Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

the scythians as others saw them
of the exact geography is not strong), makes it difficult to place them with any degree
of precision. That said, the broad picture is reasonably clear. Around Olbia the Callipedae
were to be found: they were ‘Graeco-Scythian’, presumably the result of intermarriages
between the Greek settlers and the indigenous population. Further inland
were the Alazonians, who, like the Callipedae, were cultivators, growing wheat, millet,
lentils, garlic, and onions. Yet further inland still there was another, unnamed
community who ‘grow grain not for their own use but for sale’. Then come the Neuri,
whose ‘customs are like the Scythians’. Beyond them the land was unpopulated. The
emphasis on cultivation and the possibility that some of these farming communities
may have been exporting their surplus grain through the port of Olbia to the Greek
world show that nomadism was not universal among the Scythians. In this western
part of the Scythian world the forest steppe was well suited to cultivation: mixed
farming had been practised here well before the advent of the Scythians.
To the east of the Dnieper were Scythian pastoralists who called themselves Olbiopolites.
They occupied a large territory extending northward upriver, eleven days’
sail. Further on was a desolate unoccupied land and beyond that lived cannibals. East
of the pastoralists were nomadic Scythians extending as far as the river Gerrhus, on
the opposite side of which were the Royal Scythians—‘the bravest of the Scythian
tribes, which look upon all the other tribes as their slaves’. Their domain appears
to have extended eastwards to the Don. The identity of the Gerrhus has been much
debated but with no convincing resolution. To the north of the Royal Scythians were
the Melanchlaeni (Black Robes), whom Herodotus believed to be a different race from
the Scythians. Way to the north-east, in a region occupied by hunters and gatherers,
he tells us there existed an enclave of Scythians who had broken away from the Royal
Scythians and had migrated to these distant lands.
Although the information available to Herodotus was patchy and no doubt incorrect
in part, and his cognitive geography of the steppe region was vague, the picture
which is given is of a high degree of ethnic unity stretching from the Danube to the
Don and from the shores of the Black Sea deep into the forest zone. He is also very
well aware that throughout this region the economic base of the different tribes
ranged from pure nomadism to settled agriculture. The existence of a super tribe of
Royal Scythians is also interesting. It is a reminder that in mobile nomadic-centred
societies like the Scythians elite families could impose their will on less powerful
tribes. The social and economic diversity which Herodotus describes across Scythia
was probably the result of the fusion of incoming nomadic Scythians and the indigenous
population. The direct descendants of the invading elite—the Royal Scythians—by
extending their authority over the local people embraced them within a
single ethnicity while allowing their diverse economies to continue.
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