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In Classical Antiquity, Scythia comprised the area in Eurasia inhabited by the Scythians. Its location and extent varied over time. The area known as Scythia to classical author included
- the Central Asian steppes: Kazakhstan, southern Russia, eastern Ukraine (inhabited by Scythians from at least the 8th c. BC)
- the northern Caucasus area, including Azerbaijan, Georgia
- the southern Ukraine with the lower Danube river area and Bulgaria ( Sarmatia), also known as Scythia minor.
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First Scythian Kingdom
The Scythian first state, the First Scythian Kingdom, rose among Scythians who penetrated in the 7th century BC from the territories north of the Black Sea into the Near East. It was dominated by interethnic forms of dependency based on subjugation of agricultural population in eastern South Caucasia, plunder and levied contributions (as far as Syria and Egypt for some periods), regular tribute ( Midia), tribute disguised as gifts ( Egypt), possibly also payments for military support ( Assyria). The Scythian social structure was much decentralized. The main features of the Scythian social organization developed before the 7th century B.C. (Khazanov 1975).
Probably, the same dynasty ruled in Scythia during the most part of its history. The name of Koloksai, a legendary founder of a royal dynasty, is mentioned by Alcman in the 7th century B.C. Prototi and Madi, Scythian kings in the Near Eastern period of their history, and their successors in the N.Pontic steppes belonged to the same dynasty. Herodotus lists five generations of a royal clan that probably reigned at the end of 7th - 6th c. BC: prince Anachar, kings Saul, Idanthyr, Gnur, Lyc, and Spargapith (Herodotus IV, 76) Atails, reigning in the 4th century B.C., probably was an usurper, but he also tried to connect his origin with the ancient dynasty.
After being defeated and driven from the Near East, in the 1st half of 6th c. BC Scythians had to re-conquer lands north of the Black Sea. In the 2nd half of that century Scythians succeeded in dominating the agricultural tribes of the Forest-Steppe and to place them under tribute. As a result their state was reconstructed with the appearance of the Second Scythian Kingdom which reached its zenith in the 4th c. BC.
Second Scythian Kingdom
The Scythia's social development at the end of the 5th c. and in the 4th c. BC involved its privileged stratum into trade with Greeks, efforts to control this trade, and consequences partly stemming from these two: aggressive external policy, intensified exploitation of dependent population, progressing stratification among the nomadic rulers. Trading with Greeks also stimulated sedenterization processes. The proximity of the Greek city-states on the Black Sea coast was a powerful incentive for slavery in the Scythian society, but only in one direction: the sale of slaves to Greeks, instead of use in their economy, the trade become a stimulus for capture of slaves as war spoils in numerous wars.
Scythia in the end of the 5th - 3rd century B.C.
The Scythian state reached its best in the 4th century B.C. during the reign of Atails (Gr.Ateus). Isocrates (436-338 BC, Panegyricus 67) believes that Scythians, and also Thracians and Persians, are " the most able to power, and are the peoples with the greatest might". In the 4th century B.C., under king Atails, the triune structure of the state was eliminated, and the ruling power became more centralized. The later sources do not mention three basileuses any more. Strabo tells (VII, 3, 18) that Ateus ruled over majority of the N.Pontic barbarians. Written sources tell that expansion of the Scythian state before the 4th century B.C. was mainly in the western direction. In this respect Atails continued the policy of his predesessors in the 5th century B.C. During western expansion, Ateus fought Triballs ( Polyaen, Stratagems VII, 44, 1). A part of Thracians was subjugated and levied with severe duties. During the 90-year life of Atails, the Scythians firmly settled in Thrace and became an important factor of political games in the Balkans. At the same time both nomadic and agricultural Scythian population incresed along the Dniester. A war with the Bosporian kingdom increased the Scythian pressure upon the Greek cities in the N.Pontic.
The materials of the Kamen fortress, a probable capital of the Atails’ state, show that metallurgists were free members of the society, even if burdened with imposed obligations. The metallurgy was the most advanced and the only distinct craft specialty between the Scythians. From the story of Polyaen and Frontin follows that in the 4th. century B.C. Scythia had a layer of dependent population, which consisted of impoverished Scythian nomads and local indigenous agricultural tribes, socially deprived, dependent and exploited, who did not participate in the wars, but were engaged in servile agriculture and cattle husbandry.
