Scythia Sentence Examples

In the Black Sea they exploited the shores of Pontus and Scythia, whose products they exchanged for textiles spun from the wool of their own country.

In Asia they held Asia Minor and Syria, had sent expeditions into Arabia, and were acquainted with the more distant countries formerly invaded by Alexander, including Persia, Scythia, Bactria and India.

With the disappearance of the Scythae as an ethnic and political entity, the name of Scythia gives place in its original seat to that of Sarmatia, and is artificially applied by geographers, on the one hand, to the Dobrudzha, the lesser Scythia of Strabo, where it remained in official use until Byzantine times; on the other, to the unknown regions of northern Asia, the Eastern Scythia of Strabo, the "Scythia intra et extra Imaum" of Ptolemy; but throughout classical literature Scythia generally meant all regions to the north and north-east of the Black Sea, and a Scythian (Scythes) any barbarian coming from those parts.

In western Scythia, starting from Olbia and going northwards, we have Callippidae on the lower Hypanis (Bug), Alazones where the Tyras (Dniester) and Hypanis come near each other in their middle courses, and Aroteres ("Ploughmen") above them.

To the south of Scythia the Crimean mountains were inhabited by a non-Sythic race, the Tauri.

To sum up the history of Scythia, the oldest inhabitants of whom we hear in Scythia were the Cimmerii; the nature of the country makes it probable that some of them were nomads, while others no doubt tilled some land in the river valleys and in the Crimea, where they left their name to ferries, earthworks and the Cimmerian Bosporus.

About 512 B.C. Darius, having conquered Thrace, made an invasion bf Scythia, which, according to the account of Herodotus, he crossed as far as the Oarus, a river identified with the Volga, burned the town of Gelonus and returned in sixty days.

Meanwhile Scythia had become the land of the Sarmatae (q.v.).

Like the Scyths they were pressed towards the west by yet newer swarms, and with the coming of the Huns Scythia enters upon a new cycle, though still keeping its old name in the Byzantine historians.

In 344, or one of the following years, the Macedonian arms were carried across Epirus to the Adriatic. In 342 Philip led a great expedition north "comparable to nothing in antiquity since Darius' famous march to Scythia."

He undertook the long and perilous journey from Sardis to the Persian capital Susa, visited Babylon, Colchis, and the western shores of the Black Sea as far as the estuary of the Dnieper; he travelled in Scythia and in Thrace, visited Zante and Magna Graecia, explored the antiquities of Tyre, coasted along the shores of Palestine, saw Gaza, and made a long stay in Egypt.

The stories that he had heard in Egypt of Sesostris may then have stimulated him to make voyages from Samos to Colchis, Scythia and Thrace.

In tracing the growth of Persia from a petty subject kingdom to a vast dominant empire, he has occasion to set out the histories of Lydia, Media, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Scythia, Thrace, and to describe the countries and the peoples inhabiting them, their natural productions, climate, geographical position, monuments, &c.; while, in noting the contemporaneous changes in Greece, he is led to tell of the various migrations of the Greek race, their colonies, commerce, progress in the arts, revolutions, internal struggles, wars with one another, legislation, religious tenets and the like.

In Scythia an old iron sword served as the symbol of the god, to which yearly sacrifices of cattle and horses were made, and in earlier times (as apparently also at Sparta) human victims, selected from prisoners of war, were offered.

This happened in 76 B.C. Kashgar does not appear to have been known in the West at this time but Ptolemy speaks of Scythia beyond the Imaus, which is in a Kasia Regio, possibly exhibiting the name whence Kashgar and Kashgaria (often applied to the district) are formed.

Moving westward across Scythia, and hence called Metanastae, they were on the lower Danube by the time of Ovid, and about A.D.

The barrows which cover the plains of ancient Scythia attest the truth of this description.

