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Constantine I ‘The Great’- Roman Emperor: 307-337 A.D.
Victory over Sarmatia.
Bronze AE3 20mm (2.42 grams) Trier mint 323-324 A.D.
Reference: RIC VII 435,S
CONSTANTINVS AVG, laureate head right
SARMATIA DEVICTA, Victory advancing right, holding trophy & palm branch,
spurning captive on ground to right, STR-crescent in ex.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured,
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The Iron Age
Sarmatians (Latin Sarmatæ
or Sauromatæ, Sanskrit
Sakas
Greek
Σαρμάται,
Σαυρομάται) were an
Iranian people
in
Classical Antiquity
, flourishing from about the
5th century BC to the 4th century AD.
Their territory was known as Sarmatia to
Greco-Roman ethnographers
, corresponding to the
western part of greater
Scythia
(modern
Southern Russia
,
Ukraine
, and the eastern
Balkans
). At their greatest reported extent,
around 100 BC, these tribes ranged from the
Vistula River
to the mouth of the
Danube
and eastward to the
Volga
, bordering the shores of the
Black
and
Caspian
seas as well as the
Caucasus
to the south.
The Sarmatians declined in the 4th century with the incursions connected to
the
Migration period
(Huns,
Goths
). The descendants of the Sarmatians
became known as the Alans
during the Early Middle Ages, and
ultimately gave rise to the modern
Ossetic
ethnic group.
Name
Sarmatae is in origin probably just one of several tribal names of the
Sarmatians which came to be applied to the entire group as an
exonym
in
Greco-Roman ethnography
.
Strabo
in the 1st century names as the main
tribes of the Sarmatians the
Iazyges
, the
Roxolani
, the
Aorsi
and the
Siraces
.
The Greek name Sarmatai derives from the shortening of Sauromatai
apparently by association with lizards (sauros). Suggestions for the
reason the Sarmatians were associated with lizards include their reptile-like
scale armour and their dragon standards.[5]
Both
Pliny the Elder
( book ivNatural
History) and
Jordanes
are aware that the names in Sar-
and in Sauro- are interchangeable variants, referring to the same people.
Greek authors of the 4th century (Pseudo-Scylax,
Eudoxus of Cnidus
) mention Syrmatae as
the name of a people living at the Don, perhaps reflecting the ethnonym as it
was pronounced in the final phase of Sarmatian culture. The
Avesta
mentions Sairima as a region “in
the west”.
Origins
The Sarmatians emerged in the 7th century BC in a region of the steppe to the
east of the Don River
and south of the
Ural Mountains
in Eastern Europe. For centuries
they lived in relatively peaceful co-existence with their western neighbours the
Scythians
. Then in the 3rd century BC they
spilled over the Don to attack the Scythians on the
Pontic steppe
to the north of
the Black Sea
. The Sarmatians were to dominate
these territories over the next five centuries.[6]
Archaeology
Great steppe
of Kazakhstan in early
spring.
A Sarmatian
diadem
, found at the Khokhlach
kurgan
near
Novocherkassk
(1st century AD,
Hermitage Museum
).
Sarmatian cataphracts during
Dacian Wars
as depicted on
Trajan’s Column
.
Sarmatia Europea in map of
Scythia
, 1697.
“Sarmatia Europæa” separated from “Sarmatia Asiatica”
by the Tanais
(the
River Don
), based on Greek literary
sources, in a map printed in London, ca 1770.
Soviet archaeologist
Boris Grakov
in 1947[citation
needed] defined a culture flourishing from the 6th
century BC to the 4th century AD, apparent in late
Kurgan
graves, sometimes reusing part of much
older Kurgans. It is a nomadic steppe culture ranging from the
Black Sea
to beyond the
Volga
, and is especially evident at two of the
major sites at
Kardaielova
and
Chernaya
in the trans-Uralic steppe. Grekov
defined four phases:
- Sauromatian, 6th-5th centuries BC
- Early Sarmatian, 4th-2nd centuries BC
- Middle Sarmatian, late 2nd century BC to late 2nd century AD
- Late Sarmatian: late 2nd century AD to 4th century AD
It is important to note that while “Sarmatian” and “Sauromatian” are
synonymous as ethnonyms, they are given different meanings purely by convention
as archaeological technical terms.
