Sarmatians

Sarmatians
Scythia-Parthia 100 BC.png
Approximate extent of East Iranian languages in the first century BC is shown in orange.
Total population
Unknown
Regions with significant populations
Eastern Europe
Central Asia
Northern India
Languages

Scythian language
Related ethnic groups

Scythians
Map of the Roman empire under Hadrian (ruled 117-38 AD), showing the location of the Sarmatae in the South Russian steppe region

The Sarmatians (Latin Sarmatæ or Sauromatæ, Greek Σαρμάται, Σαυρομάται) were an Iranian people of Classical Antiquity, flourishing from about the 5th century BC to the 4th century AD.[1][2]

Their territory was known as Sarmatia to Greco-Roman ethnographers, corresponding to the western part of greater Scythia (modern Southern Russia, Ukraine, and the eastern Balkans). At their greatest reported extent, around 100 BC, these tribes ranged from the Vistula River to the mouth of the Danube and eastward to the Volga, bordering the shores of the Black and Caspian seas as well as the Caucasus to the south.[3]

The Sarmatians declined in the fourth century with the incursions connected to the Migration period (Huns, Goths, Turks). The descendents of the Sarmatians become known as the Alans during the Early Middle Ages, and ultimately give rise to the modern Ossetic ethnic group.

Contents

Name

The names of several Sarmatian tribes, such as Thisomatae, Iaxomatae and others, are characterized by the final -matae, apparently meaning something like "tribe, people, men", compared by Malte-Brun (1829) to Mādai, the name of the Medes. The first element of the name is compared to Avestan zar-, "old" by Alexander Lubotsky.[4] Sarmatae is in origin probably just one of several tribal names of the Sarmatians which came to be applied to the entire group as an exonym in Greco-Roman ethnography. Strabo in the 1st century names as the main tribes of the Sarmatians the Iazyges, the Roxolani, the Aorsi and the Siraces.

The Greek name Sarmatai was corrupted to the variant Sauromatai apparently by association with lizards (sauros). Suggestions for the reason the Sarmatians were associated with lizards include their reptile-like scale armour, their dragon standards, or their "small and lively eyes, compared [by the Greeks] to those of lizards" (Malte-Brun 1829, c.f. Herodotus 4.110-117).[5][6] Both Pliny the Elder (Natural History book iv) and Jordanes are aware that the names in Sar- and in Sauro- are interchangeable variants, referring to the same people.

Greek authors of the 4th century mention (Pseudo-Scylax, Eudoxus of Cnidus) mention Syrmatae as the name of a people living at the Don, perhaps reflecting the endonym as it was pronouned in the final phase of Sarmatian culture. The Avesta mentions Sairima as a region "in the west".

Archaeology

Great steppe of Kazakhstan in early spring.
A Sarmatian diadem, found at the Khokhlach kurgan near Novocherkassk (1st century AD, Hermitage Museum).
Sarmatian cataphracts during Dacian Wars as depicted on Trajan's Column.
Sarmatia Europea in map of Scythia, 1697.
"Sarmatia Europæa" separated from "Sarmatia Asiatica" by the Tanais (the River Don), based on Greek literary sources, in a map printed in London, ca 1770.

Soviet archaeologist Boris Grakov in 1947 defined a culture flourishing from the 6th century BC to the 4th century AD, apparent in late Kurgan graves, sometimes reusing part of much older Kurgans. It is a nomadic steppe culture ranging from the Black Sea to beyond the Volga, and is especially evident at two of the major sites at Kardaielova and Chernaya in the trans-Uralic steppe. Grekov defined four phases:

  1. Sauromatian, 6th-5th centuries BC
  2. Early Sarmatian, 4th-2nd centuries BC
  3. Middle Sarmatian, late 2nd century BC to late 2nd century AD
  4. Late Sarmatian: late 2nd century AD to 4th century AD

It is important to note that while "Sarmatian" and "Sauromatian" are synonymous as ethnonyms, they are given different meanings purely by convention as archaeological technical terms.

