The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Colchians

(Russian, Kolkhi), a collective name of the ancient Georgian tribes that occupied the territory of the southeastern and eastern Black Sea region. The ancient Greeks first began to refer to western Georgia as Colchis, after the Colchians, who lived there in the early part of the first millennium B.C. The Colchians were originally joined together in the early class political formation of Colcha (Culcha), which is mentioned in the Urartian inscriptions of the eighth century B.C.; the Colchian Kingdom was created in the sixth century B.C.

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References in periodicals archive

Francisci and Chaffey had filmed their Colchian locations in Italy, while Freda stayed entirely in the studio.

Colchian religion is personified in Medea, princess and priestess.

Medea finds a new connection to her Colchian identity, and tragedy ensues.

Apollonius and the Golden Fleece: A neo-mythological screen legacy

Scholars have noted that Apollonius takes considerable pains to integrate his similes with the flow of his narrative, and the autumnal avalanche of quivering leaves is just the right image to convey the chaotic, yet directed movement of the mass of angry Colchians .

In Apollonius the reader encounters a mass of Colchians crowding along the banks of the river Phasis.

Furthermore, as I have remarked above, Apollonius binds his similes tightly to his narrative, and the simile's waves may well be linked with the Colchians' setting sail in pursuit of Medea just twenty lines further on in the narrative.

Aeneas will also have to work for his destiny, implied by Virgil's reference to the Colchians gathering in great numbers at the banks of the Phasis.

Framing Virgil's ghosts: allusion and the illusion of Rothko's door

In Apollonius's celebrated treatment, which found a close imitation in Vergil's Aeneid, the goddess induced her son Eros/Cupid to arouse Medea's passion; Valerius, by contrast, has Venus herself visit the Colchian princess in disguise as her sister Circe.

In the case of Europa, the "remythologizing" of the legend is contained in Absyrtus's exhortation to his Colchian troops as they pursue the Argonauts in the final book of the poem:

Reading models and the homeric program in Valerius Flaccus's Argonautica