The Sarmatians (; ; Latin: ) were a large confederation of ancient Iranian equestrian nomadic peoples who dominated the Pontic steppe from around the 5th century BC to the 4th century AD.Radley, Dario, (14 February 2025). "Ancient Sarmatian jewelry and artifacts unearthed in Kazakhstan", in: Archaeology News, "The Sarmatians, an ancient Iranian equestrian nomadic group that dominated the Eurasian steppes from the 5th century BCE to the 4th century CE, were known for their warrior culture and elaborate metalwork."
The earliest known reference to the Sarmatians comes from the Avesta, where they are mentioned as Sairima-, which in later Iranian sources became Sarm and Salm. Originating in the central parts of the Eurasian Steppe, the Sarmatians formed part of the wider Scythian cultures.. "During the first millennium BC, nomadic people spread over the Eurasian Steppe from the Altai Mountains over the northern Black Sea area as far as the Carpathian Basin... Greek and Persian historians of the 1st millennium BC chronicle the existence of the Massagetae and Sauromatians, and later, the Sarmatians and Sacae: cultures possessing artefacts similar to those found in classical Scythian monuments, such as weapons, horse harnesses and a distinctive 'Animal Style' artistic tradition. Accordingly, these groups are often assigned to the Scythian culture... They started migrating westward around the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, coming to dominate the closely related Scythians by 200 BC. At their greatest reported extent, around 100 BC, these tribes could be found from the Danube and eastward to the Volga, bordering the shores of the Black and Caspian seas and the Caucasus to the south.
In the 1st century AD, the Sarmatians began encroaching upon the Roman Empire in alliance with Germanic tribes. In the 3rd century AD, the Germanic Goths broke the Sarmatian dominance of the Pontic Steppe. With the Hunnic invasions of the 4th century, many Sarmatians joined the Goths and other Germanic tribes, such as the Vandals, and settled in the Western Roman Empire. Since large parts of today's Russia, specifically the land between the Ural Mountains and the Don River, were controlled in the 5th century BC by the Sarmatians, the Lower Volga–Don steppes are sometimes called the "Sarmatian Motherland".
The Sarmatians in the Bosporan Kingdom assimilated into Greek civilization, while others were absorbed by the proto-Circassian Maeotian people, "While the Sarmatians dominated the Meot lands, they were themselves assimilated and the language of the Meots, the predecessor of the modern Circassian dialects, survived." the Alans, and the Goths. Other Sarmatians were assimilated and absorbed by the Early Slavs. The Alans survived in the North Caucasus into the Early Middle Ages, ultimately giving rise to the modern Ossetic ethnic group.
The early-modern Polish nobility () claimed descent from the Sarmatians.
Genomic studies suggest that the Sarmatians may have been genetically similar to the eastern Yamnaya Bronze Age group.
Etymology
The Greek name () is derived from the Old Iranic Sarmatian endonym or , of which another variant, , gave rise to the ancient Greek name (). The form or was the main form of the name, and initially coexisted with the form until the late 4th to early 3rd centuries BC, when / became the only variant of the name in use.
This name meant "armed with throwing darts and arrows" and is cognate with the Indic Sanskrit term , which makes it semantically similar to the endonym of the Scythians, , meaning "archers."
The later, Middle Iranic, form of was or , of which the later form, or , was recorded in ancient Greek as (; ).
Location The territory inhabited by the Sarmatians, which was known as Sarmatia () to Greco-Roman ethnographers, covered the western part of greater Scythia, and corresponded to today's Central Ukraine, South-Eastern Ukraine, Southern Russia, Russian Volga, and South-Ural regions, and to a smaller extent the northeastern Balkans and around Moldova.
History Origin
The ethnogenesis of the Sarmatians occurred during the 6th to 4th centuries BC, when nomads from Central Asia migrated into the territory of the Sauromatians in the southern Ural Mountains.For the complexity of the interactions of these peoples see, e.g. and . These nomads conquered the Sauromatians, resulting in an increased incidence of eastern Asiatic features in the Early Sarmatians, similar to those of the Sakas.
The name "Sarmatians" eventually came to be applied to the whole of the new people formed out of these migrations, whose constituent tribes were the Aorsi, Roxolani, Alans, and the Iazyges. Despite the similarity between the names Sarmatian and Sauromatian, modern authors distinguish between the two, since Sarmatian culture did not directly develop from the Sauromatian culture and the core of the Sarmatian culture was composed of these newly arrived migrants. A typical transitional site between these two periods is found in the Filippovka kurgans, which are Late Sauromatian-Early Sarmatian, and dated to the 5th-4th century BC.
In the Pontic Steppe and Europe
During the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, the centre of Sarmatian power remained north of the Caucasus and in the 3rd century BC the most important centres were around the lower Don, Kalmykia, the Kuban area, and the Central Caucasus.
During the end of the 4th century BC, the Scythians, the then dominant power in the Black Sea Steppe, were militarily defeated by the Macedonian kings Philip II of Macedon and Lysimachus in 339 and 313 BC respectively. They experienced another military setback after participating in the Bosporan Civil War in 309 BC and came under pressure from the Thracian Getae and the Celtic Bastarnae. At the same time, in Central Asia, following the Macedonian conquest of the Achaemenid Empire, the new Seleucid Empire started attacking the Sakā and Dahā nomads who lived to the north of its borders, who in turn put westward pressure on the Sarmatians. Pressured by the Sakā and Dahā in the east, and taking advantage of the decline of Scythian power, the Sarmatians began crossing the Don river and invaded Scythia; they also migrated south into the North Caucasus.