As a writer on field sports Xenophon was followed by Arrian, who in his Cynegeticus, in avowed dependence on his predecessor, seeks to supplement such deficiencies in the earlier treatise as arose from its author's unacquaintance with the dogs of Gaul and the horses of Scythia and Libya.

The statement that he proceeded along the coasts of Europe "from Gades to the Tanais" is evidently based upon the supposition that this would be a simple and direct course along the northern shores of Germany and Scythia - Polybius himself, in common with the other Greek geographers till a much later period, being ignorant of the projection of the Danish or Cimbric peninsula, and the circumnavigation that it involved - of all which no trace is found in the extant notices of Pytheas.

One horde settled under Roman protection in Little Scythia (the Dobrudzha), others in Dacia Ripensis (on the confines of Servia and Bulgaria) or on the southern borders of Pannonia.

According to Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus (who calls him Sesoosis) and Strabo, he conquered the whole world, even Scythia and Ethiopia, divided Egypt into administrative districts or nomes, was a great law-giver, and introduced a system of caste and the worship of Serapis.

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 Scythia, the latter name being transferred to regions farther east.

Under their sixth king Filimer they migrated into Scythia and settled in a district which they called Oium.

From this centre they made numerous warlike excursions - to Scythia, Thrace, the coasts of Asia Minor and the islands of the Aegean, even penetrating to Arabia, Syria and Egypt.

Tradition relates that he preached in Asia Minor and in Scythia, along the Black Sea as far as the Volga.

The Milesians came primarily from Scythia and after sojourning for some time in Egypt, Crete and in Scythia again, they finally arrived in Spain.

In the reign of Eremon the Picts are stated to have arrived in Ireland, coming from Scythia.

It will have been observed that Scythia had a peculiar attraction for medieval Irish chroniclers on account of its resemblance to the name Scotti, Scots.

He was afterwards banished into Scythia, where he worked successfully among the Goths, not living to see the destruction of his labours by Athanaric. The Audaeans celebrated the feast of Easter on the same day as the Jewish Passover, and they were also charged with attributing to the Deity a human shape, an opinion which they appear to have founded on Genesis i.

They are skilled artisans, bankers and merchants, and are remarkable for their industry, their quick intelligence, their aptitude for business, and for that enterprising spirit which led their ancestors, in Roman times, to trade with Scythia, China and India.

Even Hecataeus of Miletus (549-472 B.C.), the author of a Periodos or description of the earth, of whom Herodotus borrowed the terse saying that Egypt was the gift of the Nile, retained this circular shape and circumfluent ocean when producing his map of the world, although he had at his disposal the results of the voyage of Scylax of Caryanda from the Indus to the Red Sea, of Darius' campaign in Scythia (513), the information to be gathered among the merchants from all parts of the world who frequented an emporium like Miletus, and what he had learned in the course of his own extensive travels.

On the 28th of May 585, during a battle on the Halys between him and Cyaxares, king of Media, an eclipse of the sun took place; hostilities were suspended, peace concluded, and the Halys fixed as the boundary between the two kingdoms. Alyattes drove the Cimmerii (see Scythia) from Asia, subdued the Carians, and took several Ionian cities (Smyrna, Colophon).

A second Cimmerian invasion almost destroyed the rising kingdom, but the invaders were expelled at last by Alyattes, 617 B.C. (see Scythia).

One of the earliest movements after this discovery was probably that of the Achaeans of Homer, who about 1450 B.C. invaded Greece (see Achaeans), bringing with them the use of iron and brooches, the practice of cremating the dead, and the style of ornament known as Geometric. Later the Cimmerians (see Scythia and Cimmerii) passed down from the Cimbric Chersonese, doubtless following the amber routes, and then turned east along the Danube, some of their tribes, e.g.

The first event in the history of Ionia of which we have any trustworthy account is the inroad of the Ciinmerii (see Scythia), who ravaged a great part of Asia Minor, including Lydia, and sacked Magnesia on the Maeander, but were foiled in their attack upon Ephesus.