I've checked the various passages in Ovid's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovid
works from his exile in Tomis 8 - 17 CE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomis
ie. Tristia, Ex Ponto, and Ibis
here
http://tinyurl.com/yas6ngc
and found these interesting:
On 'Sarmatians':
http://tinyurl.com/ydaymqn
On Tomis; Sarmatians and Getae unite, ie. they are in the process of becoming a single ethnos, at least militarily:
'At length, driven through long wanderings, I reached
that shore, where Sarmatians and Getic bowmen unite.'
http://tinyurl.com/yczlzbf
Springtime.
'But I only see snow that melts in the spring sun
and water that's not dug frozen from the pool.
The sea's solid ice no longer, Sarmatian herdsmen
don't drive creaking carts on the Danube, as before.'
I was wondering if this meant the Sarmatians used the Danube as an ice road to trek into Pannonia at this early stage? What would Sarmatian herdsmen want to cross the Danube for, into hostile territory?
http://tinyurl.com/ycj4gue
'Are you interested to know what the people round Tomis
are like, and the customs of those I live among?
Though there's a mix of Greeks and Getae on this coast,
it's characterised more by the barely civilised Getae.
Great hordes of Sarmatians and Getae pass
to and fro, along the trails, on horseback.'
This could be in any direction.
http://tinyurl.com/y95xhgg
'We're scarcely protected by the fortress's shelter: and even
the barbarous crowd inside, mixed with Greeks, inspire fear,
for the barbarians live amongst us, without discrimination,
and also occupy more than half the houses.
Even if you don't fear them, you'd hate the sight
of their sheepskins, their chests covered by their long hair.
Those too, who are thought to descend from the Greek colony,
wear Persian trousers instead of their ancestral clothing.
They hold communication in the common tongue:
I have to make myself understood by gestures.
Here I'm the barbarian no one comprehends,
the Getae laugh foolishly at my Latin words.
and they often talk maliciously to my face,
quite safely, taunting me perhaps for my exile.
As is usual they think there's something wrong
about my only nodding no or yes to what to they say.
Add to all this that the sharp sword dispenses justice
unjustly, and wounds are often dealt in the forum.'
Strangely familiar ;-)
I assume the 'common tongue' would be Getan.
On Scythians:
http://tinyurl.com/ycmy8c8
'The sight of the city's absent, my dear friends, absent,
and my wife's absent, none dearer to me than her.
A mob of Scythians are present, crowds of trousered Getae:
So what I can see, and what I can't see, moves me.'
That would be in Tomis.
http://tinyurl.com/ycnl4jg
'Often in trying to say something shameful confession!
words fail me, and I've forgotten how to speak.
Thracian and Scythian tongues sound round me,
and I think I could almost write in Getic metres.'
The languages spoken in Tomis.
http://tinyurl.com/ye7gd76
'yet I'm not so much tormented by this weather, never
free of cold, this soil always hardened by white frost,
these barbarian tongues ignorant of the Latin language,
this Greek speech submerged in the sounds of Getic,
as by the fact that I'm encircled, and shut in on all sides
by nearby conflict: a thin wall scarcely keeps the enemy out.
While there's peace at times, there's no reliance on peace:
so the place now endures attack, and now fears it.'
Greek spoken by Getae.
That ought to shed some light on Lucan's vision of Sarmatians conjoined with Getae;
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/65104
he must at least have read Ovid.
Torsten