126 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



referred to were simply tarpans (or Prejvalsky horses) in their 

 winter coats (p. 32), or whether they were really white, a less 

 likely alternative. 



The Sarmatians, termed Sauromatae by Herodotus, in the 

 time of that writer^ lived in the region on the east side of 

 the Tanais (the modern Bon), which formed the boundary 

 between them and the nomad Scythians. Their territory 

 stretched northward from the upper end of the Palus Maeotis 

 (Sea of Azov), a distance of fifteen days' journey, and was 

 " entirely bare of trees, whether wild or cultivated-." The 

 Sauromatae differed essentially in their habits from the 

 Scythians. Thus, whilst the Scythian women lived in their 

 ox-waggons, and never rode on horseback or went hunting with 

 their husbands, the Sarmatian women frequently followed the 

 chase on horseback with their consorts, sometimes even unac- 

 companied, and in war-time took the field, dressed exactly like 

 the men^ Their marriage law ordained that no girl should 

 wed until she had killed a man in battle. " Sometimes it 

 happens that a woman dies unmarried at an advanced age, 

 having never been able in her whole lifetime to fulfil this 

 condition." In Strabo's^ time a large number of the tribes of 

 the Caucasus who traded with the emporium of Dioscurias (the 

 modern Iskuriah) were considered Sarmatians, and it is not 

 unlikely that the Ossetes of the Caucasus, who according to 

 Ptolemy and their own tradition apparently once dwelt on 

 the shore of the Black Sea, may be of Sarmatian origin. 



In the fifth century B.C. the chief wealth of the nomad 

 Scythians, who dwelt on the north side of the Don, and tilled 

 not the soil, consisted chiefly of large herds of horses, on the 

 milk and flesh of which they principally subsisted, as has been 

 the case with all the Turko-Tartaric tribes of central Asia 

 down to our times. 



Herodotus^ remarks that the horses bore well the winter, 

 cold as it was, but mules and asses were quite unable to bear 

 it, " whereas in other countries mules and asses are found to 

 endure the cold, while horses if they stand still are frost- 



1 IV. 21. - IV. 116. a Herod, iv. 117. 



497, 499. 5 IV. 28. 



