The Macrones (მაკრონები, ; , Makrōnes) were an ancient Colchian tribes in the east of Pontus, about the Moschian Mountains (mountains approximately south and east of modern Bayburt). The name is allegedly derived from the name of Kromni valley (Κορούμ, located 13 km north-east of Gümüşhane) by adding Kartvelian ma- prefix which denotes regional descendance.
History
The Macrones are first mentioned by
Herodotus (c. 450 BC), who relates that they, along with
Mushki,
Tibareni,
Mossynoeci, and
Marres, formed the nineteenth
within the
Achaemenid Persian Empire and fought under
Xerxes I. There are many other subsequent references to them in the Classical accounts.
Xenophon (430–355 BC) places them east of Trapezus (modern
Trabzon, Turkey). They are described as a powerful and wild people wearing garments made of hair, and as using in war wooden helmets, small shields of wicker-work, and short lances with long points.
[Herodotus ii. 104, vii. 78; Xenophon Anabasis iv. 8. § 3, v. 5. § 18, vii. 8. § 25; compare Hecataeus Fragm. 191; Scylax, p. 33; Dionysius Periegetes 766; Apollonius of Rhodes ii. 22; Pliny the Elder (1st century AD) vi. 4; Josephus Against Apion i. § 22, who asserts that they observed the custom of circumcision).] Strabo (xii.3.18) remarks, in passing, that the people formerly called Macrones bore in his day the name of
Sanni, a claim supported also by Stephanus of Byzantium, though Pliny speaks of the Sanni and Macrones as two distinct peoples. By the 6th century they were known as the
Zan people (). According to
Procopius, the Byzantine emperor
Justinian I subdued them in the 520s and converted them to
Christianity.
[Procopius De Bello Persico. i. 15, De Bello Gothico. iv. 2, De Aedificiis iii. 6.] They participated in the
Lazic War fighting under the Byzantine command.
The Macrones are identified by modern scholars as one of the proto-Georgian tribes[Suny, Ronald Grigor (1994), The Making of the Georgian Nation (2nd ed.), p. 8. Indiana University Press, ] whose presence in Northeastern Anatolia might have preceded the Hittites period, and who survived the demise of Urartu.[Bryer, A. & Winfield, D. (1985). The Byzantine Monuments and Topography of the Pontos, p. 300. DOS 20 (Washington D.C.), I. Cited in: Kavtaradze (2002), pp. 63–83.] They are frequently regarded as the possible ancestors of the Mingrelians and Laz people (cf. margal, a Mingrelian self-designation).
The Macrones lived along the border with the Machelones, another "Sannic" tribe evidently closely related to the Macrones.[Edwards, Robert W. (1988), "The Vale of Kola: A Final Preliminary Report on the Marchlands of Northeast Turkey", p. 130. Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 42.]
