Sarmatians

Nomenclature

Greek Name: Σαυρομάτης 

Latin Name: Sauromatae

Toponyms: Sauromatia

Cultural Notes From Herodotos

Were originally Scythians mixed with Amazons. They speak Scythian, but ungrammatically, because the Amazons never learnt it properly. The women go to war, ride out hunting, and wear the same clothes as men. Before a woman can marry, she must kill a man of the enemy. 

Geographical Notes

The first district across the Tanaïs river, from the head of Lake Maeetis northward for fifteen days' journey. South of the Budini.

Citations in Herodotos

Key Passages in English Translation

[4.116] To this too the youths agreed; and crossing the Tanaïs, they went a three days' journey east from the river, and a three days' journey north from lake Maeetis; and when they came to the region in which they now live, they settled there. [2] Ever since then the women of the Sauromatae have followed their ancient ways; they ride out hunting, with their men or without them; they go to war, and dress the same as the men.

[4.117] The language of the Sauromatae is Scythian, but not spoken in its ancient purity, since the Amazons never learned it correctly. In regard to marriage, it is the custom that no maiden weds until she has killed a man of the enemy; and some of them grow old and die unmarried, because they cannot fulfill the law.

English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920. Retreived from <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu>

Key Passages in Greek

[4.116] ἐπείθοντο καὶ ταῦτα οἱ νεηνίσκοι, διαβάντες δὲ τὸν Τάναϊν ὁδοιπόρεον πρὸς ἥλιον ἀνίσχοντα τριῶν μὲν ἡμερέων ἀπὸ τοῦ Τανάιδος ὁδόν, τριῶν δὲ ἀπὸ τῆς λίμνης τῆς Μαιήτιδος πρὸς βορέην ἄνεμον. ἀπικόμενοι δὲ ἐς τοῦτον τὸν χῶρον ἐν τῷ νυν κατοίκηνται, οἴκησαν τοῦτον. [2] καὶ διαίτῃ ἀπὸ τούτου χρὲωνται τῇ παλαιῇ τῶν Σαυροματέων αἱ γυναῖκες, καὶ ἐπὶ θήρην ἐπ᾽ ἵππων ἐκφοιτῶσαι ἅμα τοῖσι ἀνδράσι καὶ χωρὶς τῶν ἀνδρῶν, καὶ ἐς πόλεμον φοιτῶσαι καὶ στολὴν τὴν αὐτὴν τοῖσι ἀνδράσι φορέουσαι.

[4.117] φωνῇ δὲ οἱ Σαυρομάται νομίζουσι Σκυθικῇ, σολοικίζοντες αὐτῇ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀρχαίου, ἐπεὶ οὐ χρηστῶς ἐξέμαθον αὐτὴν αἱ Ἀμαζόνες. τὰ περὶ γάμων δὲ ὧδέ σφι διακέεται. οὐ γαμὲεται παρθένος οὐδεμία πρὶν ἂν τῶν πολεμίων ἄνδρα ἀποκτείνῃ: αἳ δὲ τινὲς αὐτέων καὶ τελευτῶσι γηραιαὶ πρὶν γήμασθαι, οὐ δυνάμεναι τὸν νόμον ἐκπλῆσαι,

Other Testimonia

Pausanias, Description of Greece: Book 1, Chapter 21, Section 5: Among the votive offerings there is a Sauromatic breast plate. On seeing this a man will say that no less than Greeks are foreigners skilled in the arts. For the Sauromatae have no iron, neither mined by them selves nor yet imported. They have, in fact, no dealings at all with the foreigners around them. To meet this deficiency they have contrived inventions. In place of iron they use bone for their spear-blades, and cornel-wood for their bows and arrows, with bone points for the arrows. They throw a lasso round any enemy they meet, and then turning round their horses upset the enemy caught in the lasso.

Other Commentary

David Asheri, Alan Lloyd, Aldo Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I-IV (2007): 114,3-4. ‘ἡμεῖς...συμφέρεσθαι: on the sedentary way of life of Scythian women, cf. also Di Aeribus Aquis Locis 21; conditions are no different among many Eurasian nomads; see e.g. F. Schlette, EAZ XX-XXVII (1987), 235-6. The circumstance that men, instead of women, bring dowries and leave their paternal home constitutes, in the eyes of the Greeks, a subversion of ordinary rules: see Tyrrell, pp. 41-3.

117. φωνῇ...Ἀμαζόνες:the fact that the Sauromatians/Sarmatians spoke an Iranic dialect similar to the Scythian one, but with characteristics of its own, seems to be true: for some attempts at isolating its distinctive traits, especially on the basis of personal names, see Zgusta, pp. 208-71; Harmatta, Studies. 

Charles Darwin Adams, Ed. Hippocrates, De aere aquis et locis: Part 17: In Europe there is a Scythian race, called Sauromatae, which inhabits the confines of the Palus Maeotis, and is different from all other races. Their women mount on horseback, use the bow, and throw the javelin from their horses, and fight with their enemies as long as they are virgins; and they do not lay aside their virginity until they kill three of their enemies, nor have any connection with men until they perform the sacrifices according to law. Whoever takes to herself a husband, gives up riding on horseback unless the necessity of a general expedition obliges her. They have no right breast; for while still of a tender age their mothers heat strongly a copper instrument constructed for this very purpose, and apply it to the right breast, which is burnt up, and its development being arrested, all the strength and fullness are determined to the right shoulder and arm.

Perseus Encyclopedia: Sauromatae, a people immediately E. of the Palus Maeotis

W. W. How, J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotos: Ἀμαζόνας. The martial habits of the women of the Sauromatae (c. 117 nn.) irresistibly reminded the Greeks of the Amazons (ix. 27. 4 n.), and they are introduced here regardless of the chronological inconsistency that, if the Scyths had come into their land in the seventh century (c. 11), they could not have been found there by the Amazons in the time of Heracles. If the Scyths were descended from Heracles (c. 8), the inconsistency is different, but equally striking.

οὐ γαμέεται. Hippocrates (de Aer. c. 17) makes three victims the price of marriage, and says the ladies did not fight afterwards, unless a levy en masse was needed. It is generally supposed that the Sauromatae were the Sarmatians, who later spread west to Poland and Hungary; they were already west of the Tanais in the fourth century (Scylax 70), and by the Christian era they had reached the Danube; cf. Ovid, Tristia, iii. 3. 5-6. On the monuments, Scyths and Sarmatians wear the same dress, Reinach, A. R. M. p. 203, and Hippocrates (u. s. c. 19) makes the Sauromatae to be Scyths. The Sarmatian inscriptions seem to be connected in language with an Iranian dialect in the 

Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898): Sarmătae（Σαρμάται) or Sauromătae (Σαυρομάται). A people of Asia, dwelling on the northeast of the Palus Maeotis (Sea of Azov), east of the river Tanaïs (Don), which separated them from the Scythians of Europe. See Sarmatia.

Barry Cunliffe. Prehistoric Europe: An Illustrated History (1998) pp395-396: East of the Don, in Herodotus' Sauromatia, a fully twenty per cent of investigated fifth- and fourth- century BC buried warriors turn out to have been women, Hippocrates tells us that the Sauromatian women 'do not lay aside their virginity until they have killed three of their enemies' and do not ride after they have taken a husband 'unless compelled to do so by a general expedition'.

Bibliography

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Disambiguation

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