CIMMERII, or Cimmerians, a nomadic people of antiquity who dwelt near the Palus Maeotis or Sea of Azoff, in the Tauric Chersonese or Crimea, and in the Asiatic Sarmatia or the country of the lower Volga. They are said to have desolated Asia Minor prior to the time of Homer; and in their second invasion they penetrated as far westward as Aeolis and Ionia, captured Sardis the capital of Lydia in the reign of Ardys, and continued in possession till they were driven out of Asia by Alyattes, the grandson of that sovereign. The fears of the Ionians are commemorated in the elegiac fragments of Call inns.

The name Cimmerii is also given to a mythical people, represented by Homer as inhabiting a remote region of mist and darkness, but localized by later writers near Lake Avernus, or in the Tauric Chersonesus, or in Spain. Their country was fabled to be so gloomy, that the expression “Cimmerian darkness” became proverbial; and Homer, according to Plutarch, drew his images of hell and Pluto from the dismal region they inhabited.