Herodotus - a resident of ancient Greece, the "father of history." The Greek became the author of the first surviving treatise "History", in which he described in detail the customs of the peoples that existed in the fifth century BC, as well as the course of the Greco-Persian wars. The works of Herodotus played an important role in the development of ancient culture.

Two key sources of information about the life path of Herodotus have come down to us: the encyclopedia "Court", created in the second half of the tenth century in Byzantium, and the texts of the historian himself. Some of the information in these sources is contradictory.

Bust of Herodotus

The generally accepted version is that Herodotus was born in Halicarnassus in 484 BC. This ancient city was located on the territory of the historical region "Karia", on the Mediterranean coast in Asia Minor. The city of Halicarnassus was founded by the Dorians, and a settlement of the Carians was located nearby (both the Dorians and the Carians are representatives of the main ancient Greek tribes).

The future ancient Greek historian was born into an influential and wealthy Lix family. In his youth, Herodotus participated in the political life of the people. He joined the party, which aimed to overthrow the tyrannical ruler Ligdamid, was expelled, lived for some time on the island of Samos.

Then Herodotus went on long and numerous journeys. He traveled to Egypt, Babylon, Asia Minor, Assyria, the Northern Black Sea region, the Hellespont, and also traveled around the Balkan Peninsula from Macedonia to the Peloponnese. During his travels, the historian made sketches for his subsequent creation.

At the age of forty, Herodotus settled in Athens. At that time, he was already reading excerpts from his History to representatives of the upper strata of urban society, which gave the researchers the opportunity to conclude that the outlines were written while traveling. In Athens, the historian met and became close friends with the supporters of Pericles, the commander and orator, who is considered one of the founders of democracy in Athens. In 444 BC, when the Greek colony of Thurii was founded on the site of the destroyed city of Sybaris, he took part in the restoration of the settlement from the ruins.

The science

Thanks to Herodotus, science was enriched by the fundamental work "History". This book cannot be called a historical study. It is an interesting story of an inquisitive, sociable, gifted man who had traveled to many places and had extensive knowledge of his contemporaries. The "History" of Herodotus combines several components at once:

• ethnographic data. The historian has collected an impressive amount of information about the traditions, customs, features of life of various tribes and peoples.
• geographic information. Thanks to the "History" it became possible to restore the outlines of the ancient states as of the fifth century BC.
• Natural history materials. Herodotus included in the book data on historical events that he managed to witness.
• literary component. The author was a gifted writer who managed to create an interesting and captivating narrative.

Book "History" by Herodotus

In total, the work of Herodotus includes nine books. The essay is divided into two parts:

1. In the first part, the author tells about Scythia, Assyria, Libya, Egypt, Babylonia and a number of other states of that time, as well as about the rise of the Persian kingdom. Since in the second half of the work the author intended to tell a story about numerous Greco-Persian wars, in the first part he sought to trace the milestones of the historical struggle between the Hellenes and the barbarians. Due to the desire for such unity, the interconnectedness of the presentation, Herodotus did not include in the work all the materials that he remembered from his travels, but managed with a limited number of them. In his work, he often expresses a subjective point of view on certain historical realities.
2. The second part of Herodotus' work is a chronological account of the military confrontation between the Persians and the Greeks. The story ends in 479 BC, when Athenian troops besieged and took the Persian city of Sesta.

When writing his book, Herodotus paid attention to the whims of fate and the envy of divine forces in relation to the happiness of people. The author believed that the gods constantly intervene in the natural course of historical events. He recognized the fact that the personal qualities of politicians are also the key to their success.

Herodotus condemned the rulers of Persia for their impudence, for their desire to violate the existing order of the world order, according to which the Persians should live in Asia, and the Hellenes in Europe. In 500 BC, the Ionian uprising took place, because of which Ancient Greece was involved in a bloody war. The author characterizes this event as a manifestation of pride and extreme indiscretion.

