The Scythian: His Rise and Fall

James William Johnson

Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 20, No. 2. (Apr., 1959), pp. 250-257.

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 T H E SCYTHIAN: HIS RISE AND FALL

I n the contemporary world of ideas, the ancient race called Scythians

holds virtually no place in the popular imagination. Indeed, even among
historians, limited by the modern historiographical insistence on the docu-
mented ' facts,' the Scythians are frequently ignored altogether or relegated
to appendices and footnotes with the unicorn, Prester John, and At1antis.l
Such connotations as the Scythians may have today are limited largely to a
reference to their cannibalism in King Lear (I.i.118), their wrought gold
fibulae in museums, and the tangential knowledge which may come from
reading histories of Persia and Greece. These ideological vestiges are al-
most the sole remains of a flourishing tradition which lasted from, roughly,
the ninth century B.C. until the nineteenth century A.D.; and the very
historiographical genre which in the modern era has practically eliminated
the Scythian myth was the agency through which that tradition was formu-
lated and perpetuated for 2300 years.
I n actuality, the Scythians, an Indo-European tribe, are believed to
have migrated from Central Asia along with their cousins-germane, the
Sarmatians, into Northern Turkestan and the broader Caspian area in such
quantities that by 700 B.C. they held the territory from Rumania and
Hungary in the west to Afghanistan in the east. Always nomadic, the
Scythian herdsmen and hunters eventually came into contact with the
Greeks in Asia Minor, who were the first to record in any detail the ex-
istence of the barbarians t o the north. Since the Scythians were effective
horsemen, probably being the first people t o ride horseback or to wear
trousers, they were much in demand as mercenaries by the militaristic rulers
of ancient kssyria and Persia, though the Scythian nation as a whole avoided
communication with the Mediterranean world as much as p ~ s s i b l e . ~No
central government ever evolved, the Scythian political system being a loose
alliance of tribes much in the manner of the American Indian; and, like the
Indian, the Scythian lived in a portable house, practiced social communism,
used tomahawks, and scalped his enemies. I n the first or second century
B.C., some centuries after they had been afforded a place in history by
Heredotus and his successors, the Scythians were over-run and assimilated
by the Sarmatians; but the Hellenic world continued t o call the hybrid na-
tion ' Scythians ' or ' Getae,' the latter being the usual appellation after the
third century A.D.3
Such are the 'facts ' which the twentieth-century historian considers
valid enough to give credence to; but these are only fragments of a richly
developed iaropla of the Scythians which underwent many interesting and
lThe most complete study of the Scythians is that of Tamara T. Rice, T h e
Scythians, in Ancient People and Places, ed. Dr. Glyn Daniel (London, 1957).
Scythians were used as late as 217 A.D. as body-guards for the Roman em-
perors. Cf. Dio Cassius, R o m a n History, LXXIX Frag., trans. H. B. Foster, Leob
Classics (London, 1914).
See William LI. LlcGovern, Tlze Early Empires of Central Asia (Chapel Hill,
1939), 35-59, et passim.
 THE SCTTHIAN: HIS RISE AND FALL 251
significant permutations in its millenia of popularity. The modern histori-
ographer, circumscribed by his methodology, may feel himself consigned to
these barest of details; but the student of ideas feels less inclined to write
off as " a thing of contempt, a thing for vulgar minds: either popular tale-
telling [or] aimless antiquarianism," the complex of themes which grew up
around the Scythians in succeeding ages, making them all things to all men.'
Though the allusively fertile name of the Scythian was repeatedly called
upon by writers from Homer to Rousseau, the motive and the intended con-
notation were by no means standardized. Only the totemic nature of the
Scythian remained unchanged; and though his metamorphosis may not add
to a final understanding of what he was historically, a tracing of it does
serve to illuminate the character of the ages which produced each variant.
The earliest references to the Scythian peoples are brief, allusive phrases
in Homer and Hesiod which simply record the existence of certain Indo-
European sub-tribes. I n the Iliad (XIII.l-15), Homer transforms a basic
concept of the geographical location of the nomads into a grand poetic pic-
ture of Zeus gazing northward a t the vast sweep of the Balkan and Caspian
area, his cosmic eye roving from the west (Thrace) to the far east (land of
the Abioi, or Turkestan). There is no physical description of the topogra-
phy; rather it is designated as the habitation of tribes legendary t o the
Greeks through tales of itinerant merchants and settlers to the north.
Through the use of the attributive epithet, Homer manages to characterize
the Scythians impartially: they are " horsemen . . . that fight in close com-
bat," and who " drink the milk of mares." He then reflects a value judg-
ment by declaring that they are among " t h e most righteous of men."
Hesiod similarly documents the presence of the northern tribe, noting that
their founder discovered how t o smelt bronze and that the people themselves
are notable for being mare- milker^.^ ( I t should be pointed out that the
name ' Hippemolgi ' itself means ' mare-milkers.') The fragmentary
epithets of the two mythic poets are thus the first evidence of a literary con-
cern with the tangential Scythians.
I n Herodotus, the information and judgments regarding the Scythian
tribes of Sacae, Massagetae, Cimmerians, and Getae are definitively col-
lected: his body of material is as comprehensive as expanded mercantile
contacts and Persian knowledge of the Scythians could make it.7 Herodotus
gives the most popular accounts of the origins of the Scythians from Her-
cules or from the earth itself. H e repeats the prevalent tales about their
history and cus.toms, setting forth stories of their virtues beside tales of re-
puted cannibalism. H e carefully catalogues facts about their social and
military behavior and various conjectures about these. In short, he an-
4 R . N. Stromberg, " History in the Eighteenth Century," this Journal, XI1
(1951), 295-304.
5 Homer, Iliad, XIII.1-15, trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb Classics (London, 1924-25).
GHesiod, Zdaean Dactyls, 1.16-75, in Homeric Hymns and Homerica, trans.
H. G. Evelyn-White, Loeb Classics (London, 1926).
7 Herodotus, Histories, IV.19-47, trans. A. D. Godley, Loeb Classics (London,
1920).
252 JAMES WILLIAM JOHNSON

