Istvánovits Eszter: International Connections... (Jósa András Múzeum Kiadványai 47. Aszód-Nyíregyháza, 2001)
Andrea Vaday: Military system of the Sarmatians
Military system of the Sarmatians Andrea Vaday No detailed and accurate literary sources exist concerning the society and social structure of the Sarmatians who arrived in the Carpathian Basin. As regards only the longer Greek works, we find that faint traces of Herodotus's ethno-historical approach can be detected in Pausanius's and Strabo's historico-geographical works. The historical events in the barbarian territories, which had no impact on the provinces, stood outside the sphere of interest of "Rome-centric" writers. Cassius Dio, Zosimus and Sozomen, who wrote in Greek, described only the data connected with individual military campaigns. The Latin literature yields no Herodotus-type interpretation; only a sporadic history of events can be compiled, which can then be augmented with epigraphic and numismatic data. Tacitus's Germania also contains only indirect data, and in accordance with the title of the work, he mentions the Sarmatians only as they concern the Germans. The Annales and the Históriáé provide only short historical notes in connection with the Romans. Ptolemy listed geographical data, while the controversial História Augusta published scattered information that was not supported by other authors and is not accepted by modern research. Ammianus Marcellinus was the only one to describe the inner warfare of the Sarmatians with regard to the events of the 4 th c. A.D. Besides describing the events, the Greek and Latin literature characteristically was engaged in the banal repetition of Sarmatian customs and tactics, which the Romans considered peculiar. Given the poor quality of the literary sources, archaeological information must play a decisive role if we are to clarify the problem of Sarmatian social and military structure. An analysis of both the Roman and the barbarian materials of the find assemblages is important, since weapons (fig. 1) and other finds linked with the army are the ones that may shed some light on the military structure of the Barbaricum. This structure can only be examined adequately if we analyse the find assemblages in sections adjusted to historical periodisation 1 and differentiate between plunder and military presence at the Roman military finds in the Barbaricum (recently VADAY 1998, 123-125). The first wave of Sarmatian immigrants to the Carpathian Basin was composed 1 of the Jazyges Metanastae (resettling Jazyges) who arrived in the region after the formation of Vannnius's Quadian state following the Battle of Teutoborg. 2 The 1 G. Vörös attributed much earlier finds to the late find horizon in the collection of the graves with weapons from between the second half of the 4 TH c. and the middle of the 5 LH c. (VÖRÖS 1989, 45, cat. 15), and the characteristic find assemblage of the period (Jászalsószentgyörgy-Borsa halom) was omitted from the list of the sites. The literature dealing with the topic mirrored the same concept later as well. ISTVÁNOVUS-KULCSAR 1992 mapped the burials with shields according to typological differences; still, they did not attribute special military political importance to their chronological determination. Later, ISTVANOVITS-KULCSAR 1994 examined the weapons from the 2 ND-3 RD c. in the Hungarian Plain despite the fact that the two centuries did not represent the same period in the history of the Barbaricum. The disregard of chronology is tangibly present in their later work, where e.g. the distribution of arrowheads was put on a map where the chronological situation is marked by earthworks from the 4 TH century, although much earlier finds were also indicated in the map (ISTVÁNOVITS-KULCSÁR 1995, 1. kép). 2 The problem of the territory of Regnum Vannianum was raised once again by MóCSY 1990, 35, note 14. "The name of the Duria River does not help since it cannot be identified, but it still reflects the border changes that Pliny himself noted in the process of his work." (cf. MÓCSY 1977, 442).
