Scythians in 218 B.C.

Scythians — Spring 218 BC · Lords of the steppe, past their zenith.

In 218 BC the Scythians are the horse-nomad masters of the great steppe north of the Black Sea — a loose hegemony of peoples under the Royal Scythians, ranging from the Danube to beyond the Borysthenes. Mounted archers who carry their homes on waggons and bury their kings under colossal kurgans, they hold the Greek cities of the coast in a web of tribute and trade and sell the grain of the black-earth lands and the produce of the steppe to the Aegean. Their power is past its zenith, pressed from the east by the rising Sarmatians, but they still command the plains. Select a people to read its story.

No walls bound the realm of the Scythians. From the Danube to the Tanais, across the black-earth plains and the open grasslands north of the Pontic Sea, ride the Iranian horse-peoples whom the Greeks have feared and traded with for ten generations. They carry their homes on waggons, drink the milk of their mares, and follow no calling but the herd, the hunt and the bow. Once they turned back Darius the Persian and held the steppe from the Ister to the Tanais; now their zenith is past — pressed from beyond the Tanais by the rising Sauromatae, and hemmed by the Greek cities of the shore. Yet still the Royal Scythians command the plain, hold the coastal emporia in a web of tribute and trade, and above all sell the GRAIN of the black-earth lands and the produce of the nomads — hides, slaves and honey — through Olbia and the marts of the Bosporan Kingdom, feeding the cities of Greece across the water.