In Hungary
, a great Late Sarmatian pottery center
was reportedly unearthed between 2001–2006 near
Budapest
, in
Üllő5
archaeological site. Typical gray,
granular Üllő5 ceramics forms a distinct group of Sarmatian pottery found
everywhere in the northcentral part of the
Great Hungarian Plain
region, indicating a
lively trading activity. A 1998 paper on the study of glass beads found in
Sarmatian graves suggests wide cultural and trade links.[7]
Archaeological evidence suggests that Scythian-Sarmatian cultures may have
given rise to the myth of
Amazons
. Graves of armed females have been
found in southern Ukraine and Russia. David Anthony notes, “About 20% of
Scythian
–Sarmatian
“warrior graves” on the lower
Don
and lower
Volga
contained females dressed for battle as
if they were men, a phenomenon that probably inspired the Greek tales about the
Amazons
.”[8]
Language
The numerous Iranian personal names in the Greek inscriptions from the
Black Sea
Coast indicate that the Sarmatians
spoke a
North-Eastern Iranian
dialect ancestral to
Ossetic
(see
Scytho-Sarmatian
).[9]
Appearance
Like the Scythians, Sarmatians were of a
Caucasoid
appearance, and before the arrival of
the Huns
(4th century AD) it is thought that few
had Asiatic or turco
–Mongol
features. Sarmatian noblemen often reached 1.70-1.80m (5ft 7ins-5ft 10ins) as
measured from
skeletons
, and they had sturdy bones, they wore
long hair and beards.
The Alans
who were a group of Sarmatian tribes
according to the
Roman
historian
Ammianus Marcellinus
“Nearly all the Alani are
men of great stature and beauty , their hair is somewhat
yellow
, their eyes are frighteningly fierce”.[6]
Greco-Roman
ethnography
Herodotus
(Histories
4.21) in the 5th century BC placed the land of the Sarmatians east of the
Tanais
, beginning at the corner of the
Maeotian Lake
, stretching northwards for
fifteen days’ journey, adjacent to the forested land of the
Budinoi
. Herodotus describes the Sarmatians’
physical appearance as blond, stout and tanned, in short, pretty much as the
Scythians
and
Thracians
were seen by the other classical
authors.[who?]
As seen in Roman depictions of Sarmatians they are of caucasian types[10]
Herodotus (4.110-117) gives a story of the Sauromatians’ origin from an
unfortunate marriage of a band of young Scythian men and a group of
Amazons
. In the story, some
Amazons
were captured in battle by Greeks in
Pontus
(northern
Turkey
) near the river
Thermodon
, and the captives were loaded into
three boats. They overcame their captors while at sea, but were not able
sailors. Their ships were blown north to the
Maeotian Lake
(the
Sea of Azov
) onto the shore of
Scythia
near the cliff region (today’s
southeastern Crimea
). After encountering the Scythians and
learning the Scythian language, they agreed to marry Scythian men, but only on
the condition that they move away and not be required to follow the customs of
Scythian women. According to Herodotus, the descendants of this band settled
toward the northeast beyond the
Tanais (Don)
river and became the Sauromatians.
Herodotus’ account explains the origins of the Sarmatians’ language as an
“impure” form of Scythian and credits the unusual freedoms of Sauromatae women,
including participation in warfare, as an inheritance from their supposed Amazon
ancestors. Later writers[who?]
refer to the “woman-ruled Sarmatae” (γυναικοκρατούμενοι). However, Herodotus’
belief that the Sarmatians were descendants of mythological Amazons is very
likely a fictional invention designed to explain certain idiosyncrasies of
Sarmatian culture.
Hippocrates
[11]
explicitly classes them as Scythian
and describes their warlike women and their customs:
Their women, so long as they are virgins, ride, shoot, throw the javelin
while mounted, and fight with their enemies. They do not lay aside their
virginity until they have killed three of their enemies, and they do not
marry before they have performed the traditional sacred rites. A woman who
takes to herself a husband no longer rides, unless she is compelled to do so
by a general expedition. They have no right breast; for while they are yet
babies their mothers make red-hot a bronze instrument constructed for this
very purpose and apply it to the right breast and cauterize it, so that its
growth is arrested, and all its strength and bulk are diverted to the right
shoulder and right arm.
Strabo
[citation
needed] mentions the Sarmatians in a number of
places, never saying very much about them. He uses both Sarmatai and Sauromatai,
but never together, and never suggesting that they are different peoples. He
often pairs Sarmatians and
Scythians
in reference to a series of ethnic
names, never stating which is which, as though Sarmatian or Scythian could apply
equally to them all.
In Strabo, the Sarmatians extend from above the Danube eastward to the Volga,
and from north of the
Dnepr
into the
Caucasus
, where, he says, they are called
Caucasii like everyone else there. This statement indicates that the
Alans
already had a home in the Caucasus,
without waiting for the Huns to push them there.
