Socio-Political Terminology for Pre-State Societies in Antiquity: Sarmatian Rulers between History, Anthropology, and Archaeology
скачать Автор: Evgeny V. Vdovchenkov - подписаться на статьи автора
Журнал: Social Evolution & History. Volume 24, Number 2 / September 2025 - подписаться на статьи журнала
DOI: https://doi.org/10.30884/seh/2025.02.09
Evgeny V. Vdovchenkov
Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
The purpose of the study is to compare the political terminology of ancient authors, archaeological realities and modern scientific terminology using the example of the Sarmatians of the second century BC – second century AD.
There is a point of view about the non-terminological nature of ancient authors, that the concepts they use are rather vague. Nevertheless, this information is very valuable and needs verification in any case. The array of terminology was taken from Strabo as a sample. Strabo is known for his good knowledge of political diversity, and a sober and realistic approach to various management practices. It is possible to trace the peculiarities of the use of political terms in Strabo's Geography.
The following patterns are revealed in Strabo's political terminology. The most general term for a ruler is ‘hegemon’ (ἡγεμών), used for rulers at various levels, including representatives of the Roman administration.
The main term for a legitimate ruler-monarch is ‘basileus’ (βασιλεύς), used for the ancient kings of Rome and Greece, Hellenistic monarchs, kings of Persia, and a number of barbarian rulers.
Dynasts in most cases are rulers of middle rank, lower than basileoi. It is necessary to pay attention to expressions ‘βασιλέων καὶ δυναστῶν’ (Strabo I, 2, 32, 26; XVI, 1, 11, 33), ‘καὶ βασιλεῖς καὶ δὲ καὶ δυνάσται δεκαρχίαι’ (Strabo XVII, 3, 25, 39). Barbarian leaders are usually called hegemons, dynasts, and sometimes kings.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL MATERIALS
In the Northern Black Sea region, in the area from the Lower Volga region to the Carpathians, in the second–first centuries BC, we find burials united under the name of the Early Sarmatian culture. At this time, the location of the burial mounds is fixed over time to the west – from the Lower Volga region and the Don region to the Dnieper and Tavria steppes, and then further to the northwestern Black Sea region at the turn of the era.
In the first – middle second centuries ADб the Early Sarmatian culture was replaced by the Middle Sarmatian culture, whose epicenter was most likely the Don-Volga interfluve.
What happened in the steppe zone at the turn of the era, during the transition from one epoch – the Early Sarmatian – to another? This was a change from the Early Sarmatian culture to the Middle Sarmatian; an increase in the number of rich burials and the appearance of elite burials of ‘royal’ rank; the emergence of heavy cataphract cavalry in the steppe zone and a change in nomadic tactics; the fixation of tamgas – signs of family property. There is also a closer interaction between nomads and the settled world. All this indicates an increase in complexity of nomadic society and growing importance of rulers. These changes were largely initiated by migration of nomads from the east, primarily the Alans.
Were these changes reflected in the political terminology of ancient authors?
SOCIO-POLITICAL TERMINOLOGY OF THE EARLY SARMATIAN ERA (2nd –1st CENTURIES BC)
At the end of the third century BC, king (βασιλεύς) Saitafarn and his subordinates σκηπτοῦχος from the Saya people, appeared in the vicinity of Olbia. They extorted gifts and tribute from the city's population (Decree in honor of Protogenes. IOSPE I, 32).
The European ruler of the Sarmatians, Gatal, acted as the guarantor for the treaty of Asia Minor rulers in 179 BC, Polybius used the term ‘δυνάσται’ (Polyb. Hyst. XXV, 2, 13).
Polyaen mentions, the wife of Medosacc, the king of the Sarmatians in the Northern Black Sea region for the presumably first half of the second century BC, ‘᾿Αμάγη γυνὴ Μηδοσάκκου βασιλέως Σαρματῶν’ (Polyaen. Strateg. VIII, 56).
Strabo has evidence of the Roxolani's participation in the Crimean Scythian war against Mithridates Eupator at the end of the second century BC (Strabo VII, 3, 17). The Roxolani fought under the leadership of Tasius (ἡγεμόνα Τάσιον) (Strabo VII, 3, 17, 24).