thologizes all known opinion about the Scythians much as Hippocrates was
to do within the narrower bounds of their medical history. Though Hip-
pocrates was interested in the climate and customs of Scythia, he was most
concerned with how the northern cold and a nomadic life affected the human
body. His material, though impartial, was focused on the cold-moist quali-
ties of the Scythian physique, their lack of sex drive, their tendency to gout,
and similar matters which he reported with clinic o b j e c t i ~ i t y . ~With
Herodotus and Hippocrates, therefore, the accumulated early lore of the
Scythians found its fullest and most impartial presentation.
The casting of the Scythian in the r6le of Noble Savage was a phenome-
non which began in the fourth century B.C. and lasted well until the end
of the eighteenth century A.D.9 The father of the exemplary concept was
Ephorus (ca. 325 B.C.), who had reputedly visited the Scythians and who
eulogized them as being simple, just, generous, frugal, and highly virtuous.
Aeschylus implemented the belief that the northern nomads-a " most
righteous," " well ordered," hospitable people-were morally superior to the
wealthy, politically advanced Greeks. Other dramatists such as Antiphanes
and Sophocles, and the early geographers, like the Pseudo-Scymnus, repeated
the Scythian legend; and in the first century B.C., Strabo expanded and
formalized the Noble Savage r61e of the Scythians, basing his treatise on
Ephorus:
. . . for we regard the Scythians the most straightforward of men and the
least prone to mischief, as also far more frugal and independent of others
than we are. And yet our [Greek] mode of life has spread its changes for
the worse to almost all peoples . . . . I 0
Once Strabo had so condemned the Hellenes for their avarice, luxury, and
degeneracy by didactically citing the virtuous Scythians as the apotheosis
of human society, the way was cleared for a host of Graeco-Roman re-
formers to reduce his panegyric into a truism. I n the first century B.C., the
Pseudo-Anacharsis appeared, purporting to be the wisdom of a legendary
Scythian sage. Its subsequent absorption by Cicero foreshadowed the utili-
zation of the Scythian Noble Savage concept by a succession of writers.ll
Horace was one of the foremost admirers of the Scythian way of life,
asserting that " there it is wrong to sin, and the penalty is death." Scythian
sexual apathy he interpreted as chastity and he cited as a practical ideal the
supposed paternal respect of the Scythians.12 Virgil drew a somewhat more
austere but equally flattering picture. To him, the Scythians were a hardy,
congenial breed, making the most of adverse climatic conditions and living
SHippocrates, Airs, Waters, Places, XVII-XXII, in Works, trans. W. H. S.
Jones, Loeb Classics (London, 1923).
9This aspect of the Scythian myth has been treated by A. 0 . Lovejoy and G.
Boas, A Documentary History of Primitivism and Related Ideas (Baltimore, 1935),
I, 288ff.
10 Strabo, Geography, VII.3.7, trans. H. L. Jones, Loeb Classics (London, 1924).
11 See Lovejoy and Boas, 290.
l%orace, Odes, 111.24.1-32, trans. C. E. Bennett, Loeb Classics (London, 1939).
 THE SCYTHIAN: HIS RISE AND FALL 253

