Romans and Barbarians: Four Views From the Empire's Edge (7 page)

Late summer and autumn are less rewarding, the bronze and silver steppe a sea in which the walker wades, waist-high, through tinkling grass and crackling weed, legs pricked by stalks, socks stiff with burrs and bootfuls of sharp seeds. Here unmounted man makes little headway. Winter is more savage still. Big blizzards scour the plain, reminding us that, though we may be at the latitude of northern Italy, this, after all, is close to Russia.

Such was the hinterland of Tomis and her sister colonies along the Black Sea's northern shore. The ultimate factor, however, is not the steppe's natural history, but its extent. Although narrow in a north-south sense, from west to east it is one of the longest features on earth, extending some 5,000 miles from eastern Europe to Manchuria, where the grassy strip widens to 600 miles. All told, the area is immense, perhaps 5 per cent of former Soviet territory. While the American plains run north-south, from Manitoba to Texas, the steppe, almost three times as long, lies crosswise, traversing 100 degrees of longitude, well over half the width of the Eurasian landmass. Though its central portion is interrupted by mountains, these are crossable. As this grassy path marches eastwards it becomes higher, drier and more thinly peopled. However, the normal direction of march is westwards; for with each day's journey the winter grows minutely milder, the climate infinitesimally moister and the pasture fractionally richer. If sheep led shepherd – as doubtless they often did – greener grass would draw them gently toward Europe.

It is easy to see how these accidents of climate and geography made the steppe a feature of long-term danger for the West. Not only did it offer the Asian herd folk a corridor toward the Balkans, it brought that most irksome enemy, the mounted nomad; for such vast distances, and the tangle of summer herbage, decreed that horsemen would dominate the steppe, as cowboys would one day rule the American prairie and
gauchos
the Argentinian pampa. This is why steppe migration awaited the taming of the horse and did not begin until about 2000
BC
. At least a futher twelve centuries then elapsed before a distinctive, mounted warrior emerged, using armour and weapons largely copied from Iran.

Nomads have been described as those whose animals eat grass faster than it grows. Though we are used to thinking of the pastoralist as peaceful, this may simply be conditioning. Our cultural heritage is shepherd-friendly. The bucolic
9
vein runs deep in Western art: through Virgil's
Eclogues,
Dresden shepherdesses and Beethoven's Sixth. Its theme is the unattainable: either an innocent past in one's own place, or an innocent present in some legendary place. It elevates the shepherd to an ornamental role in societies whose real business is now the drudgery of agriculture. Christianity strengthens the tradition by emphasis on the good shepherd.
10
And yet, as the Old Testament reminds us, there is also the bad shepherd: ‘And so it was, when Israel had sown, that the Midianites came, and the Amalekites, and the children of the east [ … ] they came as grasshoppers for multitude [ … ] and they entered into the land to destroy it.'
11
These ‘children of the east' were of course bedouin from the dry lands beyond Jordan, recalling the Arabian adage, ‘raids are the bedouins' agriculture'. The nomad has always sought to rob the granaries of settled lands. Alas, the shepherds soon to be encountered by Ovid would bear little resemblance to those decorous products of Graeco-Roman pastoralism with which he and his colleagues had so blithely supplied their readers.

Whether squabbling over grazing and watering rights or harrying the farmers along its edges, aggression was a fact of steppe life. Though nomad populations were thinly spread, raiding parties could be mustered quickly. Doubtless they would as quickly dissolve, for lacking logistical capacity, there was little likelihood of prolonged campaigns. However, limitation was compensated by performance. These were the world's best horsemen. All adults were warriors. The steppe drew little distinction between military and civilian, man and woman. Accordingly the Pontic region supplied the ancient world with two of its abiding images: the amazon, a woman who could outfight a man; and the centaur, in which rider and horse merge into a powerful killing machine.

Seen more widely then, the Pontic steppe was part of an invasion path of long standing. This is not to say that mounted hordes were continually pouring out of Mongolia, intent on the West's destruction. Their view was local and their progress slow. Nor did they necessarily stay the course. Sometimes their wanderings ceased for centuries. Some tribes left the path midway, while others entered it. In particular the wide gaps between Caspian and Aral, Aral and Lake Balkhash, invited the northward movement of refugees from the droughts of northern Iran and Afghanistan, who joined the steppe in its central or Kirghiz portion. This was the probable origin of the Scythian and Sarmatian peoples, whose appearance in the Pontic region coincides with Greek commercial expansion. Nor did this pastoral corridor end at the Black Sea. Its natural
termini
were more ominous still: the Wallachian Plain, that part of the lower Danube where Bucharest now stands; or, branching north round the Carpathians, the Hungarian Plain and the middle Danube.

