676 S A R M 
SARLEINSBACH, a small town of Upper Austria; 23 
miles west-north-west of Lintz. Large quantities of linen are 
made here. 
SARLO, or Sallo Nagy, a small town of the south of 
Hungary, in the county of Barsch. Lat. 46. 6. N. long. 18. 
33. 11. E. 
SARMATIA, a large portion of Europe and Asia, which 
was divided into European and Asiatic Sarmatia. Sarmatia 
Europcea, or Sarmatia in Europe, was bounded on the 
north by the Sarmatic Ocean, and immense tracts of land, 
and extended from the Vistula, now the Weissel, parting it 
from Germany, to the Euxine Sea, the Bosphorus Cimme- 
rius, thePalus Maeotis, and the Tanais, dividing it from Asia 
and the Asiatic Sarmatia. The mountains of European Sar¬ 
matia, according to Ptolemy, were the Peuca, Amadoci, 
Boudinus, Alaunus, Carpatus, the Vindelician, and the Ri- 
ph®an mountains. The towns in the interior of the country 
wereCarcina, Torocca, Pasiris, Ercabum, Tracana, and Nau- 
barum, all near the river Carcinis; those near the Borys- 
thenes were Azagarium, Amadoca, Sarum, Serimum, and 
Olbia, the metropolis, called also Borysthenes; near the 
river Axius was Ordesus; towards the place where the Borys- 
thenes made a bend were Leinum, Sarbacum, and Niossum; 
near Dacia, on the Tyrus or Danaster, were Carrodunum, 
Mffitonium, Clepidava, Vibanta Varium, and Frtictum ; and 
near the mouth of the Tanais, was the island Alopecia, or of 
Foxes. 
Sarmatia of Asia had towards the north unknown boun¬ 
daries, towards the west European Sarmatia as far as the 
sources of the Tanais, and this river itself as far as its mouth 
in the Palus Maeotis, and this Palus to the Bosphorus. The 
mountains in this part of Sarmatia v'ere the Hippici, Ce- 
raunii. Corax, Alexandri Column®. Pylas Sarmatic®, and 
Albani® Pyl®. The towns were Exopolis, Naxarius, Ta¬ 
nais, &c. &c. 
Cellarius has collected the opinions of the ancients con¬ 
cerning the European and Asiatic Sarmatia; and M. d’An- 
ville has, with his usual skill and accuracy, applied them to 
modern geography. 
In the immense tract of land called Sarmatia, compre¬ 
hending the present Poland, Russia, and a great part of 
Tartary, dwelt, besides many others, the names of whom 
it is unnecessary to enumerate, the following people: viz. 
the Burgiones, Cariones, Sudeni, Geloni, Hamaxobii, Aga- 
thyrsi, Boras®, Melanchl®ni, Alautii or Alani, Jazyges, 
Roxolani, Bastam®, Carpi or Carpates, Sidones, Borani, 
and Venedi, called }ry Jornandes Winid® and Vinidi. The 
five last-named nations are thought to have come originally 
from Germany, especially the Bastam®; for even in the 
time of Tacitus, who is at a loss whether he ought to place 
them among the Germans or the Sarmatians, they agreed 
with the former in dress and language. The Gelonians were, 
according to Herodotus, of Greek extraction ; but had, even 
in his time, adopted, in a great measure, the customs and 
manners of the Budini, among whom they had settled, es¬ 
pecially the custom of painting their bodies, as we are in¬ 
formed. by Virgil and Claudian. The Budini dwelt near 
mount Budinus, from which sprung the Borysthenes, now 
called the Dnieper, or Nieper. The other nations above- 
mentioned were Gothic. See Goths. These various tribes 
were blended by the Romans under the common name of 
Sauramata;; and sometimes by both, under the denomina¬ 
tions of Scyth® or Scythians, and Get®. Each of them 
seems to have had its own king; for history mentions the 
kings of the Roxolani, of the Bastam®, and of the Jazyges. 
Ammianus Marcellinus describes the Sarmatians in general 
as a savage people, infamous for their lewdness. The Me- 
lanchl®ni are reproached, both by Ammianus and Herodo¬ 
tus, as cannibals, who fed on human flesh, and are hence 
called’by them, as well as by Mela and Pliny, anthropo¬ 
phagi and androphagi. 
