The powerful invasion of Scythian influence into historical life and historical development, and its great influence on the intellectual life of the peoples of Asia Minor (which may be traced in the so-called Hittite monuments, in the Amazonian myths, in the worship of the Chalybian Jupiter or Ares, and in the transformation of the Greek hero, Hercules, into the hero of Asia Minor, confused with the sun-god of the Scythians and the peninsula) cannot be without its influence in the domain of true history. It is impossible to think of the Chalybian-Cimmerian or the Amazonian expeditions as achieving momentary destruction but leaving no trace in the historical life of the nations. On the contrary, everything points to the conclusion that over and above these warlike expeditions a permanent state of affairs was called into being in Asia Minor.
The new conditions form the life and character of the post-Homeric section of the ancient history of Asia Minor before the Persian empire. And in regard to these new conditions in the eastern half of the peninsula, we find there the powerful kingdoms of Moschi and Tubal, which stretched from Pontus as far as Cilicia and Mesopotamia, and for centuries obstinately vindicated their independence against the overwhelming power of Assyria. Still more important, though also more complicated, are the ethnological, political, and the general historical conditions of the post-Homeric world in the western half of Asia Minor.
Not to mention the changes introduced into the countries along the coast by the founding of numerous Greek colonies, we see that the Homeric Asia Minor of the ancient Pelasgian peoples, the Trojans, Ascanians, Mæonians, Esionians, and the pre-Homeric or Homeric Phrygians, shows in the post-Homeric world a shape which differs from the former in many aspects. Thus we come across new names of peoples and countries, as the Lydians, Thynians, Bithynians, Lasonians, Chalybians, Hygennes; names of new dynasties, as the Sandonids (Heraclids) and Mermnadæ of Lydia; new names of kingdoms and towns, as Lydia, Sardis, Smyrna, Ephesus, and new names of gods, new cults, new names of demon-gods or of priests. The “man-equalling” Amazons, who are referred to in Homer as a host dwelling beyond Phrygia and inimical to the peoples of western Asia Minor, now appear as native to western Asia Minor, as allies of Troy and founders of towns in that part of the peninsula.
This new post-Homeric world of western Asia Minor at last finds its centre and culmination on the soil of true history, in the founding and development of the Lydian empire. In this world the Scythian expeditions play much the same part as the Doric immigration in the post-Homeric Greece; and as there that immigration ends with the creation of new states, so also the Scythian immigrations into Asia Minor have an important result in the foundation of a great kingdom in the west of that peninsula, namely the Lydian kingdom.[b]
Scythian Movements
The Scythians formed for several centuries an important section of the Grecian contemporary world. Their name, unnoticed by Homer, occurs for the first time in the Hesiodic poems. When the Homeric Zeus in the Iliad turns his eye away from Troy toward Thrace, he sees, besides the Thracians and Mysians, other tribes whose names cannot be made out, but whom the poet knows as milk-eaters and mare-milkers; and the same characteristic attributes, coupled with that of “having wagons for their dwelling-houses,” appear in Hesiod connected with the name of the Scythians: and the earliest proof which we find of Scythia, as a territory familiar to Grecian ideas and feeling, is found in a fragment of the poet Alcæus (ca. 600 B.C.), wherein he addresses Achilles as “sovereign of Scythia.” There were, besides, several other Milesian foundations on or near the Tauric Chersonesus (Crimea) which brought the Greeks into conjunction with the Scythians—Heraclea, Chersonesus, and Theodosia, on the southern coast and the southwestern corner of the peninsula—Panticapæum and the Teian colony of Phanagoria (these two on the European and Asiatic sides of the Cimmerian Bosporus respectively), and Cepi, Hermonassa, etc., not far from Phanagoria, on the Asiatic coast of the Euxine: last of all, there was, even at the extremity of the Palus Mæotis (Sea of Azov), the Grecian settlement of Tanais.
All or most of these seem to have been founded during the course of the sixth century B.C., though the precise dates of most of them cannot be named; probably several of them anterior to the time of the mystic poet Aristeas of Proconnesus, about 540 B.C. His long voyage from the Palus Mæotis (Sea of Azov) into the interior of Asia as far as the country of the Issedones (described in the poem, now lost, called the Arimaspian verses), implies an habitual intercourse between Scythians and Greeks which could not well have existed without Grecian establishments on the Cimmerian Bosporus.
