King of the Taurians among the Scythians, who sacrificed strangers to Artemis and sent Orestes and Pylades to the priestess — not to be confused with Thoas of Aetolia, Lemnos, or Dulichium.1
Apollodorus describes the Taurians as a Scythian people who murdered strangers and threw them into a sacred fire wafted up from Hades through a rock. When an oracle told Orestes he would be rid of his madness if he fetched the wooden image from their land, he came with Pylades, was detected, caught, and carried before Thoas the king.2
Thoas sent the captives to the priestess of Artemis — who proved to be Iphigenia, Orestes' sister, carried off at Aulis and appointed to serve the goddess among the Taurians. Recognized by his sister, Orestes fled with her and the image; it was conveyed to Athens and called the image of Tauropolos.3
The name is borne by at least four other figures in the atlas: Thoas son of Andraemon, captain of the Aetolians at Troy; Thoas king of Lemnos, father hidden by Hypsipyle; Thoas the Dulichian suitor of Penelope; and Thoas the Giant of the Gigantomachy. The Taurian king belongs to the Oresteia's eastern episode alone.4
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story