Strabo reports that Abeak, king of the Siraks, provided 20,000 hor-semen when Pharnaces owned the Bosporus, while Spadin, king of the Aorsi, provided 200,000 horsemen (Strabo XI, 5, 8). The Aorsi were the population of Lower Don, the Siraks were nomads on the right bank of the Kuban. This message is from the middle of the first century BC, and it uses the term ‘βασιλεύς’.
SOCIO-POLITICAL TERMINOLOGY OF THE MIDDLE SAR-MATIAN EPOCH (1st – MIDDLE OF THE 2nd CENTURY A.D.)
The ‘Res Gestae Divi Augusti’ mentions the kings of the Sarmatians who lived on both banks of the Tanais and asked Augustus for friendship: ‘Sarmatarum ... reges’ (Imp. August. XXXI) (the beginning of the first century A.D.).
Tacitus mentions the participation of the Bosporan king Mithridates VII in the war in the 40s of the first century AD. The Siracs were led by king Zorsin (Tac. Ann. XII, 15: Zorsines Siracorum rex) and the Aorsi were led by rex Eunon (Tac. Ann., XII, 19). It is important to note that Zorsin's desire to maintain the kingdom inherited from his father (Tac. Ann. XII, 17) is an important evidence of the hereditary nature of power among the Siraks in this case.
Tacitus also mentions in Eunon's letter the ‘kings of great nations’ (magnarum nationum reges), who refer to both Eunon himself and the loser of the war, and the kingdom of Mithridates VII (Ann. XII, 19).
The well-known epitaph of Plautius Silvanus tells about the events in the year 62 AD in the Northwestern Black Sea region. According to the well-founded opinion of a number of researchers, the opponents of Plautius Silvanus – ‘kings unknown to the Roman people or hostile to them’ ‘ignotos ante aut infensos p(opulo) R(omano) reges’ (CIL, XIV, 3608) were the Alans. The same inscription mentions the ‘kings of Bastarnae and Roxolani’ (regibus Bastarnarum et / Rhoxolanorum).
The inscription ‘Rasparaganus Rex Roxolanorum’ (CIL V, 32) (from the city of Pola, Istria) dates back to the beginning of the second century AD and refers to the king of the Roxolani, Publius Elias Rasparagan.
Sometimes he is considered to be the same king, whom Emperor Hadrian was in contact with: ‘With the king of the Roxolans (cum rege Roxolanorum), who complained about a decrease in annual payments, he made peace after reviewing the case’ (SHA. V. Adr. VI, 8).
The Mangup Decree, which researchers date to the middle of the first century AD and associate with Olbia, mentions ‘great kings of Aorsia’ (βασιλέας) (Sidorenko 1996: 36–37). Researchers usually mean by this ‘Aorsia’ the territory in the northwestern Black Sea region in the second half of the first century AD.
In the Pantikapaion encomium of the Bosporan statesman and military figure of the time Sauromat I (according to Sergey Saprykin), the kings of the Alans in the Crimea are mentioned: ‘and to the kings of the Alans (και` τοις 'Αλανων βασιλευσιν) he considered it necessary to determine (a fair punishment?) for (their guilt?)’ (Saprykin and Parfenov 2012: 169). These Alans are considered as the Don Alans at the end of the first century AD.
In addition to kings, other terms are mentioned in the sources from this period. Tacitus, in his Historia, when describing the Roxolani raid in the winter of 67–68 AD, mentions ‘the leaders and all the nobility’ – principes and nobilissimi (Tac. Hist. I, 79, 1–4), which is an important evidence of separations among the elite of the Roksolans.
At about the same time, describing the Sarmatians on the Middle Danube, Tacitus mentions ‘the leaders of the Sarmatian Iazyges (principes Sarmatarum Iazugum), who ruled the local tribes’ (Tac. Hist. III, 5).
The skeptouchos – sceptuchi (who are usually understood as second-rank leaders) are also known from Tacitus' description of the Sar-matian raid on Transcaucasia in 35 AD (Tac. Ann. VI. 33).
CONCLUSIONS
The specificity of archaeological material allows us to reconstruct general principles of political organization and its structural features. Two alternative models can be distinguished for nomads: the homoarchic principle of organization of society and the heterarchic one. Heterarchy is the coexistence of different social hierarchies and ranks, none of which is dominant, and it is represented by nomads. Both hierarchy and homoarchy have been proposed as antonyms to the concept of heterarchy. In this case, this discrepancy is not fundamental, and these concepts can be used interchangeably.
