SARMATAE, or SAUROMATAE (the second form is mostly used by the earlier Greek writers, the other by the later Greeksand the Romans)

This article appears in Volume V24, Page 220 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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SARMATAE, or SAUROMATAE (the second form is mostly used by the earlier Greek writers, the other by the later Greeksand the Romans) , a people whom Herodotus (iv. 21. 117) puts on the eastern boundary of

Scythia

SCYTHIA (Gr. EKuOia)

(q.v.) beyond the Tanais (Don). He says expressly that they were not pure Scythians, but, being descended from

young

Scythian men and Amazons, spoke an impure dialect and allowed their women to take part in war and to enjoy much freedom. Later writers

call

CALL (from Anglo-Saxon ceallian, a common Teutonic word, cf. Dutch kallen, to talk or chatter)

some of them the " woman-ruled

Sarmatae

SARMATAE, or SAUROMATAE (the second form is mostly used by the earlier Greek writers, the other by the later Greeksand the Romans)

." Hippocrates (De Aere, &c., 24) classes them as Scythian. From this we may infer that they spoke a language cognate with the Scythic. The greater part of the barbarian names occurring in the

inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS (from Lat. inscribere, to write upon)

of Olbia, Tanais and Panticapaeum are supposed to be Sarmatian, and as they have been well explained from the Iranian language now spoken by the Ossetes of the Caucasus, these are supposed to be the representatives of the

Sarmatae

SARMATAE, or SAUROMATAE (the second form is mostly used by the earlier Greek writers, the other by the later Greeksand the Romans)

and can be shown to have a direct connexion with the Alani (q.v.), one of their tribes. By the 3rd century B.C. the Sarmatae appear to have supplanted the Scyths proper in the plains of south Russia, where they remained dominant until the

Gothic

GOTHIC

and Hunnish invasions. Their

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

divisions were the Rhoxolani (q.v.), the Iazyges (q.v.), with whom the Romans had to deal on the Danube and Theiss; and the Alani. The term Sarmatia is applied by later writers to as much as was known of what is now Russia, including all that which the older authorities

call

CALL (from Anglo-Saxon ceallian, a common Teutonic word, cf. Dutch kallen, to talk or chatter)

Scythia

SCYTHIA (Gr. EKuOia)

, the latter name being transferred to regions farther

east

EAST
EAST, ALFRED (1849- )

Ptolemy

PTOLEMY (
CLAUDIUS
PTOLEMAEUS)

gives maps of European and Asiatic Sarmatia. (E. H. M.)

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