Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

mSTORY OF PERSIA. 1 29
in a conflict with the Scythians aided by a body of
revolted Greeks. These Scythians, who had previously
been in some measure allied to the Parthians (at
least, so far as their wandering habits permitted),
were a portion of the great nomad hordes of Central
Asia, who, like the Kimmerians, to whom we have
alluded, before historic times and often since, have
swept down on the fertile, cultivated and comparatively
refined south, like a whirlwind of locusts. Each
country in its turn had to curse the presence
of these
savage and barbarous hosts, and Parthia had now to
combat warriors as brave and as active as the best
of her own people. To check their first advance the
Parthian princes had paid them a sort of black mail ;
but Bactria, less fortunate, was rapidly overwhelmed to
the north and west.
The Scythian tribes are known under several titles,
as the Massagetae, Dahae, Tochari and Sakarauli
and their manners and sometimes cannibal practices
are fully recorded in Herodotus and Strabo. This time
again the Scythians were superior in the conflict, and
another Parthian king (Artabanus II) was slain ; but,
on the accession of the next monarch, Mithradates II,
termed, from his famous deeds, the Great, the tide of
Scythian victory was arrested, and they were driven
back and compelled to pour their superabundant
numbers into Seistan and the Eastern provinces of
Persia 1 .
Thus was formed the famous Indo-Scythic kingdom,
1 The present name of this portion of Persia, Seistan (or on the
coins Sejestan) is a memorial of this Scythic invasion, the district
they occupied having been naturally called Sacastene the land of the
Sacae.