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

THESARMATIANS 121
peoples : which show that the Sarmatians had had no regular deahngs with
the Scythians ;
that they had developed, independently of the Scythians,
somewhere in Central Asia ; and that they came as conquerors to
the steppes of South Russia, bringing with them a body of distinctive
customs, and a material culture peculiar to themselves. Their equipment
and their military tactics were un- Scythian. The Scythians
were primarily bold archers : their principal weapons were bow and
arrows. It was only after they had broken the enemy's resistance by
a succession of attacks at long range, by a continuous bombardment
of arrows, sometimes poisoned, that they advanced in wedge formation
for a final assault, a hand-to-hand struggle in which they used
their short daggers.
The tactics of the Sarmatians, especially the Alans, were very
different. Their principal weapon was a long, heavy lance, such as
was carried by mediaeval knights. Covered, horse and man, with
corslets of scale- or ring-armour, or sometimes of cast iron, they
charged in masses and broke resistance by the weight of this
heavy cavalry attack : the formation may be compared to a mounted
phalanx. The lance attack was followed by hand-to-hand fighting in
which they used long swords with sharp points. The part played by
bow and arrows was quite secondary. Conical helmets of iron, and
stirrups, both unknown to the Scythians, completed the Sarmatian
outfit. There was the same difference between the Parthians, mobile
archers, and the Sassanid Persians, mounted hoplites. We seem to
be witnessing the dawn of the Middle Ages, with their ironclad knights.
Very little is known about Sarmatian religion. From such insufficient
evidence as we possess, the Sarmatians would seem to have been
fire-worshippers. The sacrifice of horses appears to have been
prominent in their ritual.
This is virtually all we can gather about the Sarmatians from our '
written sources. But the Sarmatians inhabited the Russian steppes
for more than five centuries, and the eastern branch of them dwelt
for ages in the steppes between the Sea of Aral and the Caspian Sea
and in the adjacent steppes of Siberia. They must have left many
traces of their sojourn. Nevertheless, the works on the archaeology
of South Russia provide no clue to the archaeological material illustrating
the life and manners of the Sarmatians. Yet such material
abounds : if it has not been utilized hitherto, the reason is that no one
has taken the trouble to arrange it systematically in chronological
order, to date the several finds precisely, and to make a historical
analysis of the groups.
2353
In a general work like the present I
R
cannot undertake a task so