Structure of Herodotus' "History"

• The first book is Clio. It tells about the beginning of the strife between the barbarians and the Hellenes, provides the history of the ancient country of Lydia, the story of the Athenian politician and sage Solon, the tyrant Peisistratus, the history of Media and Sparta. In this book, Herodotus also mentions the Scythians in the context of the confrontation with the Cimmerians, and also talks about the war between the Massagetae and the Persians.
• The second book is "Euterpe". In this part of the work, the historian decided to tell about the history of Libya and Egypt, about the pygmies and the Nasamones, about the ancient Egyptian pharaohs. Here Herodotus recounted the legend of how Psammetichus I determined that the Phrygians were the oldest people in the world.
• Book three - "Thalia". It provides information about Arabia and India, about the Greek tyrant Polycrates, and also tells about the conquest of Egypt by the Persian king Cambyses, about the revolt of the magicians, the conspiracy of the seven and the anti-Persian uprising that took place in Babylon.

Fragment of a page from the book "History" by Herodotus

• The fourth book is Melpomene. Here the author described the peoples of Scythia, Thrace, Libya and Asia, and also presented the information known to him about the campaign of the Persian king Darius against the Scythians of the Black Sea region.
• The fifth book is Terpsichore. In this book, the emphasis is already on the events of the Greco-Persian wars. If in previous volumes the author devoted many pages to describing the ethnographic features of the peoples, then here he talks about the Persians in Macedonia, about the Ionian uprising, about the coming of the Persian governor Aristagoras to Athens and the Athenian wars.
• Book six - Erato. The key events of those described are the naval battle “Battle of Lada”, the capture of the Carian ancient Greek city of Miletus, the campaign of the Persian commander Mardonius, the campaign of the Persian commanders Artafren and Datis.

Herodotus. Bas-relief in the Louvre, Paris

• The seventh book is "Polyhymnia". It deals with the death of Darius and the ascension of Xerxes (Darius and Xerxes were Persian kings), Xerxes' attempts to conquer Asia and Europe, as well as the iconic battle of the Persians and Greeks in the Thermopylae gorge.
• Book eight - "Urania". This material describes the naval battle of Artemisia, the naval battle of Salamis, the flight of Xerxes, and the arrival of Alexander in Athens.
• Book nine - "Calliope". In the final part of the monumental work, the author decided to tell about the preparation and course of the battle of Plataea (one of the largest battles of the Greco-Persian wars, which took place on land), the battle of Merkala, as a result of which the Persian army was inflicted a crushing defeat, and the siege of Sest.

The “History” of this ancient Greek thinker is also called “The Muses”, since Alexandrian scientists decided to name each of its nine parts after one of the Muses.

Nine Muses named the volumes of Herodotus' History

In the process of work, Herodotus used not only his own memories and his own attitude to events, but was also guided by the memories of eyewitnesses, records of oracles, and inscription materials. In order to reconstruct each battle as accurately as possible, he specially visited the battlefields. Being a supporter of Pericles, he often sings of the merits of his family.

Despite the belief in divine intervention, the subjective approach and the limited means for obtaining information in antiquity, the author did not reduce his entire work to glorifying the battle of the Greeks for their freedom. He also tried to determine the causes and consequences of their victories or defeats. "History" of Herodotus became an important milestone in the development of world historiography.

The success of the historian's work is due not only to the fact that in one work he collected many facts about the peoples and events of his time. He also demonstrated the high skill of the storyteller, bringing his "History" closer to the epic and making it an exciting reading for both contemporaries and people of the New Age. Most of the facts stated by him in the book were subsequently proven during archaeological excavations.

Personal life

The biography of Herodotus has survived to this day only in the form of fragmentary information, in which it is impossible to find data about the scientist’s own family, about whether he had a wife and children. It is only known that the historian was an inquisitive and sociable person, he easily got along with people and was able to show amazing perseverance in the search for historically reliable facts.

Death

Herodotus supposedly died in 425 BC. The place of his burial is unknown.

I do not hesitate to assert that among the northern neighbors of the Scythians mentioned by Herodotus, not only the Neuri in Volhynia and Kiev region ... but also the Scythians, called plowmen and farmers and placed by Herodotus ... between the upper Bug and the middle Dnieper, were undoubtedly Slavs who were influenced by the Greeks. Scythian culture.

Lubor Niederle.

An analysis of the ethno-geographical records of Herodotus led us to an important, but almost boundless set of questions related to the origin of the Slavs, the area of ​​​​their settlement in different historical epochs, and their historical destinies. This complex can be considered here only concisely, without a fully developed argumentation.