a life of enviable simplicity.13 Lucian, in his Toxaris, put into the mouth
of a Scythian disputant a number of improving maxims concerning friend-
ship.14 And as late as the time of Diogenes Laertius, the wise Anacharsis
was still being lauded as the epitome of natural wisdom and virtue.15
The chorus of praise was not without its dissenters, however. When
Ovid was exiled among the Scythians, unlike Ephorus he found them vastly
inferior to the civilized nations and judged them accordingly.16 Juvenal
characterized them as savage, raging people; li and their hardy, vigorous
life seemed something less than appealing to Florus, who wrote to the Em-
peror Hadrian:
Ego nolo Caesar esse,
Ambulare per Britannos,
Latitare per . . . ,
Scythias pati pruinas.ls
Dio Cassius branded them fierce drunkards.lg Athenaeus amassed an im-
posing array of ancient testimony to their cruelty and decline through lux-
urious practices.20 And Claudian, who knew the Scythians by another name
through their persistent attacks on the frontiers of Rome, called them the
" most infamous of all the children of the north." 21 It would appear t h a t
the Scythian's reputation as a Noble Savage was directly proportional t o his
distance from the centers of Hellenic civilization.
Even when he was still wandering in the remote areas beyond the Aegean
and his legendary qualities were most vigorously praised, however, the
Noble Savage was being bitterly attacked. The hypothetical characteristics
of the Scythians which made them an ideal to the Greeks and Romans were
essentially stoic (i.e., pagan) and therefore ceased to find favor with the
increasing numbers of Christians in the post-Augustan era. The worldly
nature of the morality inherent within the Noble Savage concept of the
Scythians made them suspect to the church fathers; moreover, a religion
depending on a personal faith in the divinity of Christ had no place for a
tribe of barbarians. The first attempts of the Catholic Church t o convert
Virgil, Georgics, 111.349-383, trans. H. R. Fairclough, Loeb Classics (London,
1916).
14 Lucian, Toxaris, trans. A. M. Harmon, Loeb Classics (London, 1936).
l5Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 1.101-105, trans. R. D.
Hicks (London, 1925).
16 Ovid, Tristia, 11.187 et seq., trans. A. L. Wheeler, Loeb Classics (London,
1924).
Juvenal, Satires, XV.125, trans. G. G. Ramsay, Loeb Classics (London, 1928).
See " Hadrian," XVI, in Scriptores Historiae Augustae, ed. David Magie, Loeb
Classics (London, 1928): " I don't want to be a Caesar,/Walk among the Britons,/
Lurk about among the . . .,/And endure the Scythian winters." Dio Cassius, LI.
20 Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists, XII.524, trans. C. B. Gulick, Loeb Classics
(London, 1933).
21 Claudian, Against Rufinus, 1.310-331, trans. Maurice Platnauer, Loeb Classics
(London, 1922).
254 JAMES WILLIAM JOHNSON

