People
Caucasi
Kaukasus
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Caucasi, the peoples of the Caucasus, are named in the lands east of the Sea of Azov and north of the Taurus mountains. Reference works tie the name to the Abasgi, forerunners of the Abkhazians, a western Caucasian people living between the Inguri river and the port of Pitsunda. Under Rome they were partly dependent: the historian Arrian records that the emperor Hadrian gave them a petty king called Rhesmagas, and under Theodosius the First a cavalry unit raised from them was quartered far away in the great oasis of the Egyptian Thebaid. In the middle of the sixth century they became Christian.