The search for the ancestors of the Slavs among the peoples described by Herodotus was conducted a very long time ago, starting from the 17th century, when it was customary to identify the Scythians with the Slavs. Identification in the XIX century. belonging of the Scythians to the Iranian language family (V.F. Miller) eliminated such straightforward identifications, but the latest research by V.I. Abaeva and V. Georgieva showed the existence of a kind of Scythian period in the history of the Proto-Slavic language, expressed in a large number of Iranianisms included in the Slavic languages; of these, the word “God” should be put in the first place, replacing the Indo-European “Deivas”.

It seems to me that the observation of B.V. Gornunga: “It can be concluded that the Scythian plowmen (Slavs?) and some other tribes of the forest-steppe were temporarily superficially “Scythianized” .

A private question: where were the Proto-Slavs located in the era of Herodotus? - is a section of the big problem about the location of the Proto-Slavs in general and must be solved within the framework of the entire Slavic world, which has not been studied evenly enough.

As long as we have in our hands only a thin guiding thread leading to determining the place of a part of the Proto-Slavs in the Scythian time, this is the comparison of O.N. Trubachev with the archaeological area of ​​the Chernoles culture and some cultures of the Scythian time. For the region of the Middle Dnieper region studied by the linguist, an exact dating is established: a peculiar configuration of the Chernoles culture (which was retained in the Scythian tradition until the 4th century BC) took shape in the 8th century. BC, when the right-bank Chernoles tribes colonized the left bank of the Borisfen and settled Vorskla-Pantikapa. Situation VIII - IV centuries. BC. and reflected the archaic Slavic hydronymy, defined by O.N. Trubachev. Never - neither before nor later did the everyday features of the Middle Dnieper tribes, revealed by archaeologists, coincide with such completeness with the data of archaic Slavic hydronymy. No matter how interesting this example, the degree of its evidence is reduced to a certain extent by its singularity. To conduct a search for the location of the Proto-Slavs in the Scythian time, I consider it necessary to use a retrospective method. Let's take the following chronological slices:

1. Medieval Slavs in Europe, X - XI centuries. AD
2. Slavs on the eve of the great settlement, VI - VII centuries. AD
3. The Slavic world of the times of the first mentions of the Wends, the turn of AD.
4. Slavs in the era of Herodotus.
5. Slavdom in the period of primary sprout from other Indo-European tribes.

The first section is well supplied with all kinds of sources (written evidence, archeology, anthropology, linguistics) and is the clearest. The second chronological cut is provided by accurate information from written sources about the campaigns of the Sclavins and Antes on Byzantine possessions and very vague information about both the original place of residence of both, and the location of the Wends, their common ancestors. The one-sidedness of written sources is compensated by archaeological data: at present, the culture of the “Prague type” (or “Korchak type”) of the 6th-7th centuries has been very carefully studied. AD recognized as Slavic. The combination of two maps (Slavs in the 10th - 11th centuries and the culture of the Prague type of the 6th - 7th centuries) gives the following: the zone of Slavic ceramics of the 6th century. occupies a middle position, stretching in a wide strip from the Oder to the Middle Dnieper. The southern border is the Central European mountains (the Sudetes, the Carpathians), the northern one is from the bend of the Vistula in the Ployka region further along the Pripyat. Such is the situation on the eve of the great settlement of the Slavs.

For three - four centuries, the Slavs advanced in the west to the Elbe and Fulda, in the south, crossing the Danube, they passed almost the entire Balkan Peninsula to the Peloponnese. The colonization movement was especially widespread in the northeast direction, where the Slavs settled in a relatively rare Baltic and Finno-Ugric environment. Here the Slavs reached Lake Peipsi, Lake Ladoga, the Upper Trans-Volga region; the southeastern border ran from the middle Oka to Voronezh and Vorskla. The steppes, as always, were occupied by nomads.

At the stage of the VII century. one can still trace the expansion of the archaeological area (Rusanova, map 75), but in the future the role of archaeological data sharply decreases. To catch the contours of the entire Slavic world of the 10th century using archaeological materials. much more difficult than for the VI century.