The Sarmatians, says Mr. Gibbon, seem to unite the 
manners of the Asiatic barbarians with the figure and com¬ 
plexion of the ancient inhabitants of Europe. According 
to the various accidents of peace and war, of alliance or 
A T I A. 
conquest, the Sarmatians were sometimes confined to tlid 
banks of the Tanais; and they sometimes spread themselves 
over the immense plains which lie between the Vistula and 
the Wolga. The care of their numerous flocks and herds, 
the pursuit of game, and the exercise of war, or rather of 
rapine, directed the vagrant motions of the Sarmatians. 
The moveable camps or cities, the ordinary residence of 
their wives and children, consisted only of large Waggons 
drawn by oxen, and covered in the form of tents. The 
military strength of the nation was composed of cavalry; 
and the custom of their warriors, to lead in their hand one 
or two spare horses, enabled them to advance and to retreat 
with a rapid diligence, which surprised the security, and 
eluded the pursuit, of a distant enemy. (Ammian. 1. xvii. 
c. 12.) The Sarmatian horses were castrated, to prevent the 
mischievous accidents which might happen from the noisy 
and ungovernable passions of the males. Their poverty of 
iron prompted their rude industry to invent a sort of cuirass, 
which was capable of resisting a sword or javelin, though it 
was formed only of horses’ hoofs, cut into thin and polished 
slices, carefully laid over each other in the manner of scales 
or feathers, and strongly sewed upon an under-garment of 
coarse linen. The offensive arms of the Sarmatians were 
short daggers, long lances, and a weighty bow with a quiver 
of arrows. They were reduced to the necessity of employ¬ 
ing fish-bones for the points of their weapons; but the 
custom of dipping them in a venomous liquor, that poisoned 
the wounds which they inflicted, is alone sufficient to prove 
the most savage manners; since a people impressed with a 
sense of humanity, would have abhorred so cruel a practice, 
and a nation skilled in the arts of war would have disdained 
so impotent a resource. Whenever these barbarians issued 
from their desarts in quest of prey, their shaggy beards, un¬ 
combed locks, the furs with which they were covered from 
head to fooq and their fierce countenances, which seemed to 
express the innate cruelty of their minds, inspired the more 
civilized provincials of Rome with horror and dismay. 
Ovid, in the nine books of poetical epistles which he com¬ 
posed during the first seven years of his melancholy exile 
among these monsters of the desart, after their settlement 
near the Danube, describes in lively colours the dress andi 
manners, the arms and inroads of the Get® and Sarmatians, 
who were associated for the purposes of destruction; and 
from the accounts of history, there is some reason to believe 
that these Sarmatians were the Jazvg®, one of the most nu¬ 
merous and warlike tribes of the nation. The allurements of 
plenty engaged them to seek a permanent establishment on 
the frontiers of the empire. Soon after the reign of Au¬ 
gustus, they obliged the Dacians, who subsisted by fishing 
on the banks of the river Teyss or Tibiscus, to retire into 
the hilly country, and to abandon to the victorious Sarma¬ 
tians the fertile plains of the Upper Hungary, which are 
bounded by the course of the Danube and the semicircular 
inclosure of the Carpathian mountains. The Sarmatian 
Jazyg® were settled on the banks of the Pathissus, or Ti¬ 
biscus, when Pliny, in the year 79, published his Natural 
History. (See 1. iv. c. 22.) In the time of Strabo and Ovid, 
sixty or seventy years before, they appear to have inha¬ 
bited beyond the Get®, along the coast of the Euxine. In 
this advantageous position they watched or suspended the 
moment of attack, as they were provoked by injuries or 
appeased by presents; they gradually acquired the skill of 
using more dangerous weapons; and although the Sarma¬ 
tians did not illustrate their name by any memorable ex¬ 
ploits, they occasionally assisted their eastern and western 
neighbours, the Goths and the Germans, with a formidable 
body of cavalry. They lived under the irregular aristo¬ 
cracy of their chieftains; but after they had received into 
their bosom the fugitive Vandals, who yielded to the pres¬ 
sure of the Gothic power, they seem to have chosen a king 
from that nation, and from the illustrious race of the As- 
tingi, and who had formerly dwelt on the shores of the 
Northern Ocean. 
The Sarmatians first began to threaten the Roman empire 
in the reign of Nero, about seventeen years after Thrace had 
been 