Even more significantly, he points to a Celtic admixture in the region of the
Basternae
, who, he says, are of
Germanic
origin. The
Celtic
Boii,
Scordisci
and
Taurisci
are there. A fourth ethnic element
being melted in are the
Thracians
(7.3.2). Moreover, the peoples toward
the north are Keltoskythai, “Celtic Scythians” (11.6.2).
Strabo also portrays the peoples of the region as being nomadic, or
Hamaksoikoi, “wagon-dwellers” and Galaktophagoi, “milk-eaters” referring, no
doubt, to the universal
koumiss
eaten in historical times. The wagons
were used for porting tents made of
felt, which must have been the
yurts used universally by Asian nomads.
Pliny the Elder
writes (4.12.79-81):
From this point (the mouth of the
Danube
) all the races in general are
Scythian, though various sections have occupied the lands adjacent to the
coast, in one place the
Getae
… at another the Sarmatae … Agrippa
describes the whole of this area from the Danube to the sea … as far as the
river Vistula in the direction of the Sarmatian desert … The name of the
Scythians has spread in every direction, as far as the Sarmatae and the
Germans, but this old designation has not continued for any except the most
outlying sections ….
According to Pliny, Scythian rule once extended as far as Germany.
Jordanes
supports this hypothesis by telling us
on the one hand that he was familiar with the Geography of
Ptolemy
, which includes the entire Balto-Slavic
territory in Sarmatia[citation
needed], and on the other that this same region was
Scythia. By “Sarmatia”, Jordanes means only the Aryan territory. The Sarmatians
therefore did come from the Scythians.
Tacitus
‘
De Origine et situ Germanorum
speaks of
“mutual fear” between
Germanic peoples
and Sarmatians:
All Germania is divided from Gaul, Raetia, and Pannonia by the Rhine and
Danube rivers; from the Sarmatians and the
Dacians
by shared fear and mountains. The
Ocean laps the rest, embracing wide bays and enormous stretches of islands.
Just recently, we learned about certain tribes and kings, whom war brought
to light.[12]
According to Tacitus, like the
Persians
, the Sarmatians wore long, flowing
robes (ch 17). Moreover, the Sarmatians exacted tribute from the
Cotini
and
Osi
, and iron from the Cotini (ch. 43), “to
their shame” (presumably because they could have used the iron to arm themselves
and resist).
By the 3rd century BC, the Sarmatian name appears to have supplanted the
Scythian in the plains of what is now south
Ukraine
. The geographer,
Ptolemy
,[citation
needed] reports them at what must be their maximum
extent, divided into adjoining European and central Asian sections. Considering
the overlap of tribal names between the Scythians and the Sarmatians, no new
displacements probably took place. The people were the same Indo-Europeans they
used to be, but now under yet another name.
Later,
Pausanias
, viewing
votive offerings
near the Athenian Acropolis in
the 2nd century AD,[13]
found among them a Sauromic breastplate.
On seeing this a man will say that no less than Greeks are foreigners
skilled in the arts: for the Sauromatae have no iron, neither mined by
themselves nor yet imported. They have, in fact, no dealings at all with the
foreigners around them. To meet this deficiency they have contrived
inventions. In place of iron they use bone for their spear-blades, and
corneal-wood
for their bows and arrows,
with bone points for the arrows. They throw a lasso round any enemy they
meet, and then turning round their horses upset the enemy caught in the
lasso. Their breastplates they make in the following fashion. Each man keeps
many mares, since the land is not divided into private allotments, nor does
it bear any thing except wild trees, as the people are nomads. These mares
they not only use for war, but also sacrifice them to the local gods and eat
them for food. Their hoofs they collect, clean, split, and make from them as
it were python scales. Whoever has never seen a python must at least have
seen a pine-cone still green. He will not be mistaken if he liken the
product from the hoof to the segments that are seen on the pine-cone. These
pieces they bore and stitch together with the sinews of horses and oxen, and
then use them as breastplates that are as handsome and strong as those of
the Greeks. For they can withstand blows of missiles and those struck in
close combat.
Pausanias’ description is well borne out in a relief from Tanais.[citation
needed] These facts are not necessarily incompatible
with Tacitus, as the western Sarmatians might have kept their iron to
themselves, it having been a scarce commodity on the plains.
In the late 4th century,
Ammianus Marcellinus
[14]
describes a severe defeat which Sarmatian raiders inflicted upon Roman forces in
the province of Valeria in
Pannonia
in late 374 AD. The Sarmatians almost
destroyed 2 legions: one recruited from
Moesia
and one legion from Pannonia. The last
had been sent to intercept a party of Sarmatians which had been in pursuit of a
senior Roman officer named Aequitius. The two legions failed to coordinate,
allowing the Sarmatians to catch them unprepared.
