Distribution of Scythian languages, ca. 100 BC.
To date, no widely accepted explanation exists for the origin of the Scythians, nor how they migrated to the Caucasus and Ukraine; but many scholars conjecture that they migrated westward from Central Asia between 800 BC and 600 BC. Assyrian records are the first to mention the Scythians, from around the end of the eighth century BC. Herodotus confirms that their king Partatua was allied with Assyria, and recognized by Mannai. In 653, Partatua’s son Madius (Madyes), at the request of Ashurbanipal of Assyria, defeated the king of the Medes, Phraortes, assuming control over the Medes until 625 BC. By the end of his reign, he had led the Scythians, on a pillaging spree, overrunning and plundering Assyria, Anatolia, Syria, Phoenicia, Damascus, and Philistia. They plundered the Temple of Venus in Ashelon, and Jeremiah 4:7-13 mentioned them as “a destroyer of nations whose chariots shall be as the whirlwind.”
After 625, however, the Scythians left the Median Empire. Following the Mede sack of Assur in 614 BC, they were compelled to switch sides and ally themselves with the Medes. They comprised part of the force that sacked Nineveh in 612 BC. Some time afterwards, the Scythians returned to the steppes.
In 512 BC the Scythians were attacked by king Darius the Great of Persia. Herodotus relates that being nomads, they were able to frustrate the designs of the Persian army by letting them march through the entire country without an engagement. When Darius demanded battle they replied, “There is nothing new or strange in what we do. We follow our mode of life in peaceful times. We have neither towns nor cultivated lands in these parts which might induce us, through fear of their being ravaged, to be in any hurry to fight you. But if you must needs come to blows with us speedily, look about you, and behold our fathers’ tombs. Attempt to meddle with them and you shall see whether or not we will fight with you.” It was indeed a very strange war to Darius. There was nothing to be captured and held. No cities to plunder, nothing but the rimless steppe. He was fighting air. Darius had no alternative but to turn back. All the way to the Danube the Scythians harassed his retreat. He never campaigned northward through Europe again and the Scythians prevailed on the south Russian steppe and kept expanding westward for the next century.
During the fifth to third centuries BC the Scythians evidently prospered. When Herodotus wrote his Histories in the 5th century BC, Greeks distinguished a “Greater Scythia” that extended a 20-day ride from the Danube river in the west, across the steppes of today’s Ukraine to the lower Don basin. The Don, has been a major trading route ever since. The Scythians apparently obtained their wealth from their control over the slave trade from the north to Greece, through the Greek Black Sea colonial ports. They also grew grain, and shipped wheat, flocks, and cheese to Greece.
Shortly after 300 BC, the Celts seem to have displaced the Scythians from the Balkans, while in south Russia, they were gradually overwhelmed by a kindred tribe, the Sarmatians.
Partatua
There are few records to chronicle the deeds or character of the Scythian leader, Partatua. It is know that in the seventh century BC, he led lightning-quick detachments of horsemen from mountain and steppe Eurasian areas and crossed the Caucasus ridge, devastating towns, palaces and temples. His success apparently so frightened the Assyrian sovereign Assargadon (680-669 BC) that he decided to ally with them. He gave his daughter away in marriage to Partatua in 674 BC. Together, these nations conquered the Median Empire of the Caspian Sea.