The third chronological section is scheduled for the turn of our era (± 2nd century). It would be highly desirable to consider that bright time in the history of the Slavs, which the author of "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" called the "Trojan Ages" - II - IV centuries. AD, when the Slavs prospered in the interval between the Sarmatian raids and the invasion of the Huns, when the conquest of Dacia by Trajan made the Slavs immediate neighbors of Rome, due to which the old trade in bread was widely resumed. But this interesting era is complicated, firstly, by the great migration of peoples, the advancement of the Goths and other Germanic tribes, and secondly, by the strong leveling influence of Roman culture, Roman imports, which makes it difficult to recognize ethnic signs. Therefore, in search of the Slavic “ancestral homeland”, it would be more correct to skip the era of the Chernyakhov and late Przeworsk cultures.

Our third section captures the time of the Przeworsk and Zarubintsy cultures (2nd century BC - 2nd century AD), which in their totality very accurately correspond to the main array of Slavic culture of the later second section of the 6th century. AD In the same way, the Przeworsk-Zarubynets massif extends from the Oder to the Middle Dnieper (covering both banks here); the northern border goes from the break of the Vistula along the Pripyat, and the southern one also rests on the mountain ranges and goes from the Carpathians to Tyasmin. Geographical coincidence is almost complete. But is this enough to recognize the Przeworsk-Zarubynets massif as Slavic?

The Polish Slavist T. Ler-Splavinsky, according to archaic Slavic hydronymy, approximately in the 1st - 2nd centuries. AD, i.e. precisely for the period of existence of the Przeworsk-Zarubinets archaeological culture, outlines two contiguous geographical areas that coincide with the above-mentioned archaeological cultures of the same time. Even the border between the two zones of hydronymics runs exactly where the boundary of the Zarubintsy and Przeworsk cultures lies. The only difference is that the area of ​​archaic Slavic hydronymy in the western half is somewhat wider than the Przeworsk culture and covers the upper reaches of the Elbe and Pomorye. In the eastern, Zarubintsy, half, the coincidence of linguistic data with archaeological data is complete. According to linguistic data, F.P. Owl.

Archaeological materials give us not only statics (area), but also dynamics. The main features of temporary changes are as follows: from the west, Germanic elements penetrate into the area of ​​Przeworsk culture; the Przeworsk elements partially wedged (along the southern edge) into the Zarubintsy culture, and the Zarubinets Slavic tribes began an active colonization process in the northeast, beyond the Dnieper, wedging into the environment of the Baltic tribes of the Desenye region. For our purposes, it is important that not only linguistic Slavic materials (approximately dated), but also the first written evidence of the Venedian Slavs belong to the same Przeworsk-Zarubynets time. Historians of the 6th century AD wrote that the common ancestor of the "Sklavins" and "Antes", who attacked Byzantium from the northwest and northeast, was the people of the Venets. Geographers I - II centuries. AD they knew the Venets themselves as a people inhabiting the vast "Sarmatia".

In order to correctly assess the degree of usefulness for our purpose of written sources, contemporary Przeworsk-Zarubinets culture, we are completely lacking in separate textbook excerpts that speak of the Veneti near the Vistula or the similarity of the Veneti with the Sarmatians or Germans. It is necessary to consider the geographical concept of the ancient authors and the change in this concept under the influence of that practical acquaintance with the peoples of Europe, which occurred as a result of the advance of the Romans to the north. Much has been done in this direction by L. Niederle and in our time by G. Lovmyansky.

Herodotus' idea of ​​Scythia, based on accurate measurements and detailed cross-questions, determined the views of Greek geographers on these lands for several hundred years. But Herodotus paid great attention to the East, to those regions from where, in his opinion, the Scythians once came; for this purpose, he attracted Aristaeus of Prokopnes with his information about the Urals. In the north, Herodotus found out the origins of Borisfen, the land of the distant "Androphages", and established a clear fundamental place in geographical references behind this river. But the western and northwestern directions away from its Scythian square were of little interest to the historian, and for a long time the sources of Tira and the land beyond the neurons became an area of ​​the unknown for geographers.

