SARNIA!TIA was the name given by the Romans to all the country in Europe and Asia between the Vistula and the Caspian. It was bounded S. by the Euxine and Mount Caucasus, and was divided by the Tanais into Sarmatia Europma and Sarmatia Asiatica. The people inhabiting this country were usually called Sauromatte by the Greeks and Sarmatie by the Romans.
Neither Herodotus nor Strabo makes mention of the European Sarmatians. The Sauromatm of Herodotus dwelt to the east of the Tanais, by which they were separated from the Scythians of Europe, and inhabited a tract of country extending northward from the Palus Mmotis equal to fifteen days' journey iu length. (Herod., iv. 21, 58.) Horodotus also says that the Sauromatie sprung from the intercom-so of a body of Scythians with some Amazons who came from the river Thermodon in Asia Minor, and that their language was a corrupted form of the Scythian (iv. 110-117). Strabo likewise places the Sauna tnatm between the Tanais and the Caspian (ix. p. 492, 507), and speaks of the people west of the Tanais as Scythians.
The principal nations in European Sarmatia were-1, the Venedm or Venedi, on the Baltic. 2, the Peucini, or Bastarnm, in the neigh
bourhood of the Carpathian Mountains, who, as well as the Venedi, appear to have been of German origin. (Tao.,' Germ.,' 46.) 3, the Iazygea, Rhoxolani, and Hamaxobii, in the southern part of modern Russia. 4, the Alatini or Alani Scythm, in the central part of Russia, in the neighbourhood of Moscow. The knowledge which the ancients possessed of these people was very small ; they are universally repre sented as a nomad people with filthy habits. The people with whom the Romans were brought most in contact were the lazyges, generally called lazyges Sarmatit, and sometimes lazyges Metanastm, because they were driven out of their original seats on the Euxino and the Palus Mmotis about the year A.D. 51. They Fettled in the country between the Danube and the Tibisis or Tibiscus (Theirs), after driving out the Daci, and carried on for a short time war with the Romans.
(Plin. iv. 25; Tac. xii. 29, 30.) They are frequently mentioned by subsequent writers as dangerous neighbours to the provinces of Pannonia and Mmsia.