Grekov's Sarmatia does not extend at all into the Balto-Slavic range, where the two elements have their own archeologies descending to the Balts and the Slavs.

In Hungary, a great Late Sarmatian pottery center was reportedly unearthed between 2001–2006 near Budapest, in Üllő5 archaeological site. Typical gray, granular Üllő5 ceramics forms a distinct group of Sarmatian pottery found everywhere in the northcentral part of the Great Hungarian Plain region, indicating a lively trading activity. A 1998 paper on the study of glass beads found in Sarmatian graves suggests wide cultural and trade links.[7]

Archaeological evidence suggests that Scythian-Sarmatian cultures may have given rise to the myth of Amazons. Graves of armed females have been found in southern Ukraine and Russia. David Anthony notes, "About 20% of Scythian-Sarmatian "warrior graves" on the lower Don and lower Volga contained females dressed for battle as if they were men, a phenomenon that probably inspired the Greek tales about the Amazons."[8]

Language

The numerous Iranian personal names in the Greek inscriptions from the Black Sea Coast indicate the Sarmatians spoke a North-Eastern Iranian dialect ancestral to Ossetic (see Scytho-Sarmatian).[9]

Greco-Roman ethnography

Herodotus (Histories 4.21) in the fifth century BC placed the land of the Sarmatians east of the Tanais, beginning at the corner of the Maeotian Lake, stretching northwards for fifteen days' journey, adjacent to the forested land of the Budinoi. Herodotus describes the Sarmatians' physical appearance as blond, stout and tanned, in short, pretty much as the Scythians and Thracians were seen by the other classical authors.

Herodotus (4.110-117) gives a story of the Sauromatians' origin from an unfortunate marriage of a band of young Scythian men and a group of Amazons. In the story, some Amazons were captured in battle by Greeks in Pontus (northern Turkey) near the river Thermodon, and the captives were loaded into three boats. They overcame their captors while at sea, but were not able sailors. Their ships were blown north to the Maeotian Lake (the Sea of Azov) onto the shore of Scythia near the cliff region (today's southeastern Crimea). After encountering the Scythians and learning the Scythian language, they agreed to marry Scythian men, but only on the condition that they move away and not be required to follow the customs of Scythian women. According to Herodotus, the descendants of this band settled toward the northeast beyond the Tanais (Don) river and became the Sauromatians. Herodotus' account explains the origins of the Sarmatians' language as an "impure" form of Scythian and credits the unusual freedoms of Sauromatae women, including participation in warfare, as an inheritance from their supposed Amazon ancestors. Later writers refer to the "woman-ruled Sarmatae" (γυναικοκρατούμενοι). However, Herodotus' belief that the Sarmatians were descendants of mythological Amazons is very likely a fictional invention designed to explain certain idiosyncrasies of Sarmatian culture.

Hippocrates (De Aere, etc., 24) explicitly classes them as Scythian and describes them as "swarthy, short and fat, of a phlegmatic and relaxed temperament".

Strabo mentions the Sarmatians in a number of places, never saying very much about them. He uses both Sarmatai and Sauromatai, but never together, and never suggesting that they are different peoples. He often pairs Sarmatians and Scythians in reference to a series of ethnic names, never stating which is which, as though Sarmatian or Scythian could apply equally to them all.

In Strabo, the Sarmatians extend from above the Danube eastward to the Volga, and from north of the Dnepr into the Caucasus, where, he says, they are called Caucasii like everyone else there. This statement indicates that the Alans already had a home in the Caucasus, without waiting for the Huns to push them there.

Even more significantly, he points to a Celtic admixture in the region of the Basternae, who, he says, are of Germanic origin. The Celtic Boii, Scordisci and Taurisci are there. A fourth ethnic element being melted in are the Thracians (7.3.2). Moreover, the peoples toward the north are Keltoskythai, "Celtic Scythians" (11.6.2).

