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

THE SARMATIANS 119
an alliance, or both ? Again, we know little about the fusion of other
Germanic tribes, Suevians and Vandals, with the Alans. What is
certain is that this epoch was one of inestimable importance for the
history of the whole world. Iranians and Germans combined to
invade the kingdom of the Bosphorus, the Crimea, and the Greek
towns in the Taman peninsula, destroyed Olbia and Tanais and the
Roman fortresses in the Crimea, passed to Asia and to Greece, dealt
formidable blows at the Roman empire on its Danubian frontier,
and finally succeeded in effecting a temporary conquest of Italy
herself, of Gaul, of Spain and even of Africa. The Iranian tribes
especially the Alans— ^who had remained in Asia and in the eastern
portion of the Russian steppes, were drawn once more westward, by
the Huns : leaving, however, strong, almost independent detachments
on the Kuban, and, united with the Goths, in the Crimea and in the
Taman peninsula. I cannot examine this period in detail : it has
often been treated, and it lies outside the chronological limit which we
have prescribed. But I must lay stress upon the participation of the
Alans in the conquest of the Roman empire, and upon the extreme
importance of the Iranian element in the conquering armies of Goths
and Huns. The union of Iranians and Germans is mirrored, to take
a single instance, in the legend about the origin of the Emperor
Maximin, who was said
mother.
to have had a Gothic father and an Alan
Again, it must be borne in mind, that if the Germans exercised a
powerful influence on the Roman state and the Roman army from the
fourth century onwards, so did the Sarmatians, whose influence, moreover,
was much older. From the time of Hadrian, Roman cavalry
tactics were affected by the distinctive tactics of the Alans : the
Sarmatian element played an increasingly important part in the
Roman army, and we may go so far as to say, that in the third and
fourth centuries some Roman corps, like that which figures on the
arch of Galerius at Salonica, were almost entirely Sarmatian both in
composition and in armament.
This historical survey, incomplete as it is, shows that from the
second century B. c. till the third century a. d., the Sarmatians, and
particularly the Alans, were the predominant force throughout
South Russia and western Asia, especially in the central and eastern
regions, where they were unhampered by their dangerous rivals and
confederates , the Thracians and the Germans . From the third century
onwards, they had to share their supremacy with the Goths or even
yield it to them, but they still formed a very important factor in the
governing class and in the army of the Gothic tribes. What do
—