Istvánovits Eszter: International Connections... (Jósa András Múzeum Kiadványai 47. Aszód-Nyíregyháza, 2001)
Andrea Vaday: Military system of the Sarmatians
Thus by the beginning of the 2 nd c, the Jazyges of the Hungarian Plain were already the rulers of the Hungarian Plain under the leadership of their king supported by the tribal aristocracy. The graves with weapons show that some of the roads crossing the Hungarian Plain played an important military role during the century. The graves of the military aristocracy with weapons in the Danube-Tisza Interfluve display a denser distribution along the roads from Aquincum to Dacia in the northern area bordered by the Germanic territory, and they occur sporadically along the route Aquincum-Üllő-Tisza ford at Csongrád. The fact that they can be found in an approximately 50-km-wide band south of the Aquincum-Porolissum road on the left bank of the Tisza points to a basic change (fig. 3). There are hardly any graves with weapons in the southeast part of the Hungarian Plain south of the Maros/Mures, and the situation is the same in the Bácska /Васка region. It is important to note, however, that there has been less research published on the period in the Banat and the Bácska/ Васка than in the central part of the Hungarian Plain. It is possible that some of the Dacians were pushed back to a 50-km-wide zone east of the Temes/Timis. between the river and the Dacian limes in the eastern part of the Banat. In this case, this Free Dacian population would have been separated from the Sarmatians by the Temes/Timis at the beginning of the century! Ptolemy (Geographia VII. 2) seems to have described the Sarmatian Barbaricum as it looked after Decebal and Trajan, when some of the lands east of the Tisza were already under Sarmatian rule. This is supported by the fact that Ptolemy included Посртлакоу, the present Szeged, in the list of the towns of the Sarmatians. 8 The foundation of Dacia facilitated the Sarmatian dispersion in the Hungarian Plain at the same time as a heightened Roman presence was becoming a factor, as suggested by the stationing of Dacian troops supervising the water course along the Maros/Mures, by the Roman outpost of both military and commercial importance at Szeged and also by the military constructions at Jászberény and Szolnok (VADAY 1998, 124 and see note 65). The subsequent finds east of the Tisza suggest that the recently settled tribe occupied the freshly conquered territory, and the graves of the military aristocracy can be found more frequently both at strategically important roads and close to the borders. Further changes took place during the Marcomannic Wars. Continued Sarmatian settlement activity can be inferred from the appearance of the Jazygian population that had stayed in the east and become mixed with the Roxolani. Some of the new arrivals (VADAY-KULCSÁR 1984, ris. 9 and in a completed form VADAY 1989A, Abb. 9), especially the army, also intruded into the Upper Tisza region and, together with the Vandali arriving from the north, they delineated the German-Sarmatian border in the northern part of the land east of the Tisza, which approximately coincided with the line of the Ördög-árok, or Csörsz-árok (Devil's Ditch) (ISTVÁNOVITS 1990). Cassius Dio's short text (LXXJI. 6) refers to the middle of the 170s, the time of the Marcomannic Wars, and mentions Viceroy Banadaspos (ВаспЯщ Ssvrepoç in connection with the Jazygian Zantikos and the aristocrats ( bl яра)Т01 ) in Zantikos's retinue. The 8 Finds attesting to the Roman presence were discovered not only in the region of the Medieval castle but also in several parts of the town of Szeged, which means that the left bank of the Tisza had also been occupied (SEBESTYÉN 1926; LAKATOS 1964/65).