Strabo also portrays the peoples of the region as being nomadic, or Hamaksoikoi, "wagon-dwellers" and Galaktophagoi, "milk-eaters" referring, no doubt, to the universal koumiss eaten in historical times. The wagons were used for porting tents made of felt, which must have been the yurts used universally by Asian nomads.

Pliny the Elder writes (4.12.79-81):

“ From this point (the mouth of the Danube) all the races in general are Scythian, though various sections have occupied the lands adjacent to the coast, in one place the Getae … at another the Sarmatae … Agrippa describes the whole of this area from the Danube to the sea … as far as the river Vistula in the direction of the Sarmatian desert … The name of the Scythians has spread in every direction, as far as the Sarmatae and the Germans, but this old designation has not continued for any except the most outlying sections .... ”

According to Pliny, Scythian rule once extended as far as Germany. Jordanes supports this hypothesis by telling us on the one hand that he was familiar with the Geography of Ptolemy, which includes the entire Balto-Slavic territory in Sarmatia, and on the other that this same region was Scythia. By "Sarmatia", Jordanes means only the Aryan territory. The Sarmatians therefore did come from the Scythians.

Tacitus' De Origine et situ Germanorum speaks of “mutual fear” between Germanic peoples and Sarmatians:

All Germania is divided from Gaul, Raetia, and Pannonia by the Rhine and Danube rivers; from the Sarmatians and the Dacians by shared fear and mountains. The Ocean laps the rest, embracing wide bays and enormous stretches of islands. Just recently, we learned about certain tribes and kings, whom war brought to light.[10]

According to Tacitus, like the Persians, the Sarmatians wore long, flowing robes (ch 17). Moreover, the Sarmatians exacted tribute from the Cotini and Osi, and iron from the Cotini (ch. 43), “to their shame” (presumably because they could have used the iron to arm themselves and resist).

By the third century BC, the Sarmatian name appears to have supplanted the Scythian in the plains of what is now south Ukraine. The geographer, Ptolemy, reports them at what must be their maximum extent, divided into adjoining European and central Asian sections. Considering the overlap of tribal names between the Scythians and the Sarmatians, no new displacements probably took place. The people were the same Indo-Europeans they used to be, but now under yet another name.

Later, Pausanias, viewing votive offerings near the Athenian Acropolis in the second century AD. (Description of Greece 1.21.5-6), found among them a Sauromic breastplate.

“ On seeing this a man will say that no less than Greeks are foreigners skilled in the arts: for the Sauromatae have no iron, neither mined by themselves nor yet imported. They have, in fact, no dealings at all with the foreigners around them. To meet this deficiency they have contrived inventions. In place of iron they use bone for their spear-blades, and corneal-wood for their bows and arrows, with bone points for the arrows. They throw a lasso round any enemy they meet, and then turning round their horses upset the enemy caught in the lasso.

Their breastplates they make in the following fashion. Each man keeps many mares, since the land is not divided into private allotments, nor does it bear any thing except wild trees, as the people are nomads. These mares they not only use for war, but also sacrifice them to the local gods and eat them for food. Their hoofs they collect, clean, split, and make from them as it were python scales. Whoever has never seen a python must at least have seen a pine-cone still green. He will not be mistaken if he liken the product from the hoof to the segments that are seen on the pine-cone. These pieces they bore and stitch together with the sinews of horses and oxen, and then use them as breastplates that are as handsome and strong as those of the Greeks. For they can withstand blows of missiles and those struck in close combat.

 ”

Pausanias' description is well borne out in a relief from Tanais. These facts are not necessarily incompatible with Tacitus, as the western Sarmatians might have kept their iron to themselves, it having been a scarce commodity on the plains.

In the late fourth century A.D., Ammianus Marcellinus (29.6.13-14) describes a severe defeat which Sarmatian raiders inflicted upon Roman forces in the province of Valeria in Pannonia in late 374 A.D. The Sarmatians almost destroyed 2 legions: one recruited from Moesia and one legion from Pannonia. The last had been sent to intercept a party of Sarmatians which had been in pursuit of a senior Roman officer named Aequitiu. The two legions failed to coordinate, allowing the Sarmatians to catch them unprepared.

