Fw: Farzoi's chief racket and his northern boys.

Clicked on the wrong button before the message was complete. Sorry!

--- On Mon, 9/7/09, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:

> From: george knysh <gknysh@...>
> Subject: Farzoi's chief racket and his northern boys.
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Monday, September 7, 2009, 3:12 PM
> First of all this:
>
> http://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/scheidel/050704.pdf
>
> Cf. especially the text to footnote 48.
>
> Then have a look at Strabo (Book 11, section 2, paragraph
> 3).
> It appears that slave trading was one of the Eurasian
> nomads' chief occupations. And Greek city states were
> intermediaries. The Scythian fortresses of the Lower Dnipro
> fulfilled the same basic function.

Which puts a somewhat different slant on Tacitus' famous passage in the "Germania" ch. 46: "from whence [the Sarmatians GK] the Venedians have derived very many of their customs and a great resemblance. For they are continually traversing and infesting with robberies all the forests and mountains lying between the Peucinians and Fennians."

Proto-Slavs as slave raiders for Farzoi and his successors...And they were occasionally accompanied by their employers. The fearsome mounted "ispolins" (Slavic designation for the Spali as the rulers of Scythia were called) are a part of East Slavic folklore (ditto re the "Serpent" (=Dragon!) threatening from the steppes ,and the "Serpent Walls" built south of Kyiv for protection many times), and Farzoi coins have been found deep in the forest area of the north.

Interesting twist on these "glorious" empires.