People
Bechiricae
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The Bechiricae were a native people of the Black Sea coast east of Trapezus, today's Trabzon in Turkey, holding the river valleys up to the ridge of the Paryadres mountains. The map writes their name in plain black. The Greek geographer Scylax placed a Greek town with a harbour on their shore, where Rize now stands, and the poet Apollonius of Rhodes and the Roman writer Pliny also knew them. Greeks told strange tales about them: those who recovered from a grave illness were said to offer themselves to the dogs. One old explanation reads the name as a variant of Macrones, meaning mountain dwellers.