The year 339 BC was a culminating year for the Second Scythian Kingdom, and the beginning of its decline. The war with Phillip the Macedonian ended in a victory by the father of Alexander the Great, the Scythian king Ateus fell in battle well into his nineties ( Trogus, Prologue, IX). Many royal kurgans (Chertomlyk, Kul-Oba, Aleksandropol, Krasnokut) dated by the after-Atails’ time continued traditions of previous time, and the life in the settlements of the Western Scythia show that the state survived until the 250es B.C. When in 331 B.C. Zopirion, an Alexander’s viceroy in Thrace, "not wishing to sit idle", invaded Scythia and besieged Olvia, he suffered a crushing defeat from the Scythians and lost his life (Justinian, XII, 1, 4).
The fall of the Second Scythian Kingdom came about in the 2nd half of the 3rd c. BC under the onslaught of Celts and Thracians from the west and Sarmatians from the east. With their increased forces, the Sarmatians devastated significant parts of the Scythia and, "annihilating the defeated, transformed a larger part of the country into a desert" ( Diodorus, 11,43,7).
The dependent forest-steppe tribes, subjected to exaction burdens, freed themselves at the first opportunity. The Dniepr and Buh populace ruled by the Scythians did not become Scythians. They continued to live their original life alien to Scythian ways. From the 3rd century B.C. for many centuries the histories of the steppe and forest-steppe zones of N.Pontic diverged. The material culture of the population quickly lost their common features. And in the steppe, reflecting the end of nomad hegemony in the Scythian society, ended the erection of the royal kurgans. Archeologically, the late Scythia appears first of all as a conglomerate of fortified and non-fortified settlements with abutting agricultural zones.
The development of the Scythian society is marked by the following trends:
1.Intensified sedentarization process, evidenced by appearance of numerous kurgan burials in the steppe zone of N.Pontic, some of them dated to the end of the 5th century B.C., but the majority belonging to the 4th or 3rd cc. B.C., reflecting the establishment of permanent pastoral coaching routes and a tendency to semi-nomadic pasturing. In the Lower Dnieper area appear mostly unfortified settlements, in Crimea and Western Scythia grew agricultural population. The Dnieper settlements were developing in the previous nomadic winter villages, and in uninhabited lands.
2. Tendency for proprietary and social inequality, ideological ascend of the nobility, further stratification among free Scythian nomads. The majority of royal kurgans are dated by the 4th century B.C.
3. Increase in subjection of the forest-steppe population, archeologically traced. In the 4th century B.C. in the Dnieper forest-steppe zone appear steppe type burials. In addition to the nomadic advance in the north in search of the new pastures, they show an increase of pressure upon the farmers of forest-steppe belt. The Borispol kurgans almost entirely belong to the soldiers, and sometimes even women warriors. The blossom of the steppe Scythia coincides with decline of forest-steppe. From the second half of the 5th century BC the import of antique goods to the Middle Dnieper decreased, because of pauperization of the dependent farmers. In the forest-steppe, kurgans of the 4th century BC are poorer than during the previous time. At the same time grew the cultural influence of the steppe nomads. The Senkov kurgans in the Kyiv area, left by the local agricultural population, are low and contain poor female and no-inventory male burials, in a striking contrast with the simultaneous nearby Borispol kurgans left by the Scythian conquerors.
4.Beginning of city life in Scythia.
Scythia's later history is mainly dominated by sedentary agrarian and city elements. As a result of the defeats suffered by Scythians were formed two separate states, two Lesser Scythias, one in Thrace ( Dobrudja), and the other in the Crimea and the Lower Dnieper area ( Strabo VII, 4, 5).
Third Scythian Kingdoms
In the Lesser Scythia Third Scythian Kingdom state in Thrace, the former nomads, or more exactly their nobility, retained their power over the agrarian population, and at the same time abandoned their nomadic way of life.
The second Lesser Scythia Third Scythian Kingdom state in Crimea and Lower Dnieper area underwent a massive sedentarization. The interethnic dependence was replaced by developing forms of dependence within the society. The enmity of the Third Scythian Kingdom towards the Greek settlements of the Northern Black Sea grew worse because it regarded them as unnecessary intermediaries in the wheat trade. Besides, the settling cattlemen were attracted by the Greek agricultural belt. However, the later Scythia was both culturally and socio-economically far less advanced than its Greek neighbors.
