Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

the scythians as others saw them
flourishing in the last decades of the sixth century. Details of this kind hint at the
fluidity of the situation. While flagging settlements could be revived by newly arrived
pioneers, successful colonies would need to expand, bringing more and more coastal
territories under Greek sway.
The flood of Greeks into the Black Sea in the seventh and sixth centuries brought
the urban world of the Aegean face to face with the nomadic world of the steppe.
For the most part the two communities coexisted in harmony. While the equilibrium
may have been unstable, the trading advantages to both were such that it was in
everyÂone’s interest that peaceful, ordered relations were maintained.
Confronting the Persians
At the time that the Scythians were active in Asia Minor a small state came into existence
in Persia in what is now the Iranian province of Fars, on the eastern flank of the
Persian Gulf at the southern end of the Zagros Mountains. According to tradition the
first king, Achaemenes, ruled in the seventh century establishing the dynasty named
after him. The great Assyrian empire that had dominated the Near East finally collapsed
in 612 when the Medes and Babylonians, with Scythian help, sacked Nineveh.
In the half-century of uncertainty which followed, the power of the Achaemenids
(Persians) began to grow and with the accession of King Cyrus in 539 the world was
set to change. In an astonishingly short period of less than three decades Cyrus had
created a great empire stretching from the Aegean to the fringes of the Indus valley.
The northern frontier of the new empire was conveniently delimited by natural
features along much of its length. It extended to the southern shores of the Black Sea,
the Caucasus mountains, and the southern shores of the Caspian. But further east
between the Caspian and the Pamir Mountains there was no clear natural boundary,
just an expanse of desert (the Karakum, Kyzylkum, and Muyunkum deserts)
interspersed with extensive marshlands and lakes and crossed by two great rivers,
the Oxus (Amu Darya) and the Jaxartes (Syr Darya), eventually giving way to desert
steppe and steppe to the north. The southern part of this great open region was occupied
by horse-riding nomads known to the Persians as Sakā—a name which Herodotus
recorded to be the same as Scythian. The Persians recognized two distinct groups,
the Sakā Tigrakhauda (the Sakā of the pointed hats), who occupied the marshland
areas, and the Sakā Haumawargā (the haoma-consuming Sakā), who lived mainly
in the plains and deserts. Haoma is a plant which suitably prepared can produce an
inebriant with other beneficial properties. The Persian expansion absorbed the Sakā
Haumawargā, who were incorporated into the provinces of Sogdiana and Chorasmia,
but the Sakā Tigrakhauda retained a degree of freedom as a vassal state.
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