Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

bodies clothed in skins
task of milking the mares and making the staple fermented mares’ milk, koumiss. No
reason is given but there may have been some kind of superstitious belief involved.
The story that Herodotus tells about the unfortunate Scythian king, Skyles (Hist.
iv. 78–80), gives an insight into kingship. Skyles’ father, Ariapeithes, was the king-inchief
of the Scythians in the mid fifth century. Arapeithes had three wives, a Greek
from Istria who was Skyles’ mother, the daughter of the Thracian king, Teres, and
a Scythian woman, Opoea. When Ariapeithes died, Skyles acceded to the kingship,
being given his stepmother, Opoea, as a bride. He had two half-brothers, Oricus, son
of Opoea, and Ocamasades, son of the Thracian princes. Skyles’ pro-Greek behaviour
was unacceptable to his followers and he was deposed in favour of Ocamasades. He
fled but was hunted down on the borders of Thrace by his half-brother and beheaded.
The story offers a number of interesting reflections of Scythian kingship. Polygyny
seems normally to have been practised, with the wives chosen to strengthen political
alliances, in this case with the Thracian royal house and the Greek urban elite. Kingship
was evidently hereditary, though not always without contest, while the practice
of the new king acquiring one or more of his father’s wives was, at least in theory, a
mechanism designed to enhance social stability.
Ariapeithes’ wives appear to have survived his death. This may imply that it was
not customary for the wives of kings to be killed to accompany their dead husbands
into the other world. The females found in the rich tombs of the Pontic steppe may,
therefore, have been concubines as, indeed, Herodotus implies, strangled along with
the king’s cupbearer, cook, groom, messenger, and personal servant to provide for
his needs in the afterlife.
Another practice, which helped to bind society, was blood brotherhood—the
creation of a sacred and unbreakable bond between two warriors. This was done by
two men drinking together from the same vessel a mixture of wine and their own
blood into which their swords, spears, arrows, and axes had first been dipped. The
drink was made even more potent by formulaic incantations said over it. The drinking
ceremony is faithfully depicted on a gold plaque found in the kurgan of Kul’-Oba
showing the two men nose to nose sharing the same drinking horn. It is tempting to
think that the pairs of warriors shown on the gold beaker from the same tomb may
also have been blood brothers.
Public approval was another way in which behaviour was manipulated. Herodotus
describes how, once a year, the governor of each province, called a meeting at
which a bowl of wine was presented. Every man who had slain an enemy was allowed
to drink, while those who had slain many were rewarded with an extra cup. The men
with no tally of a dead foe ‘sit aloof in disgrace’. Such a procedure would have been a
powerful incentive to embrace warfare with enthusiasm.
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