the heathen resulted in the slaughter of its missionaries to the Caspian; so

the combined efforts of the patristic writers were thrown against the Scythian
myth in an effort t o cast down the false
The precedent for a Christian distrust of the Scythians lay in an Hebraic
antipathy reflected in Josephus, who declared t h a t l 1 the Scythians delight
in murdering people and are little better than wild beasts." 23 I n the light
of the Scythian raids on Palestine in the seventh century B.C., his attitude
is quite understandable: the continued presence of Scythians in the city of
Beth Shean provided a kind of contact which effectively prevented the Jews
from sharing the early Graeco-Roman illusion of savage nobility.24 Though
the Jews eventually came to a more or less tolerant attitude toward the erst-
while savage, and though Saint Paul told the Colossians t h a t the love of
Christ encompassed " all," even " Barbarians and Scythians," subsequent
Christian writers showed themselves less forgiving.25 Tertullian maintained
that the Ignoble Savages were rude, barbarous, promiscuous, and cannibal-
is ti^.^^ Orosius insisted that it was human blood and not mare's milk which
the Scythians drank, and he condemned the tribe as hideously cruel and
bloodthirsty in all their actions.27 Jerome declared that they not only con-
sumed raw meat, but " they devour their slaughtered parents, kinsmen, neigh-
bors when they reach old age. . . . " 2s Saint Basil decried the Scythians'
lack of self-control and their cruelty; and Clement of Alexandria, like Dio
Cassius, wrote them off as drunkards.29 I n the fourth century, Isidore of
Seville, in his encyclopedia of ecclesiastic opinion, summarized the Catholic
view of the once admirable Savage: portentuosae a c truces carnibus h u m a n i s
e t eorupn sanguine ~ i v u n t . ~ O
Yet, as they were busily demolishing one myth about the Scythians, the
church fathers were creating another. Noble or not, the Scythian had obvi-
ously existed in the historic past, his presence having been attested to by
Jewish annals as well as classical historiography. Predicating the idea t h a t
a divinely inspired Hebrew racial history could account for all things, the
patristic writers found themselves in the position of having to explain the
origin of a race about which Jewish history had little t o say. Pompeius
Trogus initiated the question of the ultimate antiquity and source of the
22 Cf. George Boas, Essays on Primitivism and Related Ideas i n the Middle Ages
(Baltimore, 1948), 136 f .n.
23 Josephus, T h e Antiquity of the Jews, 1.123-124, trans. 11. St. J. Thackeray,
Loeb Classics (London, 1926).
24 2 Maccabees, XII.29. z5 Colossians, 111.11.
26 Tertullian, Apology, IX, trans. T . R. Glover, Loeb Classics (London, 1931).
See, also, the Adversus Marcionem, 1.1.
27 Paulus Orosius, Seven Books o f History, trans. Irving Raymond (New York,
1936), 49.
28 See Boas, 131. 29 For the patristic treatment of the Scythians as Noble
Savages, see Boas, 134-135.
30 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum XX Libri, XIV.iii.32, ed. W . M. Lindsay, 2
vols. (Oxford, 1911) : ". . . these monstrous butchers live on human flesh and blood."
