Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

the scythians as others saw them
Beyond the River Don lay the Sauromatae, who were regarded by Herodotus as
being ‘beyond the land of the Scythians’. They ‘speak the language of Scythia but
have never spoken it correctly’. According to a story which he relates, the Sauromatae
were the result of the intermarriage of Amazons, women who had escaped
from their Greek captors in Cappadocia, and Scythians living on the shores of the
Sea of Azov, who at some later stage decided to find a new home east of the Don. The
story—probably little more than a convenient myth—had the advantage of explaining
the similarities between Scythians and Sauromatae while accounting for social
differences such as the high status of women among the Sauromatae. Sauromatian
territory, completely treeless, stretched north for fifteen days’ journey up to the forest
zone where the Budini lived.
Beyond the Sauromatae the land becomes ‘rugged and stony’, giving way to ‘lofty
mountains’—a description suggesting to some commentators that he was referring
to the southern end of the Urals where the steppe narrowed. Here lived the Argippaeans
‘who are said to be … bald from birth and to have flat noses and very long
chins’. Nothing is said of their language, but they wore the same type of clothes as
the Scythians. Up to this point, Herodotus says, the land and the people were well
known because the Scythians and Greek traders from the coastal ports journeyed
through these regions, though they had to take interpreters able to speak the seven
different languages encountered. The one Greek traveller known by name who is said
to have explored this region is the semi-legendary poet Aristeas, whose poem Arimaspea
mentions a journey far to the east. He is reported to have been absent from home
for seven years. Herodotus, who knew of the poem, said that Aristeas got as far as the
land of the Issedones.
Above them dwelt the Arimaspi, men with one eye. Still further the gold-guarding
Griffins and beyond them the Hyperboreans …. All of these nations (except the
Hypeboreans), beginning with the Arimaspi, were continually encroaching upon their
neighbours. Hence the Arimaspi drove the Issedonians from the country, while the
Issedonians pushed out the Scythes; and the Scythes, pressing upon the Kimmerians,
who dwelt on the shores of the Black Sea, forced them to leave the land.
(Hist. iv. 13)
Where exactly these semi-mythical people lived it is difficult to say but they probably
extended across what is now the Kazakh steppe as far east as the Altai Mountains. It
is tempting to link the gold-guarding Griffins with the nomads of the Altai, whose
burial rites proclaim the easy availability of gold and whose art frequently includes
fabulous griffin-like beasts. What is particularly interesting about the observations
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