Decline in the 4th
century
The Sarmatians remained dominant until the
Gothic
ascendancy in the
Black Sea area. Goths attacked Sarmatian tribes on the north of the
Danube in Dacia
, what is today
Romania
. The Roman Emperor
Constantine
called
Constantine II
up from Galia to run a campaign
north of the Danube. In very cold weather, the Romans were victorious, killing
100,000 Goths and capturing
Ariaricus
the son of the Goth king.[15][16][17]
In their efforts to halt the Gothic expansion and replace it with their own
on the north of Lower Danube (present-day Romania), the Sarmatians armed their
captives. After the Roman victory, however, the local population revolted
against their Sarmatian masters, pushing them beyond the Roman border.
Constantine, on whom the Sarmatians had called for help, defeated
Limigantes
, the leader of the revolt, and moved
the Sarmatian population back in. In the Roman provinces, Sarmatian combatants
were enlisted in the Roman army, whilst the rest of the population was
distributed throughout
Thrace
, Macedonia and Italy.
Origo Constantini
mentions 300,000 refugees
resulting from this conflict. The emperor Constantine was subsequently
attributed the title of
Sarmaticus Maximus
.
In the 4th and 5th centuries, the
Huns expanded and conquered both the Sarmatians and the Germanic
Tribes living between the Black Sea and the borders of the Roman Empire. From
bases in modern day Hungary, the Huns ruled the entire former Sarmatian
territory. Their various constituents enjoyed a
floruit
under Hunnish rule, fought for the Huns
against a combination of Roman and Germanic troops, and went their own ways
after the
Battle of Chalons
, the death of
Attila
and the disappearance of the
Chuvash
ruling elements west of the Volga.
In
Roman mythology
, Victoria was the personification/Goddess of victory.
She is the Roman version of the
Greek goddess
Nike
, and was associated with
Bellona
. She was adapted from the
Sabine
agricultural goddess
Vacuna
and had
a
temple
on the
Palatine Hill
. Her name (in Latin) means victory. Unlike the Greek Nike, Victoria (Latin
for “victory”) was a major part of Roman society. Multiple temples were erected
in her honour. When her statue was removed in 382 AD by emperor
Gratianus
there was much anger in Rome. She was normally worshipped by
triumphant
generals returning from war. Also unlike the Greek Nike, who was known for success in athletic games such
as chariot races, Victoria was a symbol of victory over death and determined who
would be successful during war. Appearing on Roman coins, jewelry, architecture, and other arts, Victoria is
often seen with or in a
chariot
. An
example of this is her place upon the
Brandenburg Gate
in Berlin, Germany.
Caesar Flavius Valerius
Aurelius Constantinus Augustus (27 February c. 272
– 22 May 337), commonly  known in
English
as Constantine I, Constantine the Great, or (among
Eastern Orthodox
, Coptic Orthodox,
Oriental Orthodox
and
Byzantine Catholic
Christians) Saint Constantine, was
Roman
emperor
from 306, and the undisputed holder of that office from 324 until
his death in 337. Best known for being the first
Christian
Roman emperor, Constantine reversed the
persecutions
of his predecessor,
Diocletian
,
and issued (with his co-emperor
Licinius
)
the Edict of Milan
in 313, which proclaimed
religious toleration
throughout the empire.
The
Byzantine
liturgical calendar, observed by the
Eastern Orthodox Church
and
Eastern Catholic Churches of Byzantine rite
, lists both Constantine and his
mother
Helena
as saints. Although he is not included in the
Latin
Church’s
list of saints, which does recognize several other Constantines as
saints, he is revered under the title “The Great” for his contributions to
Christianity
.
Constantine also transformed the ancient Greek colony of
Byzantium
into a new imperial residence,
Constantinople
, which would remain the capital of the
Byzantine Empire
for over one thousand years.
One of the great Roman emperors, Constantine rose to power when his
father Constantius Chlorus died in the year 306 while campaigning against
Scottish tribes. He later went on to defeat the rival emperor Maxentius in the
decisive battle of Milvian Bridge in 312. He is credited for several great
landmarks in history and is probably best memorialized by the city that bore his
name for hundreds of years: Constantinople. Although now renamed Istanbul, this
city was to be the seat of power for all Byzantine emperors for the next 1100
years. Constantine is also remembered as the first Roman emperor who embraced
Christianity and instituted the buildings and papal dynasty that eventually grew
into what is today the Vatican and the Pope.
The latter part of his life saw his commitment to the church rise in step
with the increasing repression against old-school paganism. He left behind
several sons who would, after his death, turn on each other and generally undo
much of the stability that Constantine had fought so hard to bring about.
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