The Macrones are first mentioned by
Herodotus (c. 450 BC), who relates that they, along with
Moschi,
Tibareni,
Mossynoeci, and
Marres,
formed the nineteenth
satrapy 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.
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
Tzanni (). According to
Procopius, the
Byzantine emperor Justinian I subdued them in the 520s and converted them to
Christianity. 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 whose presence in Northeastern
Anatolia might have preceded the
Hittite period, and who survived the demise of
Urartu. They are frequently regarded as the possible ancestors of the
Mingrelians and
Laz people (cf. , a Mingrelian self-designation). == References ==