Hecatæus of Miletus appears to have given much geographical information respecting the Scythian tribes; but Herodotus, who personally visited the town of Olbia, together with the inland regions adjoining to it, and probably other Grecian settlements in the Euxine (at a time which we may presume to have been about 450-440 B.C.)—and who conversed with both Scythians and Greeks competent to give him information—has left us far more valuable statements respecting the Scythian people, dominion, and manners, as they stood in his day. His conception of the Scythians, as well as that of Hippocrates, is precise and well-defined—very different from that of the later authors, who use the word almost indiscriminately to denote all barbarous nomads. His territory called Scythia is a square area, twenty days’ journey or four thousand stadia (somewhat less than five hundred English miles) in each direction—bounded by the Danube (the course of which river he conceives in a direction from N. W. to S. E.), the Euxine, and the Palus Mæotis with the river Tanais, on three sides respectively—and on the fourth or north side by the nations called Agathyrsi, Neuri, Androphagi, and Melanchlæni. However imperfect his idea of the figure of this territory may be found, if we compare it with a good modern map, the limits which he gives us are beyond all dispute: from the Lower Danube and the mountains eastward of Transylvania to the Lower Tanais, the whole area was either occupied by or subject to the Scythians. And this name comprised tribes differing materially in habits and civilisation. The great mass of the people who bore it, strictly nomadic in their habits,—neither sowing nor planting, but living only on food derived from animals, especially mare’s milk and cheese—moved from place to place, carrying their families in wagons covered with wicker and leather, themselves always on horseback with their flocks and herds, between the Borysthenes and the Palus Mæotis. They hardly even reached so far westward as the Borysthenes, since a river (not easily identified) which Herodotus calls Panticapes, flowing into the Borysthenes from the eastward, formed their boundary. These nomads were the genuine Scythians, possessing the marked attributes of the race, and including among their number the Regal Scythians—hordes so much more populous and more effective in war than the rest, as to maintain undisputed ascendency, and to account all other Scythians no better than their slaves. It was to these that the Scythian kings belonged, by whom the religious and political unity of the name was maintained—each horde having its separate chief and to a certain extent separate worship and customs. But besides these nomads, there were also agricultural Scythians, with fixed abodes, living more or less upon bread, and raising corn for exportation, along the banks of the Borysthenes and the Hypanis. And such had been the influence of the Grecian settlement of Olbia at the mouth of the latter river in creating new tastes and habits, that two tribes on its western banks, the Callipidæ and the Alazones, had become completely accustomed both to tillage and to vegetable food, and had in other respects so much departed from their Scythian rudeness as to be called Hellenic-Scythians, many Greeks being seemingly domiciled among them. Northward of the Alazones lay those called the agricultural Scythians, who sowed corn, not for food, but for sale.
Such stationary cultivators were doubtless regarded by the predominant mass of the Scythians as degenerate brethren. Some historians even maintain that they belonged to a foreign race, standing to the Scythians merely in the relation of subjects—an hypothesis contradicted implicitly, if not directly, by the words of Herodotus, and no way necessary in the present case. It is not from them, however, that Herodotus draws his vivid picture of the people, with their inhuman rites and repulsive personal features. It is the purely nomadic Scythians whom he depicts, the earliest specimens of the Mongolian race (so it seems probable) known to history, and prototypes of the Huns and Bulgarians of later centuries. The Sword, in the literal sense of the word, was their chief god—an iron scimitar solemnly elevated upon a wide and lofty platform, which was supported on masses of fagots piled underneath—to whom sheep, horses, and a portion of their prisoners taken in war, were offered up in sacrifice: Herodotus treats this sword as the image of the god Ares, thus putting an Hellenic interpretation upon that which he describes literally as a barbaric rite. The scalps and the skins of slain enemies, and sometimes the skull formed into a drinking-cup, constituted the decoration of a Scythian warrior: whoever had not slain an enemy, was excluded from participation in the annual festival and bowl of wine prepared by the chief of each separate horde. The ceremonies which took place during the sickness and funeral obsequies of the Scythian kings (who were buried at Gerrhi at the extreme point to which navigation extended up the Borysthenes) partook of the same sanguinary disposition. It was the Scythian practice to put out the eyes of all their slaves; and the awkwardness of the Scythian frame, often overloaded with fat, together with extreme dirt of body, and the absence of all discriminating feature between one man and another, complete the brutish portrait. Mare’s milk (with cheese made from it) seems to have been their chief luxury, and probably served the same purpose of procuring the intoxicating drink called kumiss, as at present among the Bashkirs and the Calmucks.
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 Thucydides so numerous and so formidable, that he pronounces them irresistible, if they could but unite, by any other nation within his knowledge. [He says of them, to quote Hobbes’ translation (1676): “For there’s no nation, not to say of Europe, but neither of Asia, that are comparable to this, or that, as long as they agree, are able, one nation to one, to stand against the Scythians: and yet in matters of Counsel and Wisdom in the present occasions of life, they are not like to other men.”]