The advance of Greek colonization to the west, to the shores of Sicily and Gaul, gave geographers new points of view on Europe and the place of Scythia in it. Efor, historian of the 4th century. BC. (405-330), gives an interesting distribution of the peoples of the Old World:

“The area facing Apeliot and close to the sunrise is inhabited by the Indus; the Ethiopians own the note and noon; the region on the side of Zephyr and the sunset is occupied by the Celts, and the area facing Borea and the north is inhabited by the Scythians.

These parts are unequal: the region of the Scythians and Ethiopians is larger, and the region of the Indus and Celts is smaller. "The area inhabited by the Scythians occupies the intermediate part of the solar circle: it lies opposite the people of the Ethiopians, which, apparently, stretches from winter sunrise to the shortest sunset."

"Scythians" or those peoples who were hiding under this generalized name, Efor allotted a huge space, covering the ecumene from the north and from the northeast and reaching in the northwest to the small land of the Celts.

For the era of Ephora, the archaeological boundary of the Celtic culture reached the Oder. Consequently, the “Scythians” of his time should include the monuments located east of the Oder along the Vistula of the so-called culture of underklesh burials.

The definition of Scythia as a neighbor of Celtica may seem to be simply the result of the geographical ignorance of Ephor, a native of Asia Minor. But at the same time, around the middle of the 4th century, the location of Scythia on the shores of the Baltic Sea becomes a new geographical concept. Its author is, apparently, Piteus, whose initial point of view was shifted far to the west from Greece: he came from the farthest western Greek colony in Celtica - from Massilia (modern Marseille). Pitaeus traveled the North Sea, knew Britain and Ireland, and may have sailed as far as Jutland.

“Against Scythia, which lies above Galatia, there is an island in the Ocean called Basilia. Upon this island, the waves throw forth in abundance a substance called electricity, found nowhere else in the universe ...

Electrum is collected on the aforementioned island and brought by the natives to the opposite mainland (i.e. to Scythia. - B.R.), along which it is transported to our countries ”(Diodor Siculus).

The concept of Baltic Scythia, or more precisely "Scythia to the Baltic Sea", became especially strong after the advance of the Romans to the shores of the Rhine and the North Sea, i.e. in the era of the highest prosperity of the Przeworsk-Zarubinets tribes.

After the campaigns of the Romans on the Rhine and Elbe and after they created an uninterrupted defensive line from the sea to the Danube, their geographical ideas about Europe became more holistic: the old knowledge of the southern regions closed with newly acquired information about the North Sea and the Baltic. In this regard, the testimony of two contemporaries who wrote in the middle of the 1st century BC is very important. AD: a native of Spain Pomponius Mela and a participant in the northern campaigns of Pliny the Elder.

Mentioning the Rhine, the Elbe and Jutland surrounded by islands, Pomponius Mela defines the eastern limit of the Germanic tribes at the westernmost edge of the Baltic and proceeds to describe "Sarmatia":

“The inner part of Sarmatia is wider than its coastal part. From the lands lying to the east, Sarmatia is separated by the Vistula River. The southern border of Sarmatia is the Istra River.

Here, Sarmatia means located south of the Baltic Sea and west of the Vistula (obviously, its lower reaches) the areas of distribution of the tribes of the Przeworsk and Oksyvska (coastal) cultures of the first centuries AD. e. In a further presentation, Mela speaks of the Black Sea Sarmatians. The geographer's desire to link together the peoples of the Black Sea region with the peoples of the Baltic Pomerania is noteworthy. At first glance, it seems that Mela made a mistake by mistaking the Vistula for the eastern border of Sarmatia: after all, the real Sarmatians and their immediate neighbors were not to the west, but to the southeast of the Vistula. But this contradiction is resolved by an important note of the geographer: the inner, southern part is wider than the coastal one. Obviously, by the mouth of the Vistula, he determined a clearer coastal line for him.

Pliny, obviously relying on information about the voyage of the Roman squadron in AD 5, describes the Baltic Sea, mentioning Scandinavia and Scythia as the southern amber coast of the sea. G. Lovmyansky very wittily suggested that the squadron, whose information was used by Pliny, made a circular detour of the sea, to the mouth of the Vistula, and the Romans called the southern coast either the “Scythian region”, or the “island” of Eningia, where “up to the Vistula lived the Sarmatians, Wends , skirrs and girrs ”(Pliny book IV, § 97).

