Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/603

Rh S C Y T H I A 577 Aristeas of Proconnesus (Herod., iv. 13) had heard of a migration of the Scythians into their later settlement. The one-eyed Arimaspians, who, as neighbours of the gold-guarding griffins, may be sought near the gold-fields of the Tibetan plateau, had attacked the Issedones (whom later authors are probably right in placing in the region of Kashgar and Khotan), and the latter in turn fell on the Scythians and drove them from their seats, whereupon these occupied the lands held till then by the Cimmerians. It is a probable conjecture that the branch of the royal Scythians spoken of as dwelling north of the Oxus and Jaxartes was really a part of the nation that remained in their ancient home. Aristeas's story has much internal probability ; but it is impossible to hold that the Scythian migration immediately preceded the first appearance of the expelled Cimmerians in Asia Minor, in Aristeas's own days (695 B.C.). The Scythians must have seized the steppe as far as the Dnieper centuries before, but the older inhabitants, who were probably of one race with the Thracians, remained their neighbours in the Crimea and the extreme west till the beginning of the 7th century. Concerning the complete expulsion of the Cimmerians and the Scythian invasion of Asia that followed, Herodotus (iv. 11 sq., i. 103-106, iv. 1, 3 sq.) gives an account, taken from several sources, which is intelligible only when we put aside the historian's attempts to combine these. A barbarian (i.e., Median) account was that the Scythian nomads of Asia, pressed by the Massagetae, crossed the Araxes (by which Herodotus here and in other places means the Amu-Darya) and fell on Media. Taking these Scythians for Scolots and assuming, therefore, that the reference was to their first migration, Herodotus had to place the expulsion of the Cimmerians between the crossing of the Araxes and the invasion of Media, and he had heard from Greeks (of Pontus) that on the Dniester was the grave of the Cimmerian kings, who had slain each other in single combat rather than share the migration of their people. This local tradition implies that the Cimmerians reached Asia Minor through Thrace, which, indeed, is the only possible route, except by sea; Herodotus, however, is led by his false presuppositions to conduct them east- wards from the Dniester by the Crimea (where many local names preserved their memory), and so along the Black Sea coast, and then westwards from the Caucasus to Asia Minor. The Scythians, he thinks, followed them, but, losing the trail, went east from the Caucasus, and so reached Media. This he gives only as his own inference from two things (1) that the Cimmerians settled on the peninsula of Sinope, from which their forays into Asia Minor seem to have been conducted, and (2) that the Scythians invaded Media. The Median source spoke further of a great victory of the Scythians, after which they overran all Asia, and held it for twenty-eight years (634-606), levying tribute and plundering at will, till at length the Medes, under Cyaxares, destroyed most of them after making them drunk at a banquet. 1 Here a third, Egyptian, account comes in, viz., that King Psam- metichus (d. 611) bought off certain northern invaders who had advanced as far as Philistsea ; there is no reason to doubt that these are the Scythians of the Median account. Still more important is the evidence of certain prophecies of Jeremiah (comp. iii. 6) in the reign of Josiah (628-609), describing the approach from the north of an all- destroying nation of riders and bowmen (Jer. iv. 6 sq., v. 15 sq., vi. 1 sq., 22 sq.). 2 Herodotus's twenty-eight years are simply the period between the accession of Cyaxares 1 This story may be influenced by the myth about the feast of the Sacasa (Strabo, xi. p. 512). Ctesias has it that peace was made. 2 This is Hitzig's discovery and must be sound. Before the fall of Nineveh the Chaldaeans could not be a source of danger. and the taking of Nineveh, which followed close on the overthrow of the Scythians ; Justin, on the other hand, gives the Scythians eight years of sovereignty, which fits well with the interval between the first and the second siege of Nineveh (619-609). 3 A fourth account in Herodotus, which connects the OrjXfia vocros of the Enarians with the plundering of the temple of Astarte at Ascalon, is entirely apocryphal, and must come from the Greek identification of this Astarte with the Scythian Arippasa. Yet it seems to have been chiefly this story that led Herodotus to take the Scythians of his Median source for Scolots. He is refuted by another account of Iranian origin : Ctesias (in Diod., ii. 34) tells of a long war between the Medes and the Sacse, occasioned by the defection of Parthian subjects of Media to the latter nation in the time of Astibaras (Cyaxares) ; so that the Scythian conquerors actually came from the east, not from the north. Herodotus's Median source closed with Cyaxares recovering his power ; the story which follows about the resistance of the slaves of the Scythians to their returning lords, who cowed them by using whips instead of arms, must have come from the Pontic Greeks, and is certainly a local legend, 4 which has nothing to do with the wars in Asia, and indeed is connected by Callistratus (Steph. Byz., s.v. Ta^pou) with a war between Scythians and Thracians. From the expedition of Darius upwards Herodotus names five generations of Scythian kings, Idanthyrsus, Saulius, Gnurus, Lycus, Spargapeithes ; the last may be contemporary with the foundation of Olbia (646 B.C.). 5 Under Idanthyrsus fell the invasion of Darius (513 B.C.). The motive for this invasion cannot possibly have been revenge for the Scythian invasion of Media. It is possible that a popular war against the chief nation of the nomads, who are so hated by the Iranian peasants, seemed to Darius a good way of stimulating common feeling among his scattered subjects, and it is certain that he had quite false ideas of the wealth of Scythia, due perhaps to export of grain from the Grecian cities of the Scythian coast. Herodotus's account of the campaign is made up in a puzzling way of several distinct narratives, retouched to smooth away contradictions. Here it must suffice to refer to the article PERSIA (vol. xviii. p. 570), and to add that the geographical confusion in Herodotus and his exaggerated idea of the distance to which the Persians advanced seem to be due partly to a false combination between a Scythian account of the campaign and certain notices about the burning of Gelonus by enemies and about fortresses on the river Oarus which had come to him from the inland trade route, and had nothing to do with Darius, partly to a confusion between the desert reached by the Persians and that which lay between the Budini and Thyssagetae. While the Persian rule in the newly conquered districts of Europe was shaken by the Ionic revolt, the Scythians made plundering expeditions in Thrace, and in 495 pene- trated into the Chersonesus, whose tyrant Miltiades fled, but was restored after their retreat by the Dolonci (Herod., vi. 40). Darius had Abydus and the other cities of the Propontis burned lest they should furnish a base for a pro- jected Scythian expedition against Asia (Strabo, xiii. p. 59 1 ); this agrees with the fact known from Herodotus (v. 117), 3 Eusebius's date (634) for the Scythians in Palestine is deduced from Herodotus. 4 It is meant to explain the origin of the fosse (Herod., iv. 3), which the slaves were said to have dug, and of a subject-race in the same district (Pliny, H.N., iv. 80), the Sindians (Amm. Mar., xxii. 8, 41 j Val. Flac., vi. 86), or rather perhaps the Satarchae. 5 That the wise ANACHARSIS (q.v.) was brother of King Saulius (Caduidas of Diog. Laert., i. 101) seems to be a mere guess of Herod- otus's Scythian informant Tunes. The story of Anacharsis's fate is coloured by that of the later king Scyles. XXL 73