Foundation of the Pontic cities had coincided with a long lull in steppe migration caused by the settling of the Scyths, a people of sufficient power to command agricultural produce from the moister zone to the north and trade goods from the Greeks to the south. In the mid-1970s an exhibition from the Soviet Union called
Scythian Gold
caused surprise and excitement. Here were objects recovered by Soviet archaeologists from the
kurgans.
Of finest Greek workmanship and commissioned by Scythian notables, some depicted scenes from steppe life. The excavation reports are more sensational still. They describe burials of opulent barbarity, sickeningly brutal in their accompaniment of human and equine sacrificial massacre. Such findings provided a striking confirmation of Herodotus. In about 450
BC
the ‘father of history' visited Olbia, a Pontic city at the mouth of the Bug, three towns along from Tomis, leaving this description:

The death and burial of Scythian kings [ … ] A great, square pit is dug. The body is enclosed in wax, the stomach cavity stuffed with fragrant herbs and incense. The bearers mutilate themselves, slashing arms, scratching faces, cutting off ear lobes and piercing the left palm with an arrow. The body is placed on a couch, with spears planted all round it and roofed with hides. A concubine, the closest servants and their horses are then garrotted and buried with the body, plus various personal treasures. Then all build an earthen barrow, vying to make it as great as possible. A year later they strangle fifty more servants and horses. The horses' bodies are propped up on posts and the men, mounted on top of them, secured with more stakes, as if riding round the king. Finally the whole grisly cavalcade is buried.
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The Scyths built palisaded settlements, usually within the protection of a river bend. The largest known has a perimeter of twenty miles, including grazing space for substantial flocks, wooden dwellings, smithies and leather workshops, plus a royal palace. Greek-style coins were minted, bearing the likeness of Scythian kings. Here was a developmental level not far behind that of Celtic Europe.

Two centuries after Herodotus' visit, steppe traffic began to move again. The next arrivals were the Sarmatians. Numerous, ferocious and less advanced (except in war), they defeated the Scyths and confined them to the Crimea, where remnants survived for a time. The name ‘Scythia' continued to be used by classical authors both for the north Pontic coast and, more loosely,
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for almost the entirety of the former Soviet Union. In fact the lands to the Black Sea's north would remain inscrutable. Reportedly they were the abode of races subhuman and deformed: a conventional evasion by the ancient geographer when the limits of his knowledge were reached. Antiquity probably knew more about coastal India than the hinterlands of Dniepr and Don; as in the Age of Discovery, when continents would be circumnavigated long before they were investigated. Certainly the Greek colonists did not contemplate Livingstone-like marches into the interior. They preferred to placate the nearest tribes, addicting their leaders to outside products, especially wine, so inveigling them into a dependence through which the interior could be exploited indirectly. In this way a slave trade would be set in motion and grain drawn down from the forest-steppe zone around today's Kiev, without the instigators leaving the safety of their coastal depots. The discovery of Greek objects far to the north tells of a web of trading relationships in partnership with the Scyths. Now the Sarmatians had blown the web away and a replacement must be sedulously spun.

The newcomers, however, were a trickier proposition. Though also of Iranian origin and speaking an Indo-European tongue, the Sarmatians were less likely to be influenced toward sedentary courses. The burial mounds of their chieftains are of a construction comparable to the Scythian, but less lavishly equipped. Many were opened by Soviet archaeologists in the pre-war and post-war years, mainly along the rivers and in the Kuban, yielding gold or bronze jewellery, weapons and iron chainmail; the latter confirming a formidable cavalry of knightly type. No sign of a steppe agriculture has been found. On the other hand, grave fields of two or three hundred burials imply prolonged stays. Here is something of a contradiction: a mobile people caught up in an indefinite pause. It is difficult to say whether trading and raiding among the Pontic cities provided incentives to stay. But stay they did: some eight or ten unruly subgroups, scattered along the Black Sea's northern shore. Their vanguard, the Thracians, had reached as far as today's Bulgaria. Closest, therefore, to Greece, the Thracians tended to side with the Greeks against their own Sarmatian cousins. Another group, the Dacians, had crossed the Carpathian passes, abandoned the ways of the nomad and settled in Transylvania. Yet another, the Getans, now occupied the steppe around Tomis. Nearby were the restless Rhoxolans and Iazyges; then the Sarmatian parent tribe itself, living east of Tomis; and the Alans, probably the rearguard: together a queue of troubles awaiting Rome's eventual attention.

