Iranians and Greeks in South Russia - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian ...

SCYTHIANSIN SOUTH RUSSIA 55
there are two streams of importation and of influence in the sixth
century : one Oriental, probably coming from Mesopotamia by way
of the Caucasus, and from Asia Minor through the Greek colonies on
the southern shore of the Black Sea : the other Greek, coming from
the Ionian and Aeolian colonies in Asia Minor. The former weakens
towards the end of the fifth century and then almost disappears, the
other grows and develops. The Greek artists of Asia Minor begin to
work for the Scythians, and to consult their taste. But they have only
a general notion of Scythian life : they know the forms of Scythian
objects, and the Scythian love of the animal style : but the spirit of
their work remains Ionian.
The predominance of the Oriental aspect in sixth-century Scythian
civilization is a fact of capital importance, and one which is generally
acknowledged. What was the costume of the Scythians of South
Russia in the sixth century we do not know. But as we are well
acquainted with their costume in the fourth and third centuries, from
the representations which I shall quote in the fifth chapter, and as
this costume is purely Oriental, we may suppose that it had not changed
since the sixth century. It is the Iraniian costume which we know
from the reliefs of Naksh-i-Rustam and Bisutun (Behistun), and
from other monuments of Persian art. I shall not discuss it further,
as the facts are well known and have been studied over and over again.
As to armour, apart from the bronze helmet and greaves, which were
borrowed from the Greeks, the panoply of the Kuban barrows is
Iranian : Iranian the scaled corslet with pectoral badge^—a kind of
cunningly wrought bronze shirt : the spear and the javelins ; the
arrows with bronze heads of the triangular form which spread with
the Iranians all over the ancient world, beginning in the early iron age
the bow of the shape known to the ancients as Scythian and frequently
the gorytus, quiver and
described both by ancients and by moderns :
bowcase in one, of wood covered with leather or metal, an Iranian
speciality ; the short iron sword ; the scabbard, with its side-projection
for the chains or straps by which the sword was suspended from
the warrior's belt, a type of scabbard convenient for cavalrymen and
regularly represented in Persian art ; finally, the dagger, often attached
by straps to the warrior's left leg, again a handy fashion for cavalrymen
armed like foot-soldiers. All this is familiar and has often been
set forth : recently by Minns.
It is not so generally known, that the horse-trappings, which we
can reconstruct with the aid of many hundreds of pieces from tombs,
and particularly the bridle, are of pure Iranian type. The frontlet,
the ear-guards, the temple-pieces, the pectoral, the plaques which
;