Scythian Sentence Examples

Tiridates, who was proclaimed king, could no longer maintain himself, because he appeared to be a vassal of the Romans; Artabanus returned from Hyrcania with a strong army of Scythian (Dahan) auxiliaries, and was again acknowledged by the Parthians.

The most famous Arsaces was the chief of the Parni, one of the nomadic Scythian or Dahan tribes in the desert east of the Caspian Sea.

This double identification enabled Cassiodorus to bring the favoured race into line with the peoples of classical antiquity, to interweave with their history stories about Hercules and the Amazons, to make them invade Egypt, to claim for them a share in the wisdom of the semi-mythical Scythian philosopher Zamolxis.

They probably are aborigines fundamentally, with a mixture of what are now called the Scythian tribes, which at a very early time overran India.

The Scythian nomads became the ruling race; they were invested with large landed property, and formed the council of the king, who appointed the successor.

But the Arsacid kingdom never was a truly national state; with the Scythian and Parthian elements were united some elements of Greek civilization.

Herodotus mentions it as the seat of the Graeco-Scythian Alazones and the Scythian Neuri, who were followed by the Dacians and the Getae.

The eastern provinces of Iran went in 240 or thereabouts, when the Greek Diodotus made himself an independent king in Bactria(q.v.) and Sogdiana, and Tiridates, brother of Arsaces, a " Scythian " chieftain, conquered Parthia (so Arrian, but see Parthia).

There were also public slaves; of these some belonged to temples, to which they were presented as offerings, amongst them being the courtesans who acted as hieroduli at Corinth and at Eryx in Sicily; others were appropriated to the service of the magistrates or to public works; there were at Athens 1200 Scythian archers for the police of the city; slaves served, too, in the fleets, and were employed in the armies, - commonly as workmen, and exceptionally as soldiers.

The circumstances of his minority are not recorded, nor is anything related of the Scythian inroads which occurred in the latter half of the 7th century B.C., although some passages in the books of Jeremiah and Zephaniah are supposed to refer to the events.

By taking into his personal service a body of Alani, and appearing in public in the dress of a Scythian warrior, he aroused the contempt and resentment of his Roman troops.

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.

The settled Scythians would be the remains of this Iranian population, or the different tribes of them may have been connected with their neighbours beyond Scythian dominion - Thracian Getae and Arimaspi, Slavonic Neuri, Finnish Androphagi and such like.

If the Scyths came out of upper Asia, the Scythian colonists beyond the Iyrcae might be a division which had remained nearer the homeland, but in dealing with nomads we can suppose such a return as that of the Calmucks (Kalmuks) in the 18th century.

The Scythian pantheon is not distinctive, and can be paralleled among the Tatars and among the Iranians.

The greater part of its body is covered by a pattern of acanthus leaves, but on the shoulder is a frieze showing nomads breaking in wild mares, our chief authority for Scythian costume.

This latter had three wives, a Greek woman from Istrus, Opoea a Scythian, and a Thracian daughter to the great chief Teres.

Henceforward the name "Scythian" is purely geographical.

The Scythian king of Ecbatana, the Cyaxares of the Greeks, came to the help of the Babylonians.

Nineveh was captured and destroyed by the Scythian army, along with those cities of northern Babylonia which had sided with Babylonia, and the Assyrian empire was at an end.

Towards the end of the 2nd century B.C. we find the Tauri dependent allies of the Scythian king Scilurus, who from their harbour of Symbolon Portus or Palacium (Balaclava) harassed Chersonese.

See Vincent Smith, Early History of India (1908); Hoernle and Stark, History of India (1905); Rapson, Indian Coins (1898); Gardner, Coins of Greek and Scythian Kings in India (1886); Franke, Beitrage aus Chinesischen Quellen zur Kenntnis der Tiirkvolker und.

His simple and forcible mode of expressing himself gave birth to the proverbial expression "Scythian eloquence," but his epigrams are as unauthentic as the letters which are often attributed to him.

His Scythian travels are thought to have taken place prior to 450 B.C.

Franke, Beitrage aus chinesischen Quellen zur Kenntnis der Tiirkvolker and Skythen (1904); P. Gardner, Coins of Greek and Scythian Kings in India (1886); and various articles by Vincent Smith, Fleet, Cunningham, A Stein, Sylvain Levi and others in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Journal asiatique, Indian Antiquary, Zeitsch.

The Jats are agriculturists variously described as Scythian immigrants and as descendants of Rajputs who immigrated to the Punjab from central India.

At the instance of the emperor Justinian he adopted the proposition unus de Trinitate passus est in carne as a test of the orthodoxy of certain Scythian monks accused of Nestorian tendencies.