Of course, the concentration of resources and labor costs come to the fore when determining the features of a hierarchical model. Although, of course, the scale of Sarmatian mounds is not comparable to the classical Scythian mounds, but all the sizes of mounds are also important markers of the richest and most outstanding burials. The most important feature of this model is also the established elite subculture.
The presence of a hierarchical model is usually compared to chiefdom. Among anthropologists and archaeologists studying ancient societies, ‘chiefdom’ has gradually become a central concept that allows us to understand the ways of politogenesis. The idea that chiefdoms existed among the Sarmatians has already been considered and substantiated (Skripkin 2015: 76), and now the existence of chiefdoms among the Sarmatians is not disputed. An important circumstance is that chiefdom is not typical of all Sarmatian societies. This is compared to societies with a developed stratification, primarily with the population of the Middle Sarmatian culture (first – middle second century AD). In this respect, the Early Sarmatian culture is characterized by a greater poverty of burials, the absence of a pronounced elite subculture, and there are only a few rich burials from that time. Previously, we assumed that the people of the Early Sarmatian culture were more tribal in organization with egalitarian tendencies.
For the early Sarmatian era, we have five mentions of a ruler. There are three kings (Medosakk, Abeak, and Spadin) and two other titles for hegemon Tasiy and the dynast Gatal. Although Gatal is often referred to as a king in the literature, this is not the case.
We can fix nine mentions of kings for the Middle Sarmatian era – and this, in our opinion, is obvious evidence of increased political activity of the Sarmatians, as well as greater subjectivity (and these two phenomena are mutually conditioned). Archaeologically, these kings correspond to the regions where there were concentrations of elite monuments in the Lower Don region and the Northwestern Black Sea region in the Middle Sarmatian era. For these regions, at that time, we can assume the existence of a hierarchical (homoarchic) model and a form of polity as chiefdoms.
The mention of the βασιλεύς Saitafarn and the σκηπτοῦχος in the decree of Protogen raises a question. Whoever they were, during this period, there was no stable population in the northern Black Sea region. The third century BC was a time of systemic crisis and aridization when the steppe zone became deserted. It is unclear who king Saitafarn and the skeptouchos ruled.
There is also a significant difference between the nomadic burial mounds of the second–first centuries BC in the Lower Don region and those in the Kuban. There are richer burials in the Kuban region, and it is easier to reconstruct society with a king ruling based on archaeological evidence. The Don material is much poorer, with only 500 burials known, none of which are truly elite. Therefore, Strabo's reference to Spadin, the king of the Aorsi (who lived in the Don region), raises questions. In the Kuban area, it is easier to imagine the existence of a kingdom led by Abeak, the king of the Siraks.
This problem – the discrepancy between the data of ancient tradition and archeology – requires a solution. And the answer, perhaps, lies precisely in the phenomenon of pseudo-hierarchy among the early nomads. A pseudo–hierarchy is a situation where titles do not correspond to the real state of affairs.
REFERENCES
Saprykin, S. Yu., Parfenov, V. N. 2012. The encomium of Panticapaeum: Domitian or Commodus? Vestnik drevnei istorii 1: 163–182. Original in Russian (Сапрыкин, С. Ю., Парфенов, В. Н. ΚΑΙΣΑΡ Ο ΤΟΤΕ энкомия из Пантикапея: Домициан или Коммод? Вестник древней истории. № 1. С. 163–182).
Sidorenko, V. A. 1996. A Fragment of a Decree of the Roman Period from the Medieval Basilica near Mangup. Materials on archeology, history and ethnography of Tavria V: 35–59. Original in Russian (Сидоренко, В. А. Фрагмент декрета римского времени из средневековой базилики под Мангупом. Материалы по археологии, истории и этнографии Таврии. Вып. V. С. 35–59).
Skripkin, A. S. 2015. On the political organization of the Sarmatians at the turn of the Era. Stratum plus 4: 73–84. Original in Russian (Скрипкин, А. С. О политической организации сарматов на рубеже эр. Stratum plus. № 4. C. 73–84).
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