Decline in the 4th century

See also: Alans and Ossetians

The Sarmatians remained dominant until the Gothic ascendancy in the Black Sea area and then disappeared from the historical record following the Hunnish destruction of the Gothic empire and subsequent invasion of central Europe. From bases in Hungary, the Huns ruled the entire former Sarmatian territory. Their various constituents enjoyed a floruit under Hunnish rule, fought for the Huns against a combination of Roman and Germanic troops, and went their own ways after the Battle of Chalons (a stand-off), the death of Attila and the disappearance of the Chuvash ruling elements west of the Volga.

Goths attacked Sarmatian tribes on the north of the Danube in what is today Romania. The Roman Emperor Constantine called Constantine II up from Galia to run the campaign. In very cold weather, the Romans were overwhelmingly victorious, destroying 100,000 Goths and capturing Ariaricus the son of the Goth king.[11][12][13]

In their efforts to halt the Gothic expansion on the north of Lower Danube (present-day Romania), the Sarmatians armed their slaves. After the Roman victory, however, the local population revolted against their Sarmatian masters, pushing them beyond the Roman border. Constantine, on whom the Sarmatians had called for help, defeated Limigantes, the leader of the revolt, and moved the Sarmatian population back in. In the Roman provinces, Sarmatian combatants were enlisted in the Roman army, whilst the rest of the population was distributed throughout Thracia, Macedonia and Italy. Origo Constantini mentions 300,000 refugees resulting from this conflict. The emperor Constantine was subsequently attributed the title of SARMATICUS MAXIMUS.[12][14][15][16][17]

See also

References

  1. ↑ J.Harmatta: "Scythians" in UNESCO Collection of History of Humanity - Volume III: From the Seventh Century BC to the Seventh Century AD. Routledge/UNESCO. 1996. pg. 182
  2. ↑ (2007). Encyclopædia Britannica, s.v. "Sarmatian". Retrieved May 20, 2007, from [Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9065786]
  3. ↑ Apollonius (Argonautica, iii) envisaged the Sauromatai as the bitter foe of King Aietes of Colchis (modern Georgia).
  4. ↑ Indo-Aryan Inherited Lexicon (on the Leiden University IED site)
  5. ↑ Conrad Malte-Brun, Universal geography (1829).
  6. ↑ Brzezinski (2002), p. 6.
  7. ↑ [http://www.nbz.or.jp/eng/pdffiles/hallandyablonsky1998.pdf Chemical Analyses of Sarmatian Glass Beads from Pokrovka, Russia], by Mark E. Hall and Leonid Yablonsky.
  8. ↑ Anthony, David W. (2007). The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691058873. http://books.google.com/books?id=rOG5VcYxhiEC. 
  9. ↑ Handbuch der Orientalistik, Iranistik. By I. Gershevitch, O. Hansen, B. Spuler, M.J. Dresden, Prof M Boyce, M. Boyce Summary. E.J. Brill. 1968.
  10. ↑ Germania omnis a Gallis Raetisque et Pannoniis Rheno et Danuvio fluminibus, a Sarmatis Dacisque mutuo metu aut montibus separatur: cetera Oceanus ambit, latos sinus et insularum inmensa spatia complectens, nuper cognitis quibusdam gentibus ac regibus, quos bellum aperuit.
  11. ↑ Origo Constantini 6.32 mentions the actions
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Eusebius Vita Constantini IV.6
  13. ↑ Charles Matson Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, Chapter X.
  14. ↑ Origo Constantini 6.32 mention the actions
  15. ↑ Barnes Victories of Constantine page 150–154
  16. ↑ Grant Constantine the Great pages 61–68
  17. ↑ Charles Manson Odahl Constantine and the Christian Empire Chapter X

Bibliography

External links