The Sarmatians

In The Sarmatians: Riders of the Steppe Frontier, Elliot Rowan explores the history of one of the ancient world's most formidable yet often overlooked peoples. From the grasslands beyond the Don and Volga Rivers to the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and the Roman frontier along the Danube, the Sarmatians dominated vast stretches of the Eurasian Steppe for centuries, building a society shaped by mobility, horsemanship, warfare, and far-reaching connections with the civilizations around them.

Drawing on Greek and Roman accounts alongside archaeological discoveries from burial mounds across Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Rowan reconstructs a people who left few written records of their own. He examines the Sarmatians' origins and relationship with the Scythians, their powerful cavalry traditions, tribal confederations, trade with the Greek cities of the Black Sea, conflicts with Rome, richly furnished burials, religious practices, and the remarkable evidence for women who rode and sometimes fought alongside men.

More than the story of a vanished steppe people, this book reveals the Sarmatians as important participants in the history of ancient Eurasia. Their warriors influenced the development of mounted warfare, their migrations reshaped the frontiers of Europe, and their Alan descendants carried elements of the Sarmatian inheritance into the medieval world and the Caucasus. Though their tribal confederations eventually disappeared, the Sarmatians left an enduring legacy across the lands they once crossed on horseback.