III

THE SARMATAE AND PARTHIANS

II.

SARMATIAN SOCIETY, WARFARE AND ART

 

Very little is known of the organization of Sarmatian political life. There are kings and barons, the skeptouchoi and it may be assumed that the Sarmatians, like all the Iranians, had a kind of monarchical feudal State. Our sources are unanimous in regarding all the Sarmatian tribes, with the exception of the Siracians, as nomads leading a pastoral life and breeding great numbers of cattle. Their small, swift horses were famous in the Roman world. In a well-known inscription found at Apta on the Durance the Emperor Hadrian praises and commemorates his” Alanus Caesareus Veredus” that “flew” with him over swamps and hills of Tuscany as he hunted the wild boar.

There is no doubt that the Sarmatians were Iranians—near relations of the Scythians. The descendants of the Alani—the Ossetes in the Northern Caucasus—still speak an Iranian language and most of the non-Greek names in the Bosporan cities, especially in Tanais in Imperial times, are Iranian. The Sarmatian aristocracy was probably very rich. Through the empire of the Aorsi-Alani, which occupied vast regions to the north of the Caspian and Aral Seas and included the eastern part of the South Russian steppes, there ran an important caravan road connecting the Greek cities of the Black Sea with China, witness its description in the Chinese sources and the many Chinese articles, especially mirrors, which have been found in Sarmatian graves and at Panticapaeum (fragments of silk stuffs of Chinese workmanship of the second century AD). Furthermore, according to Strabo, many Indian and Babylonian products passed through Media and Armenia across the Caucasus into the regions occupied by the Aorsi and thence probably to the harbors of the Bosporan kingdom. Strabo meant probably the important trade-routes, one of which ran from India through Parthia to the Oxus and from there to the Caspian, the other from Babylonia along the Tigris and the Euphrates.

Since the Greeks and Romans met the Sarmatians mostly on the field of battle, their information on the military equipment, strategy and tactics of the Sarmatae is much more complete than on their religious, social and economic life, of which we know practically nothing. A combination of the descriptions of the Sarmatian army given by Strabo, Josephus, Tacitus, Arrian, Pausanias and Ammianus Marcellinus gives a picture which is very similar to that of the Parthian, Armenian and Iberian armies given by the same and other writers. The dominant feature is the prominent part played in the army by a body of heavy cataphracts with metal helmets, whose chief weapons were long heavy lances and swords, the bow being subsidiary. This body of mailed knights mounted on armoured steeds was made up, according to Tacitus, of members of the Sarmatian aristocracy, while the main body of the army was formed by light-armed bowmen, protected by leather corselets and leather caps. A like combination of heavy cavalry in close formation and swarms of nimble archers existed earlier in the steppes of Russia, at the time of the Scythian domination. But the new system was then in its beginnings, and the new type of a mailed phalanx had not yet been created. Who deserves the credit of having used it first, we do not know.  It must have been a people controlling a certain supply of iron and bronze, which suits both the Aorsi, masters of the Ural mountains, of the Altai and of the Minussinsk region, and the Parthians, who got their iron and steel through Merv. It must be noted, however, that the resources of the Sarmatian tribes in iron were not very large, since Ammianus Marcellinus describes the Sarmatae as wearing scale-armor, not of iron but of horn. A specimen of this armor dedicated in the temple of Asclepius at Athens moves Pausanias to observe how skillfully they made good their deficiency in iron. The mode of fighting used by the Sarmatians was much the same as that of the Parthians: the piece de resistance was the attack of the mailed, mounted phalanx, prepared and supported by the archers. Duels between the leaders of Iranian hosts in which the lasso and wrestling played an important part were common.

The picture given by classical authors is illustrated by many monuments of Graeco-Roman and Oriental art of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, as, for example, the figures of enemy cataphracts on the column of Trajan and similar figures on the arch of Galerius at Salonica. It is very probable that the first are meant to represent the equestrian phalanx of the Roxolani, while the second are the Sarmatian “foederati” of the army of Galerius in his Persian expedition (AD 296). No pictures of Sarmatian warriors Appear on the objects found in their graves. But the Sarmatian military organization had a strong influence on that of the Bosporan kingdom in the first three centuries AD. Many grave paintings of this period at Panticapaeum show Panticapaean victories over their enemies, the Scythians and Taurians of the Crimea. These pictures are probably copies of parts of the monumental paintings which were dedicated by the Bosporan kings and their generals to commemorate these victories. The Panticapaeans are represented either as a mounted phalanx or as single heroes charging their enemies, alone or at the head of their infantry. They always wear the complete equipment of a Sarmatian cataphract—long scale-cuirass, conical scale-helmet, sword and a long, heavy lance, while their enemies are bare-headed, mounted archers of the Scythian type. The same Sarmatian equipment appears also on many Panticapaean grave-stelae and on a commemorative monument from Tanais. Even the Bosporan kings adopted it in the second century AD, as is shown by their coins, and it appears also on pictures engraved on the rocks along the Yenisei river, pictures which probably represent the eastern Asiatic Aorsi-Alani. Finally may be mentioned a gold plaque found in Siberia, which represents a Sarmatian hunting a wild boar. As he is hunting, not fighting, he wears the nomadic riding kaftan of leather and not the cuirass and is using the bow. But his long sword hangs down from the shoulder. The peculiar manner of wearing this sword which slides on a special porte-épée, appears over and over again on many monuments of Oriental art, for example in India, and swords with this porte-épée (mostly of jade) have been found in the Volga region and at Panticapaeum and in many Chinese and Korean graves of the Han period. The Yenisei pictures and the Siberian plaque may attest the extension of Sarmatian domination over large parts of Siberia as far as the Minussinsk region.

THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE      

The evidence collected above, which bears on the history and life of the Sarmatians, is supported and completed by archaeological material. No cities or other settlements of the Sarmatians have been excavated. The Sarmatians were nomads and became sedentary city-dwellers only as emigrants who settled down in some of the Greek cities or as successors of earlier residents of the regions which the Sarmatians had conquered, for example, Uspa, the capital of the Siracians. The archaeological evidence for their life and art must be derived, therefore, from their graves. Very few of these have been systematically excavated. A small group in the region of the Ural river, some cemeteries along the lower Volga and a set of tumulus graves in the Kuban valley make up the list. The rest of our archaeological evidence comes from chance finds in various parts of the wide area inhabited by the Sarmatians—graves in Western Siberia, others in the region of the Don and the Donetz and burials in the region of the Dnieper and further to the west.

The Sarmatian graves may be subdivided in chronological groups—Hellenistic, early Imperial and late Imperial. Some local peculiarities may also be noted. The most important local group is that of the early Hellenistic graves of the Taman peninsula of the Kuban valley, and of the region of the lower Don. The rich graves recently discovered in the Altai mountains and in Mongolia show the same general characteristics as the Eastern European and Siberian graves and certainly belong to the same time and to the same civilization. But whether the chieftains buried in these graves were Iranian or Mongolian princelings no one can say.

As regards the archaeological evidence for the nomadic graves of the Sarmatian period, which cannot here be described in detail, it will suffice to say that the armor and weapons found in them all coincide with those described in the literary and archaeological evidence analyzed above. We find as especially typical the sword, the heavy lance and the various types of body-armor, the scale-cuirass, plate, ring or chain mail. The persistence of these makes these graves, whether the more modest or the more ambitious, a single group throughout the Hellenistic and early Imperial period, with certain chronological and local subdivisions. It is to be observed that the same equipment appears in Parthia, Armenia and Iberia, all Iranian or iranized countries. It penetrated also into China and India, but never appears there in the same pure form. Whether it was also used by the Mongolian nomads cannot as yet be said with confidence.

Archaeological evidence for the Sarmatian burials of the Volga and Kuban regions, which are identical in almost all details, is especially rich. It may be useful to quote a reconstruction of the picture of a typical Volga-Sarmatian tribesman (not a chieftain)-derived from the objects found in scores of contemporary graves of this region. Dressed in a shirt and long trousers, which were adorned with small beads above and larger ones below, wearing short overcoat which was fastened with a safety-pin on the right shoulder and a leather cap covered with bronze scales, his body protected by scale-armor and his feet by low, soft shoes, the Volga nomad appeared high on his horse, holding his small, curved bow. On a strap from his right shoulder, a red quiver, piled with long, painted arrows, hung down on his left side, while sword—long or short—was fastened at his right side. A lance completed his military equipment. This description may be compared with that of an average Roxolan given by Strabo. The equipment of the chieftain was, of course, more ambitious and more complicated. The main point, however, is that this is entirely different from the ancient Iranian equipment of the Scythian warriors of the sixth to the fourth centuries BC. The typical Scytho-Persian dagger (akinakes) the short javelins, the gorytus, the Scythian bow, the triangular arrow-heads, the Greek helmet—all have disappeared completely and are never found in the Sarmatian graves.

Another typical feature of the Sarmatian graves is the complete change in artistic tastes and styles. The Sarmatians no doubt brought their own art with them from their Oriental home. One of the striking traits of the earlier eastern Sarmatian graves is the entire absence of imported Greek objects, which are so common in Pontic Scythian graves, an absence which persisted in the eastern branches of the Sarmatian stock, for example the Volga Sarmatians. Not that all the objects which these Sarmatians wore were homemade; some were imported, but none from Greece. Persia and China were the countries with which the eastern Sarmatians were in constant commercial relations. The picture is different for the western Sarmatians of the Kuban river and the Don, who were good customers of the Greek cities of the Black Sea. But even in the western Sarmatian graves the Greek objects are but a foreign addition to a nomadic Oriental stock.

