Agathyrsi

The Agathyrsi (Ancient Greek: Ἀγάθυρσοι Agathursoi; Latin: Agathyrsi) were a people belonging to the Scythian cultures.[1] The Agathyrsi were a people of mixed Iranian Scythic and Geto-Thracian origin[2] whose bulk were Thracian while their aristocracy was closely related to the Scythians.[3]

For the Hunnic tribe native to north of Black Sea, see Akatziri.
Agathyrsi
The Agathyrsi lived around the sources of the Maris (Mureș) river
Regions with significant populations
Pontic Steppe (9th–8th century BC)
Moldavia, Transylvania, Oltenia (7th–4th century BC)
Languages
Scythian
Getic
Religion
Scythian religion
Thracian religion
Related ethnic groups
Cimmerians, Dacians, Getae Massagetae, Saka, Sarmatians, Scythians, Thracians
Offering pot from a Scythian grave from Alba Iulia, Romania, 6th century BC. In display at National Museum of the Union, Alba Iulia

Name

The name Agathursoi (Αγαθυρσοι) is the Hellenized form of a Scythian name whose original form is not attested.[4][5] The linguist Alexis Manaster Ramer has reconstructed it as *Haxāϑruš or *Haxāϑruša, or as *Haxāϑrauš or *Haxāϑrauša, meaning "prospering the friend/socius", with the final part modified into -θυρσος, referring to the composite vegetal wand of Bacchus, in Greek because the ancient Greeks associated Scythian peoples with Bacchic rites.[6]

Location

At the time when the Greek historian Herodotus described them, in the 5th century BC, the Agathyrsi occupied the region around the source of the Maris river, in the mountainous part of ancient Dacia now known as Transylvania in what in the present-day is the state of Romania, as well as in the regions corresponding to modern Moldavia and possibly Oltenia.[7][2]

History

The Agathyrsi were the oldest Scythian-related Iranian population[7] to have dominated the Pontic Steppe.[2] This origin was reflected in the genealogical myth of the Scythian peoples, according to which Agathyrsus was the eldest of the three ancestors of the Scythian peoples born of the union of the god Targitaos and the Anguipede Goddess.[2] Because both the 1st century AD Roman geographer Pomponius Mela and the 4th century AD Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus, basing themselves on earlier ancient Greek sources, located the Agathyrsi near the Lake Maeotis, it is therefore likely that the original homeland of the Agathyrsi was in the region of the Sea of Azov.[2] In the 8th to 7th centuries BC, the migration of the Scythians proper from the east into the Pontic Steppe pushed the Agathyrsi westwards, away from the steppes,[7] following which the relations between the Agathyrsi and the Scythians remained hostile.[2]

Herodotus world map

After being expelled westwards from the steppe, the Agathyrsi settled in the territories of present-day Moldavia, Transylvania, and possibly Oltenia, where they mingled with the indigenous population who were largely Thracians.[2][7] In the 5th century BC, Herodotus mentioned the presence of the Agathyrsi in the area of present-day Moldavia, to the north of the Danube and the east of the Carpathian Mountains, by which time they had become acculturated to the local Getic populations[7] and they practised the same customs as the Thracians, although the names of their kings, such as Agathyrsus and Spargapeithes, were Iranian.[2][3]

When the Achaemenid king Darius I attacked the Scythians in 513 BC, the Scythian king Idanthyrsus summoned the kings of the peoples surrounding his kingdom to a meeting to decide how to deal with the Persian invasion. The kings of the Budini, Gelonians and Sarmatians accepted to help the Scythians against the Persian attack, while the kings of the Agathyrsi, Androphagi, Melanchlaeni, Neuri, and Tauri refused to support the Scythians.[8] When the armies of the Scythians fled to the territories of their neighbours in front of the advancing Persian army, the Agathyrsi refused to provide refuge to the Scythians, which forced them to retreat back into their own territory.[9][8]

Later at some point in the 5th century BC and according to Herodotus, the Agathyrsian king Spargapeithes treacherously killed the Scythian king Ariapeithes.[8]

Scythian artefacts originating from sites in Transylvania, in display at Aiud History Museum, Aiud, Romania.

The Agathyrsi were barely ever mentioned again by ancient writers after Herodotus and were last mentioned as a still existing people by Aristotle in the 4th century BC,[10] after which they disappeared from history[2] due to having later become completely assimilated by the Geto-Thracian populations;[2] thus, the fortified settlements of the Agathyrsi became the centres of the Getic groups who would later transform into the Dacian culture, and an important part of the later Dacian people was descended from the Agathyrsi.[2]

A section of the Agathyrsi might also have migrated more southwards into Thrace proper, where a group of the Agathyrsi was located on the Haemus Mons by Stephanus of Byzantium,[2] who also suggests that a section of the Agathyrsi were present on the Rhodope Mountains by his mention of the Greeks calling the Trausi tribe who lived there as Agathyrsi.[11]

Scythian artefacts originating from sites in Transylvania, in display at Aiud History Museum, Aiud, Romania.
Scythian artefacts originating from sites in Transylvania, in display at Aiud History Museum, Aiud, Romania.

