If the habits of the Scythians were such as to create in the near observer no other feeling than repugnance, their force at least inspired terror. They appeared in the eyes of Thucydidês so numerous and so formidable, that he pronounces them irresistible, if they could but unite, by any other nation within his knowledge. Herodotus, too, conceived the same idea of a race among whom every man was a warrior and a practised horse-bowman, and who were placed by their mode of life out of all reach of an enemy’s attack.[464] Moreover, Herodotus does not speak meanly of their intelligence, contrasting them in favorable terms with the general stupidity of the other nations bordering on the Euxine. In this respect Thucydidês seems to differ from him.
On the east, the Scythians of the time of Herodotus were separated only by the river Tanais from the Sarmatians, who occupied the territory for several days’ journey north-east of the Palus Mæôtis: on the south, they were divided by the Danube from the section of Thracians called Getæ. Both these nations were nomadic, analogous to the Scythians in habits, military efficiency, and fierceness: indeed, Herodotus and Hippokratês distinctly intimate that the Sarmatians were nothing but a branch of Scythians,[465] speaking a Scythian dialect, and distinguished from their neighbors on the other side of the Tanais, chiefly by this peculiarity,—that the women among them were warriors hardly less daring and expert than the men. This attribute of Sarmatian women, as a matter of fact, is well attested,—though Herodotus has thrown over it an air of suspicion not properly belonging to it, by his explanatory genealogical mythe, deducing the Sarmatians from a mixed breed between the Scythians and the Amazons.
The wide extent of steppe eastward and north-eastward of the Tanais, between the Ural mountains and the Caspian, and beyond the possessions of the Sarmatians, was traversed by Grecian traders, even to a good distance in the direction of the Altai mountains,—the rich produce of gold, both in Altai and Ural, being the great temptation. First, according to Herodotus, came the indigenous nomadic nation called Budini, who dwelt to the northward of the Sarmatians,[466] and among whom were established a colony of Pontic Greeks, intermixed with natives, and called Gelôni; these latter inhabited a spacious town built entirely of wood. Beyond the Budini eastward dwelt the Thyssagetæ and the Jurkæ, tribes of hunters, and even a body of Scythians who had migrated from the territories of the regal Scythians. The Issêdones were the easternmost people respecting whom any definite information reached the Greeks; beyond them we find nothing but fable,[467]—the one-eyed Arimaspians, the gold-guarding Grypes, or Griffins, and the bald-headed Argippæi. It is impossible to fix with precision the geography of these different tribes, or to do more than comprehend approximatively their local bearings and relations to each other.
But the best known of all is the situation of the Tauri (perhaps a remnant of the expelled Cimmerians), who dwelt in the southern portion of the Tauric Chersonesus (or Crimea), and who immolated human sacrifices to their native virgin goddess,—identified by the Greeks with Artemis, and serving as a basis for the affecting legend of Iphigeneia. The Tauri are distinguished by Herodotus from Scythians,[468] but their manners and state of civilization seem to have been very analogous. It appears also that the powerful and numerous Massagetæ, who dwelt in Asia on the plains eastward of the Caspian and southward of the Issêdones, were so analogous to the Scythians as to be reckoned as members of the same race by many of the contemporaries of Herodotus.[469]
This short enumeration of the various tribes near the Euxine and the Caspian, as well as we can make them out, from the seventh to the fifth century B. C., is necessary for the comprehension of that double invasion of Scythians and Cimmerians which laid waste Asia between 630 and 610 B. C. We are not to expect from Herodotus, born a century and a half afterwards, any very clear explanations of this event, nor were all his informants unanimous respecting the causes which brought it about. But it is a fact perfectly within the range of historical analogy, that accidental aggregations of number, development of aggressive spirit, or failure in the means of subsistence, among the nomadic tribes of the Asiatic plains, have brought on the civilized nations of southern Europe calamitous invasions, of which the prime moving cause was remote and unknown. Sometimes a weaker tribe, flying before a stronger, has been in this manner precipitated upon the territory of a richer and less military population, so that an impulse originating in the distant plains of Central Tartary has been propagated until it reached the southern extremity of Europe, through successive intermediate tribes, a phenomenon especially exhibited during the fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian era, in the declining years of the Roman empire. A pressure so transmitted onward is said to have brought down the Cimmerians and Scythians upon the more southerly regions of Asia. The most ancient story in explanation of this incident seems to have been contained in the epic poem (now lost) called Arimaspia, of the mystic Aristeas of Prokonnêsus, composed apparently about 540 B. C. This poet, under the inspiration of Apollo,[470] undertook a pilgrimage to visit the sacred Hyperboreans (especial votaries of that god) in their elysium beyond the Rhipæan mountains; but he did not reach farther than the Issêdones. According to him, the movement, whereby the Cimmerians had been expelled from their possessions on the Euxine sea, began with the Grypes or Griffins in the extreme north,—the sacred character of the Hyperboreans beyond was incompatible with aggression or bloodshed. The Grypes invaded the Arimaspians, who on their part assailed their neighbors the Issêdones;[471] these latter moved southward or westward and drove the Scythians across the Tanais, while the Scythians, carried forward by this onset, expelled the Cimmerians from their territories along the Palus Mæotis and the Euxine.