 THE SCYTHIAN: HIS RISE AND FALL 255
Scythians in his conjectures as to which antedated the other, Scythia or
Egypt. Herodotus' theories of the beginnings of the Scythians were nulli-
fied by a n acceptance of the legendary universal flood among such Roman
historians as Trogus and Justin, who insisted t h a t the nlountainous region
of Scythia must have emerged first from the receding waters, ergo, the
Scythians were the most ancient race on earth.31 The inevitable conse-
quence of this juxtaposition of the Scythians and the Flood was the question
of how the Holy Scriptures could account for the pagan race in terms of the
facts in Genesis. The church fathers found an answer in a judicious combi-
nation of Biblical authority and Jewish tradition.
The Old Testament had conveniently provided Noah with three sons to
repeople the earth; and it further named the progeny of one of these, Japhet,
by giving him seven sons: Javan, hfagog, Gomer, et The references to
the land of hlagog in the Book of Ezekiel (Chaps. 38-39) were plainly to
the raids of the Scythians on Israel; and Josephus, in his H i s t o r i e s , made
the Scythians the sons of Magog. The church chronologers, in their efforts
to correlate Jewish and non-Jewish history, followed this precedent tliough
with emendations. Isidore of Seville repeated the traditional ascription of
the Scythians to Magog; 33 but Saint Ambrose attributed the Rhodians and
other sea-faring nations generally to Japhet without designating specific
paternity to his sons.34 And Eusebius, the foremost of the c1~ronologers,
claimed to be following the venerable tradition of Julius Africanus and
Tatian in naming the Scythians (or Goths) the sons of G ~ m e r . ~ Etymo- ;
logical similarity between ' Cinlnlerians ' (a Scythian tribe) and ' Gomerians '
('sons of Gomer ') eventually resulted in a wide-spread adoption of the
paternity of Gomer, though some objection to him was voiced through the
centuries by dissenter^.^^
The genealogical emphasis thus placed on Scythia by the patristic writers
prepared the way for a more substantial study of Scythian ethnic and cul-
tural development. Ovid had identified the Scythians with the Sarmatians
and their language ~ i ~ i Getic,
th which he himself learned. Tacitus discussed
the Sarnlatians' customs as being identical with the time-honored ones of
the Scythians, and he seemed to identify Germany with ' Sarmatia,' one
sub-tribe being the got one^.^^ Dio Chrysostom placed the tribes of Scyth-
ians and Getae in juxtaposition; and Claudian made the newly arrived
31 Justin, History of t h e TVorld, in Justin, Cornelius Nepos, and Eutropius, trans.
J. S.Watson (London, 1884), 16-19.
32 Genesis, X.2. 33 Isidore, IX.ii.27.
34 Saint Ambrose, D e N o e et Arca, XXXIII.124, in Opera Omnia, ed. J . P.
lligne, P a t . Lat.. vol. 14 (Paris, 1545).
35 Saint Jerome, Interpretatio Chronicae Eusebii Pamphili, VI-IX, in Opera
Omnia, ed. J . P. IIigne, P a t . Lat., vol. 27 (Paris, 1846).
36 The Venerable Bede, Opera Historica, 1.17, trans. J . E. King, Loeb Classics
(London, 1930).
37 Tacitus, Dialogues. Agricola. and Germonia, trans. TV. H . Fyfe (Oxford, 1908),
99, 116-118.
256 JAMES WILLIAM JOHNSON