Culture

The acculturation of the Agathyrsi into the Geto-Dacian culture of the area they settled in is evidenced by how they practised the same customs as the Thracians, although the names of their kings, such as Agathyrsus and Spargapeithes, were Iranian.[2][3] Thracian customs of the Agathyrsi included their nobles practice of tattooing themselves and dyeing their hair dark blue to distinguish themselves from the common people,[12][11] as well as their memorisation of their laws in song form.[13][14]

Other aspects of the culture of the Agathyrsi recorded by Herodotus include the fact that they were used to living in luxury and wore golden jewellery, and their custom of having wives in common so that all the Agathyrsi would be each other's brothers and members of a single family living together without jealousy or hatred.[2]

Archaeology

To the archaeological presence of the Agathyrsi belongs a cemetery from the 8th to 7th centuries BC at Stoicani, as well as the Stincesti-Cotnari type fortified settlements which first appear in the 6th century BC.[2]

Legacy

An old theory of 19th century writers (Latham, V. St. Martin, Rambaud, Newman) which, according to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, is based on 'less convincing proof', suggested an identification of the Agathyrsi with the later Hunnic Akatziri tribe first mentioned by Priscus. According to E.A. Thompson, the conjecture that connects the Agathyrsi with Akatziri should be rejected outright.[15]

See also

Notes
  1. Batty 2007, p. 205.
  2. Olbrycht 2000.
  3. Sulimirski, T. (1985). "The Scyths". In Gershevitch, I. (ed.). The Cambridge History of Iran: The Median and Achaemenian Periods. Vol. 2. Cambridge University Press. pp. 183–184. ISBN 978-1-139-05493-5. "Scythian" remains have been found in various regions west of Scythia, in West Podolia, central Transylvania, Hungary, Slovakia, etc.; they mostly form distinct groups of Scythian culture, but also appear scattered in parts of Romania and Bessarabia. They probably represent the various tribes of the Agathyrsi who, according to most authorities, were of Thracian stock, although their ruling class seems to have been of Scythian origin, as suggested by the Iranian name of their king, Spargapeithes, and by various remarks of Herodotus (IV. 25, 49, 78, 100); moreover, the name of the people appears in one of the legends about the origins of the Scyths. These groups, formed mostly around the mid-6th century B.C., exhibit a specific character due to the local Thracian elements absorbed by the Scythian invaders.
  4. Schmitt, Rüdiger (2003). "Die skythischen Personennamen bei Herodot" [Scythian Personal Names in Herodotus] (PDF). Annali dell'Università degli Studi di Napoli l'Orientale (in German). 63: 1–31.
  5. Schmitt, Rüdiger (2011). Iranisches Personennamenbuch [Book of Iranian Personal Names] (in German). Vol. 5.5a. Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. pp. 73–74. ISBN 978-3-700-17142-3.
  6. Schwartz, Martin; Manaster Ramer, Alexis (2019). "Some Interlinguistic Iranian Conundrums". In Hintze, Almut; Durkin, Desmond; Naumann, Claudius (eds.). A Thousand Judgements: Festschrift for Maria Macuch. Harrassowitz Verlag. ISBN 978-3-447-11094-5.
  7. Batty 2007, p. 202-203.
  8. Herodotus & Godolphin 1973.
  9. Fol, Alexander; Hammond, N. G. L. (1988). "Persia in Europe, Apart from Greece". In Boardman, John; Hammond, N. G. L.; Lewis, D. M.; Ostwald, M. (eds.). The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 241. ISBN 978-0-521-22804-6.
  10. Maenchen-Helfen, Otto J. (1973). The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 451. ISBN 978-0-520-01596-8.
  11. Hrushevsky 1997, p. 97.
  12. Choureshki, Stefan [in Bulgarian] (1995). "An Observation on the Getic-Schythian Ethnic and Cultural Interactions in the 8th-5th Century BC : Contact in Motion". Thracia. 11: 181–189.
  13. Fol, Alexander; Marazov, Ivan (1977). Thrace & the Thracians. New York City: St. Martin's Press. p. 59. ISBN 978-0-304-29880-8.
  14. Hrushevsky 1997, p. 101.
  15. Thompson, E. A. (1948). A History of Attila and the Huns. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 95. ISBN 978-0-837-17640-6.

References
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