Sochi, where the 2014 Winter Olympics is to take place, has some associations with Ancient Greece that go beyond the fact that the Olympic games originated in that part of the world. Sochi was the venue of Ancient Greek myths, reports yahoo ‘s writer Mark Whittington .

The Moscow Times ruminates that Prometheus, the Titan who gave humankind the gift of fire according to the myths, was chained to a rock on a mountain quite near to modern Sochi where his liver was ravaged by an eagle each day. The story also goes on to state that the spirit of the Agura River would alleviate Prometheus’ torment, giving him food and salving his wounds.

Sochi was also, it is alleged, in the area where Jason and the Argonauts sailed to seek the Golden Fleece. The Golden Fleece was the pelt of a ram that was sacrificed to the god Zeus by Phrixus, the son of Athamus and the goddess Nephele, for he having been delivered from being sacrificed by his jealous stepmother. The Golden Fleece, which was considered a symbol of kingship, was nailed to a tree and remained there until Jason and his friends arrived to retrieve it. A Golden Fleece Monument resides in Sochi, consisting of two pillars and a gold plated sheep guarded by a dragon, meant to symbolize the association of Sochi with Greece.

In fact, while the area around Sochi was inhabited off and on since Neolithic times, it was colonized by Greeks around the first millennium B.C. Colchis, as the area was called in classical antiquity, was an important Greek trading community which dealt in gold, slaves, hides, linen cloth, agricultural produce, as well as shipbuilding materials as timber, flax, pitch, and wax.

Colchis was fought over by Persia, the Kingdom of Pontus, and finally by Rome. The Russians are relative latecomers, arriving in force in the 19th Century. However a considerable number of ethnic Greeks remains in modern times