ; in which so much attention was paid to the 
strict tenor either of record or tradition. It is uncertain to which of 
the Heathen Goddesses the detmon virgin of Strabo may be referred. 
The editor of the Oxford Strabo (p. 446. in Not.) suspects that she 
Was of Scythian origin. Her image was believed to have fallen front 
heaven. Orestes carried it into Greece ; but the base of the statue, 
according to Ovid, remained. In the language of the Tauri, her 
earliest votaries, she was called Orsiloche. Ovid calls her Orestea 
Dea : Epist. 1. ex Pont. lib. i. 