The continuity of the royal line is less clear in the Crimea and Thrace Lesser Scythias. In the 2nd c. BC, Olvia became a Scythian dependency That event was marked in the city by minting of coins with name of the Scythian king Skilur. Skilur was a son of a king and a father of a king, but the relation of his dynasty with the former dynasty is not known. Either Skilur or his son and successor Palak were buried in the mausoleum of Naples Scythian that was used from ca.100 B.C. to ca. 100 AD , and the late burials are so poor that they do not seem to be royal, indicating a change in the dynasty or royal burials in another place. In nomadic societies a long rule of the same dynasty is not unusual. Later, at the end of 2nd c. BC the city was freed from the Scythian domination, but became a subject of Pontos king Mithradates the Great. Later in the second half of 1st c. BC Olbia, rebuilt after repulsion of the Gets, became a dependent of the Dacian barbarian kings Pharzoy and Inensimey, who minted their own coins in the city. Later from the 2nd c. AD Olbia belonged to the Roman Empire.
It was no coincidence that Scythia was a first state north of the Black Sea to collapse with the invasion of the Goths.
Post-classical ideas of "Scythia"
Owing to their reputation as promulgated by Greek historians, the Scythians served as the epitome of savagery and barbarism in the early modern period. Specifically, early modern English discourse on Ireland frequently resorted to comparisons with this people in order to confirm that the indigenous population of Ireland descended from these ancient "bogeymen", and showed themselves as barbaric as their alleged ancestors. Edmund Spenser wrote that "the Chiefest [nation that settled in Ireland] I Suppose to be Scithians ... which firste inhabitinge and afterwarde stretchinge themselves forthe into the lande as theire numbers increased named it all of themselues Scuttenlande which more brieflye is Called Scuttlande or Scotlande" (A View of the Present State of Ireland, c. 1596). As proofs for this origin Spenser cites the alleged Irish customs of blood-drinking, nomadic lifestyle, the wearing of mantles and certain haircuts and "Cryes [or wailings] allsoe vsed amongeste the Irishe which savor greatlye of the Scythyan Barbarisme". William Camden, one of Spenser's main sources, comments on this legend of origin that "to derive descent from a Scythian stock, cannot be thought any waies dishonourable, seeing that the Scythians, as they are most ancient, so they have been the Conquerours of most Nations, themselves alwaies invincible, and never subject to the Empire of others" (Britannia, 1586 etc., Engl. transl. 1610). Spenser's contemporary Shakespeare alluded to the legend that Scythians ate their parents in his play King Lear:
- The barbarous Scythian
- Or he that makes his generation messes
- To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
- Be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and relieved,
- As thou my sometime daughter. - (Act I, Scene i)
In the second paragraph of the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath the élite of Scotland claim Scythia as a former homeland of the Scots.
In the 19th century, romantic revisionists transformed the " barbarian" Scyths of literature into the wild and free, hardy and democratic ancestors of all blond Indo-Europeans. Aside from the findings of modern archaeology and genetics, most of what subsequent generations "knew" of Scythia and Scythians remained second-hand, a series of literary conventions.
Some modern groups still claim descent from the Scythians. The Scythians feature in the national origin legends of the Celts. Archaeologists discovered in 2000 that Scythians landed several miles outside St Austell in Cornwall and their presence had an influence on the Cornish language [citation needed]. Some romantic nationalist writers claim that they figured in the formation of the empire of the Medes and likewise of Caucasian Albania, the precursor in antiquity of the modern-day Azerbaijan Republic. Most famously of all, the Russians sometimes saw themselves as Scythians in 18th-century poetry, as some contemporary scholars sought to demonstrate their descent from the ancient warriors described by Herodotus. Alexander Blok drew on this tradition in his last major poem, The Scythians (1920).
Literature
- Alekseev, A. Yu. et al., "Chronology of Eurasian Scythian Antiquities Born by New Archaeological and 14C Data". Radiocarbon, Vol .43, No 2B, 2001, p 1085-1107.
- Khazanov AM Social history of Scythians, Moscow, 1975 (in Russian)