The Relations Between Scythians And The Greco-Roman World

Scythians was an ancient nomadic ethnic groups who lived in the southern Russia steppe and spoke Iranian. As the nomads of the early Iron Age, Scythians developed the typical developed nomadic culture, which provided a certain model of the coming nomadic culture. At the same time, as the precursors of eastern nomads who migrated west earlier, Scythians affiliated with the near agricultural world especially the ancient Greco-Roman world frequently, so Scythians played an important role in the so-called "Barbarians" groups at that time. In a word, Scythians played an important part and had a significant impact on the history of the ancient nomads, the southern steppe and the Black Sea. Therefore, the research of Scythians is of great significance. Through the research of the Scythians' culture, we can learn the causes of the nature and characteristics of the nomadic culture, and then know the mutual relations among the nomadic cultures, especially the inheritance of culture and the change of races etc. Besides, the research of the relations between Scythians and the agricultural world can also help us know the relations between the Greece-Roman world and the barbarians, and then understand the contributions of the nomadic civilization to the world civilization and the history movement of the nomadic civilization in the process of exchanging with the agricultural civilization etc.This paper is the production of those thoughts.It consists of three parts.The introduction consists of two sections. The first section defines the conception of Scythians and clearly shows that this paper uses the Scythians in a narrow sense. The second part concludes the history of Scythians' research and the temporary situation and points out the foundation and novelty of the paper.Chapter one mainly describes the basic situations of Scythians in the southern Russian steppe, including the geographical environment of southern Russian steppe, the relations between Scythians and other ethnic groups and the history and culture of Scythians etc.Chapter two is the main part of this paper which probes into the relations between Scythians and Greeks. After simply introducing the foundation of the Greek colonial city-states in the northern Black Sea, this paper reviews the intercourse between Scythians and the Greek world in the whole and then discusses the idiographic relations between Scythians and some Greek city-states and the formation process of the Greco-Scythian art. Finally, this chapter makes a conclusion about the mutual relations and estimates the level of relations between them and discusses the reasons that Scythians could not carry through Hellenization.Chapter three mainly dissertates the relations between Scythians and the Greco-Roman world in Rome era. Through the description of the political and military diplomacy, foreign trade, culture intercourse of Scythians, this chapter points that Scythians accelerated the process of settlement and agriculturation andhellenization and made a big choice in the aspect of life style and types of culture.In the end, this paper concludes the cultural vicissitude of Scythians according to time logic and gives a simple evaluation about its level of foreign exchanges...