As a frontier province, Moesia was strengthened by stations and fortresses erected along the southern bank of the Danube, and a wall was built from Axiopolis to Tomi as a protection against Scythian and Sarmatian inroads.

He says of it that it is not Scythian, but has Scythian customs. Every member of it, being a wizard, becomes a wolf once a year.

Then " Scythian " peoples from central Asia, Sakas and Yue-chi, having conquered Bactria, gradually squeezed within ever-narrowing limits the Greek power in India.

India, the sceptical observe, has yielded no Greek inscription, except, of course, on the coins of the Greek kings and their Scythian rivals and successors.

The Assyrians did not move against him, but a great Scythian horde, destroying all before it in its southward advance, is said by Herodotus to have been turned back by presents and entreaties.

An unusual find was a Scythian royal grave in a tumulus at Solokha, in 1913.

There is a general correspondence between classical and Chinese accounts of the time when Bactria was overrun by Scythian invaders.

The hero, a young Scythian descended from the famous philosopher Anacharsis, is supposed to repair to Greece for instruction in his early youth, and after making the tour of her republics, colonies and islands, to return to his native country and write this book in his old age, after the Macedonian hero had overturned the Persian empire.

In 315 he joined Cassander, Ptolemy and Seleucus against Antigonus, who, however, diverted his attention by stirring up Thracian and Scythian tribes against him.

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.

Hippocrates (De Aere, &c., 24) classes them as Scythian.

In former times the second language has often been called Scythian, Turanian or Median; but we now know from numerous inscriptions of Susa that it is the language of Elam which was spoken in Susa, the capital of the Persian empire.

Further development was arrested by the Scythian invasion described by Herodotus.

On the lower Etymander, the Sacae had established themselves obviously on the inroad of the Scythian tribesand after them the country was named Sacastene (now Sejistan, Seistan).

It was bound to protect itself ArSSCId against Scythian aggression in the East and Empire.

So the rival faction brought out another .Arsacid, resident among the Scythian nomads, Artabanus II., who easily expelled Vononesonly to create a host of enemies by his brutal cruelty, and to call forth fresh disorders.

For the A hlee- defence of these provinces the mounted archers, who formed the basis of the army, possessed adequate strength; and though the Scythian nomads from the east, or the Romans from the west, might occasionally penetrate deep into the country, they never succeeded in maintaining their position.

They were supposed to be one-eyed (hence their Scythian name), and to steal gold from the griffins that guarded it.

Drained of men and resources it was no longer able to make head against the Cimmerian and Scythian hordes who now poured over western Asia.

He was slain by a Scythian Saumacus who led a rebellion against him.

One of them, close to the town, contained, along with other Scythian antiquities, the well-known precious vase representing the capture of wild horses.

Beyond, once more beyond, spreads the Scythian steppe, not the dead level of Lombardy, but an expanse of long low modulations, which would be reckoned hills in our home counties, seamed by long shining ribbons, which mark the courses of the tributaries of the Terek..

He was a Scythian by birth, and did not come to Rome till after 496; his learning was considerable for his times, and to him we owe the employment of the Christian era and a new way of reckoning Easter.

Thyrsi is supposed to be a Scythian form of Trausoi (Trausi), a Thracian tribe mentioned by Stephanus of Byzantium.

Scythian envoys sought her aid to stem the invasion of Darius; to her the Greeks of Asia Minor appealed to withstand the Persian advance and to aid the Ionian revolt; Plataea asked for her protection; Megara acknowledged her supremacy; and at the time of the Persian invasion under Xerxes no state questioned her right to lead the Greek forces on land and sea.

A fleece being fashioned into a garment is shown on a Scythian chief's gold regalia of around 500 B.C. (left ).

They adopted the Iranian religion of Zoroaster (in the royal town Asaak an eternal fire was maintained), and " their language was a mixture of Scythian and Median " (i.e., Iranian).

Now the Sarmatae are represented as half-caste Scyths speaking a corrupt variety of Scythian.

We can make a list of Scythian kings - Spargapeithes, Lycus, Gnurus, Saulius (whose brother, the famous Anacharsis, travelled over all the world in search of wisdom, was reckoned a sage among the Greeks and was slain among his own people because they did not like his foreign ways), and Idanthyrsus, the head king at the time of Darius, probably the father of Ariapeithes.

Here the Graeco-Bactrian and Graeco-Indian kingdoms held their own, till, in 139 B.C., they succumbed before the invading Mongolian and Scythian tribes (see BACTRIA and works quoted there).

A fleece being fashioned into a garment is shown on a Scythian chief 's gold regalia of around 500 B.C. (left).