Huns a tribe of Scythia, imputing t o them the customs and characteristics

of the G e t a e - S ~ y t h i a n s . ~Orosius
~ maintained t h a t the invading Getae
were the lineal descendants of the Scythians; and Isidore ascribed the same
ancestry to the Scythians and Gothse3@Procopius recorded the presence of
Massagetae in Attila's army and noted that both Goths and Huns came
from the area anciently known a s Scythiae40 The most complete early sum-
mary of the ancestry of the Goths was that of Jordanes in the sixth century,
which was based on a n earlier history by Cassiodorus. This anthology of
ethnic legends traced the Goths ultimately back t o Scandinavia, declaring
that they migrated from there to ' Scythia,' where the presence of a Scythian
named Magog had been recorded in Jewish history.41
From this time onward, the Scythian enjoyed a new glory as the parent
of virtually every nation in western Europe. The Venerable Bede listed the
" Redshanks " from " Scythia " among the early Britons.42 English his-
torians from Polydore Vergil on used various combinations of the Noah-
Japhet theory and the Scythian-parent theory to explain the racial kinship
between the Germanic and Celtic peoples. Polydore said the Picts " weare
a people of Scithia, and verie neare t o the Gothes in contrie and manners,
soe weare they a crewel1 nation and marvelus prone t o fight." 43 Camden,
Daniel, and Stow all traced the Britons back t o the Scythians and thus
related them t o the continental Celts and Goths.44 Speed referred t o the
chronologies of Eusebius and his followers by way of proving his affirma-
tions about the Scythian origins of the early Britons; and Holinshed attested
t o the settling of the British Isles in the earliest times by " Scithian Hyper-
b o r e a n ~" descended from Noah.45 Sir Walter Raleigh made the Scythians,
Sarmatians, and Cimmerians all one race, " who peopled most of the Western
M70rld, and whose reflux overwhelmed no small part of Greece and Asia." 46
38 Dio Chrysostom, Discourses, XXXVI.l-4, trans. J. W. Cohoon, Loeb Classics
(London, 1940).
39 Orosius, op. cit., n. 27 above, 64.
40 Procopius, History of the Wars, III.iv.20-28, trans. H. B. Dewing, Loeb Clas-
sics (London, 1916).
41 Jordanes, The Gothic History, trans. C. C. Mierow (London, 1915), 55-61.
42 Bede, 1.17.
43 Polydore Vergil, English History, ed. Sir Henry Ellis (London, 1846), 11, 74-
75; 111, 105.
44See T. D. Kendrick, British Antiquity (London, 1950)) 109ff.
45 John Speed, History of Great Britaine, 3d edition (London, 1650), 161-162;
Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (London, 1807))
I, 9-10.
46 See Laurence Eacherd, An Abridgement of Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the
World (London, 1700)) 191. For further ethnical treatments see, also, Jean Bodin,
Method for the Easy Comprehension of History, trans. Beatrice Reynolds (New
York, 1945)) 100; Petrus Justinianus, Rerum Venetarum Ab Urbe Condita (Venice,
1576)) 12; Georgius Cedrenus, Annales, Sive Historiae Ab Exordio Mundi (Basle,
1624), 11; Denis Petau, The History of the World (London, 1659), 4-5.
 THE SCYTHIAN: HIS RISE AND FALL 257
By degrees, the Scythians became sires to the Franks, Celts, Hungarians,
Bulgarians, Swedes, and numerous other races. I n this fashion, the Scythian
survived the demolition of his legendary virtue, and with a largely revised
r81e became as integral a part of Renaissai~cehistory as he had Graeco-
Roman.
I n the final phase of the Scythian legend, its various facets were carried
t o their logical-or illogical-extremes, and the extinction of the ancient
straw man in the world of ideas was effected. As the Noble Savage he
claimed a few traditionalist supporters, one of the n o s t illustrious being Sir
William Temple, who eulogized the primitive paragon with a vigor worthy
of Strabo. The Scythian was ousted from his archetypal nobility by the
latter half of the 1700's, however; his appearance side by side with the
American Indian in RousseauJs " Discours sur les sciences et les arts " was
the final promenade of a moribund monarch beside his heir.47 As the b6te
noire of Christianity, the Scythian drew occasional shots from such clerics as
Bishop Bossuet and Feyjoo y Montenegro; but he soon fell into obscurity
once the threat of Deism and Free-thinking began to claim the attention of
the Church.48 As the ethnic forebear of Europe, he was the subject of a
number of chauvinistic racial histories such as Pezron's History of the
Celtae, or Gauls and Loccenius' Antiquitatum Sueo-Gothicarum but was
soon relegated by the new historiography to a position of negligible impor-
t a n ~ e .Perhaps
~~ the most interesting use to which the fading Scythian was
put in the eighteenth century was as a satiric object by the Augustan wits:
the label of " Scythian " was applied to individuals, nations, customs-any-
thing that smacked of vulgar, unenlightened p r i m i t i ~ i s m . ~ ~
Thus the Scythian perished after a lifetime of twenty-two centuries. The
infrequent allusions to his name in the history and literature of today are
but a meager indication of the influence he once wielded as legend, moral
exemplum, chimera, ethnic font, and satiric target. Yet even a slight knowl-
edge of the significance of the Scythian in the thought of the past does much
to revivify the topicality of classical, patristic, and neo-classical literature
alike.
University of Rochester.
47 Sir William Temple, Works, ed. Jonathan Swift (London, 1757), 111, 347-368;
Jean J. Rousseau, " Discours sur les sciences et les arts," in Ouevres complbtes de
J . J. Rousseau (Paris, 1877).
4 8 Bishop Bossuet, Discours sur LJHistoire Universelle (Paris: Garnier Freres,
n.d.), 341-361; Feyjoo y LIontenegro, Essays, or Discourses, trans. John Brett
(London, 1780), I, 15.
49 Paul Pezron, The Antiquities of Nations, etc., trans. Mr. Jones (London, 1706),
I, 3 et seq.; Johannes Loccenius, Antiquitatum Sueo-Gothicarum (Stockholm, 1647).
50 See Jonathan Swift, Prose Works, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford, 1935), I, 175-178.
[Cf. Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, bk. I, aphorism 72: " giving indiscriminately
the name Scythians to all in the North."-Ed.]