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

ii6 THE SARMATIANS
stage in the war which Mithridates the Great was waging in the
Crimea. Behind the Roxalans, another of Strabo's informants, the
authority used for the eleventh book, Theophanes of Mytilene, a
contemporary of Pompey and his biographer, alludes to Aorsians as
occupying the left bank of the Don and the shores of the Sea of Azov,
and to Siracians as holding the valley of the Kuban. Farther east
we must suppose that the Alans were supreme : it is not long before
they appear as the dominant tribe in the eastern steppes of South
Russia.
The earUest reference to the Alans belongs to the year A. D. 35.
Josephus, who mentions them, leads us to suppose that they had
held the Kuban valley for some time, and were trying to force their
way, through the passes of the Caucasus, to Iberia and Armenia, with
the ultimate intention of fighting the Parthians. It seems, however,
that their attempt was frustrated, that they turned aside and followed
the other Sarmatian tribes towards the Don and the Dnieper. In
A. D. 49, during the troubles which arose in the Cimmerian Bosphorus,
the immediate neighbours of the Bosphoran kingdom were Aorsians
and Siracians, not Alans. But these tribes seem to have been gradually
invaded by the Alans and to have combined with them to form a unit
which was thenceforth known by the name of the dominant tribe,
the Alans. The continual advance of the Sarmatians soon carried
them beyond the Dnieper in the direction of the Danube. In A. D. 50,
we find the lazygians between Theiss and Danube, and the Roxalans
beyond the Dnieper.
The Sarmatians now became an imminent danger to Roman
power, which was threatened from two different quarters. The
provinces and vassal kingdoms south of the Caucasus daily anticipated
a flood of conquerors from the steppes beside the Kuban, while the
Danubian provinces were already feehng the pressure of the Sarmatian
vanguard. Little is known about the conditions on the Dnieper
at this period, and between Dnieper and Danube. The region seems
to have been the meeting-place of several currents : a Thracian
current of Getians or Dacians, who took Olbia in the middle of the
first century B. c. ; a Celto-Germanic current of Galatians and
Scirians in the third century, and later of Bastarnians, who appear
to have occupied at least a portion of the Dnieper basin ;
and, lastly,
the Sarmatian current. What matters most to us, is that from this
period, the first century B. c, the Iranians maintained regular and
sometimes cordial relations with the Germanic and Thracian tribes,
and that they dwelt side by side with them in the succeeding centuries.
From the first century b. c, therefore, Rome had to face a new