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

ii8 THE SARMATIANS
Domitian, Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, though they led to the
temporary annexation of Dacia, were primarily defensive wars with
the object of interposing an effective barrier between the Danubian
provinces and the combined attacks of Germans and Sarmatians.
In the Crimea and in the Caucasus, the Romans pursued the same
defensive policy. We shall see that after Nero the kingdom of the
Bosphoruswas re-established as a vassal kingdom, and entrusted with
the duty of defending the Crimea and Olbia against the Scythians,
and of keeping watch in the Taman peninsula and on the Don to
preserve the Greek colonies in that region from complete occupation
by the Sarmatians. The kingdom of the Bosphorus proving unequal
to the task, the Roman government, from the time of Hadrian
onwards, was forced to protect the rear by drawing a line of fortresses,
manned by Roman troops, round the territory of Chersonesus Taurica
in fact, it had to resume that military occupation of part of the
Crimea, which had been taken in hand by Claudius and by Nero. Roman
policy in the Caucasus was the same. The kingdom of Iberia, which
covered the Caucasian passes, was guarded, at its most vulnerable
points, by fortresses and Roman troops : Armenia also, from the
second century A. D. The military bases, on which these two groups
of advanced posts depended, were the province of Lower Moesia for
the Crimea, and for the Caucasus the province of Cappadocia and the
legions re-installed there by the Flavian emperors.
The Alans, by themselves, were never able to cross the barriers
set up by the Romans. In 73-74, they tried to invade the Parthian
kingdom from the east : in Hadrian's time, in 135, they attempted
to cross the Caucasus and to invade Armenia from the north. Both
enterprises failed. The invasion of 135 was repulsed by the governor
of Cappadocia, the historian Arrian, whose treatise on his tactics and
order of battle against the Alans throws valuable light on Alan military
organization. The invasion of 73-74 collapsed before the might of
Parthia. On the Danube also, the Sarmatian advance was arrested,
once and for all, by the vigorous defensive measures and counterattacks
of the second-century emperors.
In the third century A. D., the situation changed. We have already
observed, that from their first appearance on the Dnieper, the Alans
maintained constant relations with the Germanic tribes, and often
joined hands with Germans and Thracians to fight the Roman legions.
What shape these relations assumed we do not know : nor what was
the character of the association, formed in South Russia during the
third century, between the Alans and the Goths, who were Germanic
tribes from the Dnieper. Was it a conquest of Alans by Goths, or
;