Such was the Pontic steppe when Jesus was a boy in Nazareth, the elderly Augustus ruled a renascent Rome and the imperial army and navy were taking the lower Danube in hand. However, their approach was slow. The coastal region between the Bosphorus and the delta would not be formally annexed for at least forty years. The date of this event is unknown, but the first permanent stationing of an army unit is not attested by inscription until the
AD
70s.

For the Greek cities, with Roman land forces still distant and only sporadic protection from the navy, the early 1st century was a time of unease; the
Barbaricum
unstable, shifting round them like the winter ice floes against the Black Sea shore. This was the mood at the time of Ovid's arrival; and archaeology confirms his pessimism. Constantsa's modern overlay makes Tomis less easy to dig, but Histria, the next city northwards, has provided considerable evidence. In the 2nd century
BC
its size had doubled. Temples had been built. There were stone houses with upper stories. Its own coinage was issued. A period of contraction then followed; and construction of a stronger town wall indicates the coming of the Sarmatians and disorder in the Pontic region generally.

Regarding the character of the Sarmatians and the flavour of life in an outpost among them, Ovid's verse is our principal source. His
Poems of Exile
consist of two major compositions:
Tristia
(The Sorrows) and
Epistulae ex Ponto
(Letters from the Black Sea), together some 7,000 lines, which have survived almost entire. As literature and the testament of a personal ordeal these are works of unique interest. As history they must be treated with caution. Ovid loathed this thraldom and his poems are a plea for deliverance. To whomever they were addressed, their real target was the emperor, or those who might influence him favourably. It was not in his interest to paint Tomis and the Black Sea region in cheerful colours. On the other hand, neither archaeology, modern climatic data, nor the views of other ancient witnesses entirely refute his impressions.

We must also remember that Ovid's style, with its abundant echoes of other authors, sometimes puts his value as an observer in doubt. His description of the Black Sea's winter climate is, for example, embarrassingly close to a passage in Virgil's
Georgics.
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One Ovidian commentator rightly points to resemblances between his portrayal of the Pontic barbarians and those of the
Aeneid's
later books, in which Virgil visualizes the primitive tribes of Italy.
15
Where, then, do Ovid's descriptions end and his plagiarisms begin? After forty years weaving poetic spells, was he capable of straight reporting? Probably not. Certainly, allusion was indispensable to his compositional method. Ovid's motives were idiosyncratic and no one could call him an impartial witness. But he was not necessarily a perjured one.

As well as personal pleading there is also the more general bias of Roman against non-Roman. The steppe barbarians bequeathed few impressive remains and no written evidence. As ever, the reputation of the illiterate was in the hands of the literate, who had no reason to depict Rome's potential enemies with sympathy and understanding. Here Ovid is as culpable as other ancient authors. It did not occur to him that fate had placed him at a unique vantage point, a forward listening post from which the steppe could be monitored and a fascinating study written.
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What he does give are glimpses of the grassland barbarians at their grimmest; strikingly perceived and expressed, but always subordinated to his own propaganda intention: that he should be allowed to return to Rome. In view of contemporary literary tastes, it is in any case barely conceivable that he would have placed the barbarian in the foreground of his work. As we have said, literature tended to feed on its own traditions and to be more intent on refining subject-matter than enlarging it in an ethnic or social sense. One may doubt whether
any
man of letters would have respected Sarmatian society sufficiently to be its ethnologist or lexicographer. Today, by contrast, we live in an age which professes to cherish less advanced peoples and their cultures; guilty perhaps that so few are left. Furthermore the modern Western nations are comfortingly distant from alien continents. Theirs were maritime empires, with oceans between themselves and their colonies. Even now, direct First World–Third World interfaces (as between South Africa and Mozambique, or the United States and Mexico) are surprisingly rare. Classical antiquity's sense of being adjacent to and surrounded by the envy of less happy lands was stronger; with fear and prejudice correspondingly more acute.