A Successful Raid: Pontic Steppe, 1st–2nd Centuries CE by G. Embleton
"During the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, the centre of Sarmatian power remained north of the Caucasus and in the 3rd century BC the most important centres were around the lower Don, Kalmykia, the Kuban area, and the Central Caucasus.
During the end of the 4th century BC, the Scythians, the then dominant power in the Black Sea Steppe, were militarily defeated by the Makedonian kings Philippos II and Lysimakhos in 339 and 313 BC respectively. They experienced another military setback after participating in the Bosporan Civil War in 309 BC and came under pressure from the Thracian Getai and the Germanic Bastarnai. At the same time, in Central Asia, following the Makedonian conquest of the Achaemenid Empire, the new Seleucid Empire started attacking the Sakā and Dahā nomads who lived to the north of its borders, who in turn put westward pressure on the Sarmatians. Pressured by the Sakā and Dahā in the east and taking advantage of the decline of Scythian power, the Sarmatians began crossing the Don river and invaded Skythia (later in the mediaeval period, the military campaigns of Ismā'īl Sāmāni against the Oγuz Turks in Central Asia would similarly pressure the Hungarians into moving westwards into the Pannonian Basin), and also migrated south into the North Caucasus.
The first wave of westward Sarmatian migration happened during the 2nd century BC, and involved the Royal Sarmatians, or Saioi (from Scytho-Sarmatian *xšaya, meaning "kings"), who moved into the Pontic Stepp, and the Iazyges, also called the Iaxamatai or Iazamatai, who initially settled between the Don and Dnieper rivers. The Rhoxolanoi, who might have been a mixed Scytho-Sarmatian tribe, followed the Iazyges and occupied the Black Sea steppes up to the Dnipro and raided the Crimean region during that century, at the end of which they were involved in a conflict with the generals of the Pontic king Mithradatēs VI Eupatōr in the Bosporan Khersonēsos, while the Iazyges became his allies.
That the tribes formerly referred to by Herodotus as Scythians were now called Sarmatians by Hellenistic and Roman authors implies that the Sarmatian conquest did not involve a displacement of the Scythians from the Pontic Steppe, but rather that the Scythian tribes were absorbed by the Sarmatians. After their conquest of Skythia, the Sarmatians became the dominant political power in the northern Pontic Steppe, where Sarmatian graves first started appearing in the 2nd century BC. Meanwhile, the populations which still identified as Scythians proper became reduced to Crimea and the Dobruja region, and at one point the Crimean Scythians were the vassals of the Sarmatian queen Amagē. Sarmatian power in the Pontic Steppes was also directed against the Greek cities on its shores, with the city of Olbia Pontikē being forced to pay repeated tribute to the Royal Sarmatians and their king Saitapharnēs, who is mentioned in the Protogenēs inscription along with the tribes of the Thisamatai, Scythians, and Saudaratai. Another Sarmatian king, Gatalos, was named in a peace treaty concluded by the king Pharnakes of Pontos with his enemies.
Two other Sarmatian tribes, the Sirakoi, who had previously originated in the Transcaspian Plains immediately to the northeast of Kyrkania before migrating to the west, and the Aorsoi, moved to the west across the Volga and into the Caucasus mountains' foothills between the 2nd to 1st centuries BC. From there, the pressure from their growing power forcing the more western Sarmatian tribes to migrate further west, and the Aorsoi and Sirakoi destroyed the power of the Royal Sarmatians and the Iazyges, with the Aorsoi being able to extend their rule over a large region stretching from the Caucasus across the Terek–Kuma Lowland and Kalmykia in the west up to the Aral Sea region in the east. Yet another new Sarmatian group, the Alanoi, originated in Central Asia out of the merger of some old tribal groups with the Massagetai. Related to the Asioi who invaded Baktrianē in the 2nd century BC, the Alanoi were pushed west by the Kʰɑŋ-kɨɑ people (known to Graeco-Roman authors as the Ιαξαρται Iaxartai in Greek, and the Iaxartae in Latin) who were living in the Syr Darya basin, from where they expanded their rule from Fergana to the Aral Sea region.
The hegemony of the Sarmatians in the Pontic Steppe continued during the 1st century BC, when they were allied with the Scythians against Diophantos, a general of Mithradatēs VI Eupatōr, before allying with Mithradatēs against the Romans and fighting for him in both Europe and Asia, demonstrating the Sarmatians' complete involvement in the affairs of the Pontic and Danubian regions. During the early part of the century, the Alanoi had migrated to the area to the northeast of the Lake Maiōtis. Meanwhile, the Iazyges moved westwards until they reached the Danube and the Rhoxolanoi moved into the area between the Dnipro and the Danube and from there further west. These two peoples attacked the regions around Tomis and Moesia, respectively. During this period, the Iazyges and Rhoxolanoi also attacked the Roman province of Thracia, whose governor Tiberius Plautius Silvanus Aelianus had to defend the Roman border of the Danube. During the 1st century BC century, various Sarmatians reached the Pannonian Basin and the Iazyges passed through the territories corresponding to modern-day Moldavia and Wallachia before settling in the Tisza valley, by the middle of the century."
-taken from wikipedia
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| A Successful Raid: Pontic Steppe, 1st–2nd Centuries CE by G. Embleton. Illustration from book, The Sarmatians 600 BC - AD 450, from Osprey Publishing. |
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