So far as imports are concerned, one group of Sarmatian graves appears in a quite peculiar light. A number of Hellenistic graves of the Taman peninsula, the Kuban valley and the region of the lower Don have yielded, alongside the objects typical of the Sarmatian period, a large number of silver and gold phalerae, which took the place of the earlier Scythian plaques used for horse-trappings. These phalerae, and jewels found with them, show such similarity, both in style and subjects, to the earlier products of Graeco-Sacian art, that it must be assumed that the men who used them belonged to the same group as that which created the peculiar Graeco-Sacian art which is so closely related to early Parthian art. These Graeco-Sacian phalerae were apparently imported by the Siracians into South Russia and spread from there along the north shore of the Black Sea.

Our information regarding the Sarmatian type of art is scanty. The only objects of a more or less artistic character that the graves have yielded are of metal, the local pottery being very coarse and the better grades of pottery and glass imported. And yet even this scanty supply shows some features which are interesting in themselves and important from the point of view of the evolution of art in both East and West. One of these features is the great love of the Sarmatians for effects of color: their arms and weapons, their silver and gold plate, the metal plaques sewn on their garments are regularly adorned with rows and groups of inset colored stones. Instead of, or along with them, a peculiar type of enamel is often used.  Polychromy in jewelry and toreutics was all the fashion of the day in the classical world of the Hellenistic period in general, and this fashion was inherited by Roman art and is especially noticeable in the provincial art of the Empire. It reached the Hellenistic kingdoms both from Egypt and from the Semitic and Iranian East, while the Roman provinces of central and eastern Europe added to it Celtic features—polychrome metallurgy was age-old in the Celtic countries—and developed it in their own way.  Sarmatian polychrome jewelry and toreutics has, however, its own cachet and its own development parallel to, and independent of, the evolution of polychromy in the Near East and in western Europe, and resembles that of the Parthian kingdom, India and China. A reflection of this eastern development may be seen in the costumes, jewelry and silver and gold plate of Palmyra. This eastern branch of polychrome jewelry—one of the peculiar features of it being enamel cloisonné—came into touch with the western branch, both in Syria and in South Russia and on the Danube. In the south this style was spread by the Parthians and the Sassanian Persians, in the north by the Sarmatians. It was the characteristic style of the North which was in the main responsible for the gorgeous development of polychrome metallurgy in the period of the Migrations and in the early Middle Ages, the Sassanian influence being merely subsidiary. Still more characteristic is another feature of Sarmatian art— its love for animal forms and its peculiar style of ornamentation which is usually called the “animal style”. This style had long obtained in central Asia. It came with the Scythians to South Russia where in the seventh to the fourth century BC it developed in its own way. To this early Asiatic animal style the Sarmatian is certainly closely related. Yet it is not a continuation of the Pontic or Scythian branch of it; it marks a new period in the development of the original animal style of Asia unaffected by Greek influence, which was so strong in the later period of the Pontic or Scythian variety. The Sarmatian animal style is at once vigorous and savage and highly refined and stylized,  though in a way different from the earlier Scythian stylization of the animal forms. It combines, moreover, the polychrome and the animal style in a most skilful and, at the same time, “barbarous”, way.

The most important objects which represent the Sarmatian, i.e. neo-Asiatic, animal style come partly from Western Siberia, partly from South Russia (especially the region of the Don). They belong to the adornments of dresses and to horse-trappings of the great Sarmatian chieftains. On the other hand, the animal style is but poorly represented in more modest graves, both of the Kuban and of the Volga region. It was an art of the ruling aristocracy. Whether or not it was confined to the Iranian aristocracy, it is hard to say. In all probability it was the art of the ruling Asiatic families in general, since it is found so splendidly displayed in princely graves of Mongolia and of the Altai, which hardly belonged to Iranian tribal chieftains. It may have been imported into China, where the style was fashionable mostly on the borderlands for a time, by the Yueh-chih, but more probably by the Huns, who for centuries were the nearest neighbors of the Chinese. In Siberia and in South Russia, however, the neo-Asiatic animal style was certainly patronized by the great chieftains of the Aorsi and the Alani, whom Strabo characterizes as “wearers of gold”. On the other hand, it never became the mode among the Parthians or Sassanian Persians.

The development of western European art owes but little to this style. It certainly influenced the art of the upper Volga and Kama, and some elements of it perhaps penetrated into early Scandinavian art, which had its own native animal style. Some features of the late Gotho-Sarmatic polychrome art may be derived from the neo-Asiatic animal style and may have penetrated with the Goths, Alani and Vandals into western Europe. Another source of animal motives may have been the art of the later Mongolian invaders of western Europe—the Huns, the Avars, the Bulgars and the Magyars. But, on the whole the animal style of the Romanesque, Carolingian and Gothic periods must be regarded as only partly derived from these sources.