We see thus that Aristeas referred the attack of the Scythians upon the Cimmerians to a distant impulse proceeding in the first instance from the Grypes or Griffins; but Herodotus had heard it explained in another way, which he seems to think more correct,—the Scythians, originally occupants of Asia, or the regions east of the Caspian, had been driven across the Araxês, in consequence of an unsuccessful war with the Massagetæ, and precipitated upon the Cimmerians in Europe.[472]
When the Scythian host approached, the Cimmerians were not agreed among themselves whether to resist or retire: the majority of the people were dismayed and wished to evacuate the territory, while the kings of the different tribes resolved to fight and perish at home. Those who were animated with this fierce despair, divided themselves along with the kings into two equal bodies and perished by each other’s hands near the river Tyras, where the sepulchres of the kings were yet shown in the time of Herodotus.[473] The mass of the Cimmerians fled and abandoned their country to the Scythians; who, however, not content with possession of the country, followed the fugitives across the Cimmerian Bosphorus from west to east, under the command of their prince Madyês son of Protothyês. The Cimmerians, coasting along the east of the Euxine sea and passing to the west of Mount Caucasus, made their way first into Kolchis, and next into Asia Minor, where they established themselves on the peninsula on the northern coast, near the site of the subsequent Grecian city of Sinôpê. But the Scythian pursuers, mistaking the course taken by the fugitives, followed the more circuitous route east of Mount Caucasus near to the Caspian sea;[474] which brought them, not into Asia Minor, but into Media. Both Asia Minor and Media became thus exposed nearly at the same time to the ravages of northern nomades.
These two stories, representing the belief of Herodotus and Aristeas, involve the assumption that the Scythians were comparatively recent emigrants into the territory between the Ister and the Palus Mæotis. But the legends of the Scythians themselves, as well as those of the Pontic Greeks, imply the contrary of this assumption; and describe the Scythians as primitive and indigenous inhabitants of the country. Both legends are so framed as to explain a triple division, which probably may have prevailed, of the Scythian aggregate nationality, traced up to three heroic brothers: both also agree in awarding the predominance to the youngest brother of the three,[475] though in other respects, the names and incidents of the two are altogether different, The Scythians call themselves Skoloti.
Such material differences, in the various accounts given to Herodotus of the Scythian and Cimmerian invasions of Asia, are by no means wonderful, seeing that nearly two centuries had elapsed between that event and his visit to the Pontus. That the Cimmerians—perhaps the northernmost portion of the great Thracian name, and conterminous with the Getæ on the Danube—were the previous tenants of much of the territory between the Ister and the Palus Mæotis, and that they were expelled in the seventh century B. C., by the Scythians, we may follow Herodotus in believing; but Niebuhr has shown that there is great intrinsic improbability in his narrative of the march of the Cimmerians into Asia Minor, and in the pursuit of these fugitives by the Scythians. That the latter would pursue at all, when an extensive territory was abandoned to them without resistance, is hardly supposable: that they should pursue and mistake their way, is still more difficult to believe: nor can we overlook the great difficulties of the road and the Caucasian passes, in the route ascribed to the Cimmerians.[476] Niebuhr supposes the latter to have marched into Asia Minor by the western side of the Euxine, and across the Thracian Bosphorus, after having been defeated in a decisive battle by the Scythians near the river Tyras, where their last kings fell and were interred.[477] Though this is both an easier route, and more in accordance with the analogy of other occupants expelled from the same territory, we must, in the absence of positive evidence, treat the point as unauthenticated.
The inroad of the Cimmerians into Asia Minor was doubtless connected with their expulsion from the northern coast of the Euxine by the Scythians, but we may well doubt whether it was at all connected, as Herodotus had been told that it was, with the invasion of Media by the Scythians, except as happening near about the same time. The same great evolution of Scythian power, or propulsion by other tribes behind, may have occasioned both events,—brought about by different bodies of Scythians, but nearly contemporaneous.