Hi everyone! I'm an Italian student (so I'm very sorry in advance for my bad English!) who is studying the habits of ancient populations and, since I also tarvel a lot, I'm very interested in the cultures of the places I visit. In particolary I'm very interested in the period of the Persian ampire and, because of studies of mine, in very primitive and ancient populations. At the moment I'm reading/studying Erodotus but I couldn't find any information about people living in the area of the nowdayday Armenian and Georgian territories. I know that in the present Georgia there was a population where Medea was living (it's Colchi in italian, don't know in wnglish). Does Erodotus talk about this people? I've read about people living in the nowdays Ukraine and Crimea and other people around there but nothing I was looking for! Thanks for help, still sorry about my bad english grammar, really!
The earliest mentions of the Armenians as a people was in the Behistun inscription, which is one of the most important sources we have for Old Persian and the history of the Achaemenid Empire. At this time Armenia was a satrapy in the Achaemenid Empire.
Xenophon in his Anabasis tells his tale of fleeing the royal Persian army while traversing the Armenian highland and describing his encounters with the local people. In his Cyropaedia, he tells the story of Cyrus the Great's Armenian vassal, Tigran Orontid, and how he often hunted with the Persian emperor.
The earliest Greek reference to the Armenians was through Hecataeus of Miletus. Herodotus (in The Histories) also spoke of the Armenians, suggesting that they were Phrygian colonists:
"The Armenians, who are settlers from Phrygia, were armed like the Phrygians."
Armenians had been living in the Armenian Highland before the Achaemenid Empire. It's very likely that they formed a contigent of the population of the state of Urartu which lay in the same territory. Although the Urartians were related to the Hurrians and weren't Indo-Europeans, traces of linguistic borrowing and probable migration models tell us that Armenians did live in Urartu.
Urartu was conquered by the Median Empire in early 6th century BC, from there on Armenians lived under Iranian influence until the coming of Alexander the Great. The massive layer of Iranian loanwords (mostly Parthian, but many can be safely traced to Old Persian through Middle Persian) in the Armenian language today is an example of this. The amount of Iranian borrowings is so great that early linguists intially believed Armenian was actually an Iranian language (it's actually an isolate within Indo-European, likely closely related to Greek and Phrygian). Armenian mythology also underwent substantial Iranian influence. The main Armenian gods were replaced with their Zoroastrian equivalents (Ahura Mazda becomes Aramazd, Anahita becomes Anahit, Verethragna becomes Vahagn, Mithra becomes Mihr).
The Georgians, meanwhile, are an amalgam of the ancient Colchians and the Iberians. The Georgians speak a language today descended from the language of the Iberians, while the descendants of the Colchians still live in Georgia today. Hecateaus of Miletus identifies the Colchians with the Moschoi. The Greeks colonised the Black Sea coast around Colchis and the kingdom is featured in Greek mythology as the place of the Golden Fleece. Both Colchis and Iberia were governed by the Persians from the 6th century BC to the 4th century BC.
The kingdoms of Armenia, Iberia and Colchis became independent after Alexander the Great caused the fall of the Achaemenid Empire.
Not much in Herodotus, I'm afraid. There's a quick mention of that area in Herodotus 3.93-94, and Xenophon mentions Armenia in a few places in his Anabasis (3.5.17, 4.3.4, 4.4.4, and 4.4.7), but it and Georgia/Colchis (that's the English spelling) weren't visited by Greeks very much until the time of Alexander's conquest.
Greek settlements that were around at the time of the Achaemenid Empire were mainly on the north coast of the Black Sea (Ukraine, esp. Crimea) and the south coast (Anatolia/Turkey). The cultural interface with the Greeks was in Ukraine, with the Scythians who lived to the north and north-east; so those are the non-Greek people that Herodotus focuses on. Intuitively, it makes sense that Herodotus was less able to find out about peoples where there was a more limited cultural interface, like the Armenians/Colchians.
After Alexander, of course, everything is different, and that area became part of the Seleucid Empire, so you'll find more information popping up in later sources like Arrian and Strabo.
Your post has prompted me to find my copy of 'Black Sea' by Neal Ascherson (1995), which I've been meaning to re-read. It's a long time since I first read it, so I can't remember much detail, but I think it might give you some relevant clues and references.
I've got strong memories of it being a very enjoyable book. Are there any historians out there who can comment on it?