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

i8o GREEK CITIES OF SOUTH RUSSIA
foremost, to the cult of Sabazios, the supreme god of the Thracians,
especially as it has recently been shown, that the Sabbathiasts themselves
had nothing to do with Jewish religion, but were connected
with a cult of the Great Goddess of Asia Minor and her consort. The
arguments of Schiirer and of Cumont fail to convince me that the
Jewish behefs exercised a dominant influence on the Bosphorus ;
the tendency to monotheism, and to moralization of the gods, was
general at the Roman period, especially in the East. On the other
hand, the figure of Sabazios appears in the Bosphoran tombs
described above, his cult is found in the Caucasus, and it was probably
he who gave rise to the Bosphoran coin types of the fourth century B.C.,
the silen and the satyr. Moreover, there was a powerful Thracian
element in the Bosphoran population, and the deity who has most
affinity with the god Sanerges is along with Sandas of Asia Minor,
god of wine and prosperity, the mystic Thracian god Sabazios. I con-
sider, therefore, that the ee6?''Ti//io-Tos of the Bosphoran inscriptions, is
the supreme god of the native population, a syncretism of the Iranian
Ahuramazda and of the Thracian Sabazios, who was influenced, in
his turn, by the consort of the Great Goddess of Asia Minor.
In conclusion : our study has shown, that the Roman period was
a period of real renaissance in the Bosphoran kingdom and in the
Greek colonies on the Black Sea. Under Roman protection, Hellenism,
which had been almost stifled by Iranism, began to revive and to
prosper. But Iranization, undefeated, returned to the attack and
took possession of the Greek city life in all its branches. The Iranian
world exercised a powerful effect upon the political and social life
of the Greek colonies, upon their religion, their art and their industry.
By the time that Roman protection ceased to be the principal factor,
the process of Iranization was almost completed. But the fusion of
Iranism and Hellenism did not involve the suppression of Hellenism :
it was a true fusion, and the outcome was a mixed civilization of
singular complexity and interest. The northern tribes who mingled
with this world in the third century A. d., and who had long been
penetrating into its midst, were faced by a civilization which was far
higher than theirs. They naturally learned from it and made it their
own. We must not forget, that there is no evidence of the Sarmatians
having been conquered and subjugated by the Goths. The relation
between the two was rather that of co-operation and alliance : in
military matters, the Goths were the stronger ; the Sarmatians were
the cultivated element. The result of this fusion will be made clear
in the next chapter.