The first wave of westward Sarmatian migration happened during the 2nd century BC, and involved the Royal Sarmatians, or Saioi (from Scytho-Sarmatian , meaning "kings"), who moved into the Pontic Steppe, and the Iazyges, also called the Iaxamatai or Iazamatai, who initially settled between the Don and Dnieper rivers. The Roxolani, who might have been a mixed Scytho-Sarmatian tribe, followed the Iazyges and occupied the Black Sea steppes up to the Dnipro and raided the Crimean region during that century, at the end of which they were involved in a conflict with the generals of the Pontic king Mithridates VI Eupator in the Bosporan Chersonesus, while the Iazyges became his allies.
That the tribes formerly referred to by Herodotus as Scythians were now called Sarmatians by Hellenistic and Roman authors implies that the Sarmatian conquest did not involve a displacement of the Scythians from the Pontic Steppe, but rather that the Scythian tribes were absorbed by the Sarmatians. After their conquest of Scythia, the Sarmatians became the dominant political power in the northern Pontic Steppe, where Sarmatian graves first started appearing in the 2nd century BC. Meanwhile, the populations which still identified as Scythians proper became reduced to Crimea and the Dobruja region, and at one point the Crimean Scythians were the vassals of the Sarmatian queen Amage. Sarmatian power in the Pontic Steppes was also directed against the Greek cities on its shores, with the city of Pontic Olbia being forced to pay repeated tribute to the Royal Sarmatians and their king Saitapharnes, who is mentioned in the Protogenes inscription along with the tribes of the Thisamatae, Scythians, and Saudaratae. Another Sarmatian king, Gatalos, was named in a peace treaty concluded by the king Pharnaces I of Pontus with his enemies.
Two other Sarmatian tribes, the Siraces, who had previously originated in the Transcaspian Plains immediately to the northeast of Hyrcania before migrating to the west, and the Aorsi, moved to the west across the Volga and into the Caucasus mountains' foothills between the 2nd to 1st centuries BC. From there, the pressure from their growing power forcing the more western Sarmatian tribes to migrate further west, and the Aorsi and Siraces destroyed the power of the Royal Sarmatians and the Iazyges, with the Aorsi being able to extend their rule over a large region stretching from the Caucasus across the Terek–Kuma Lowland and Kalmykia in the west up to the Aral Sea region in the east. Yet another new Sarmatian group, the Alans, originated in Central Asia out of the merger of some old tribal groups with the Massagetae. Related to the Asii who invaded Bactria in the 2nd century BC, the Alans were pushed west by the Kangju people (known to Graeco-Roman authors as the in Greek, and the in Latin) who were living in the Syr Darya basin, from where they expanded their rule from Fergana to the Aral Sea region.
The hegemony of the Sarmatians in the Pontic Steppe continued during the 1st century BC, when they were allied with the Scythians against Diophantus, a general of Mithradates VI Eupator, before allying with Mithradates against the Romans and fighting for him in both Europe and Asia, demonstrating the Sarmatians' complete involvement in the affairs of the Pontic and Danubian regions. During the early part of the century, the Alans had migrated to the area to the northeast of the Lake Maeotis. Meanwhile, the Iazyges moved westwards until they reached the Danube, and the Roxolani moved into the area between the Dnipro and the Danube and from there further west. These two peoples attacked the regions around Tomis and Moesia, respectively. During this period, the Iazyges and Roxolani also attacked the Roman province of Thracia, whose governor Tiberius Plautius Silvanus Aelianus had to defend the Roman border of the Danube. During the 1st century BC, various Sarmatians reached the Pannonian Basin, with the Iazyges passing through the territories corresponding to modern-day Moldavia and Wallachia before settling in the Tisza valley, by the middle of the century.
Although the Sarmatian were defeated and their movements stopped temporarily during the 1st century BC due to the rise of the Dacian kingdom of Burebista, they resumed after the collapse of his kingdom following his assassination and in 16 BC. Lucius Tarius Rufus had to repel a Sarmatian attack on Thracia and Macedonia, while further attacks around 10 BC and 2 BC were defeated by Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus.
Meanwhile, other Sarmatian tribes, possibly the Aorsi, sent ambassadors to the Roman emperor Augustus, who tried to establish a diplomatic accommodation with them. During the 1st century AD, the Siraces and Aorsi, who were mutually hostile, participated in the Roman–Bosporan War on opposite sides: the Siraces and their king Zorsines allied with Mithridates III against his half-brother Cotys I, who was allied with Rome and the Aorsi. With the defeat of Mithridates, the Siraces were also routed and lost rulership over most of their lands. Between 50 and 60 AD, the Alans had appeared in the foothills of the Caucasus, from where they attacked the Caucasus and Transcaucasus areas and the Parthian Empire. During the 1st century AD, the Alans expanded across the Volga to the west, absorbing part of the Aorsi and displacing the rest, and pressure from the Alans forced the Iazyges and Roxolani to continue attacking the Roman Empire from across the Danube. During the 1st century AD, two Sarmatian rulers from the steppe named Pharzoios and Inismeōs were minting coins in Pontic Olbia.