Claudius Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD also considers "European Sarmatia" in a very wide geographical framework from Tanais to the Vistula and from the Venedian Gulf of the Baltic Sea ("Sarmatian Ocean") to the Black Sea coast.

Ptolemy gives the exact coordinates of the "Venedi Mountains" (47°30′ east longitude 55° north latitude). This corresponds in latitude to the Budin and Alan mountains, i.e., according to our account, approximately the 50th parallel. In the meridional direction, these mountains are located to the north of the Danube Gate and the Carpathians. These coordinates (of course, approximate) correspond to the Małopolska Upland in the upper reaches of the Vistula, the Warta and the tributaries of the Oder, part of which is the Swietokrzyzskie Mountains.

Ptolemy names the Wends living “across the entire Venedsky Gulf” in the first place among the tribes of Sarmatia, and from the Wends, as a guide, he counts (not very clearly, though) the position of other tribes: the Gitons (below the Wends, near the Vistula), the Avarins near the origins of the Vistula. Below the Wends live in the eastern direction Galinds, Sudins, Stavans. “Lower” in this case means “closer to the sea”, “downstream” of the Vistula.

Ptolemy ends the Scythian-Baltic concept, born as a desire to combine knowledge received from different parts of the Old World - from the Black Sea and from Marseilles and Celtica. This concept was reinforced by the presence of Slavic (Venedian) tribes both in Scythia (in a broad geographical sense) and near the Baltic Sea beyond the Vistula.

The eastern border of the Germanic tribes at the turn of our era passed along the Elbe basin, but over the next two centuries, two heterogeneous, but partly related processes took place: firstly, Roman geographers expanded their understanding of the tribes beyond Albis (east of the Elbe) ; some of them turned out to be Germans (Semnons, Burgundians), while others were simply ranked as Germans, and in geographical writings a new artificial region appeared instead of "Scythia" or "Sarmatia" - "Germany", which extended to the Vistula. Secondly, there was a real process of some infiltration of Germanic elements in the eastern and southern directions, a process reflected in the archaeological cultures of the Elbe-Vislen interfluve. It should be said that the results of this process were far from being as significant as it might seem from the geographical surveys of that time. The areas east of the Oder continued to be Przeworsk in their archaeological appearance.

Summing up our third chronological cut, it should be said that written sources, in full agreement with archaeological ones, define in Europe a vast Baltic-Pontic region inhabited by "Scythians", "Sarmatians", Wends. Archaeological unity for the era of Mela and Pliny, allowing to transfer the Eastern European terminology (Scythians, Sarmatians) to the Baltic, is only one - Przeworsk-Zarubinet.

In our gradual retrospective movement, we will skip the fourth chronological cut (Scythian time) as the desired one and first get acquainted with the very primary area of ​​\u200b\u200bsettlement of the Slavs, which we took for the fifth chronological cut.

Linguists determine the time of the offshoot of the Proto-Slavs from the mass of Indo-European tribes by about the 2nd millennium BC. e. V. Georgiev speaks about the beginning of the II millennium, and B.V. Gornung is more specific about the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. and connects with the Trzynec archaeological culture of the 15th - 12th centuries. BC. The Trzynec culture of the Middle Bronze Age is currently well studied. The area of ​​\u200b\u200bits distribution is outlined by S. S. Berezanskaya as follows: from the Oder to the Middle Dnieper, a wide strip between the Pripyat and the upper reaches of the Vistula, Dniester and Bug. Within this framework, the Trzynec culture coincides so completely with the common area of ​​the Przeworsk and Zarubinets cultures that it is quite possible to use a map of these two cultures to accurately determine its geographical location, although there are about nine centuries between the Trzynec culture and the Zarubinets-Przeworsk complex.

A number of researchers (A. Gardavsky, B.V. Gornung, V. Genzel, P.N. Tretyakov, A.I. Terenozhkin, S.S. Berezanskaya) consider it possible to build the ancestral home of the Slavs or the primary placement of the Proto-Slavs to Tshinetskaya (or to Tshinetsko-Komarovskaya) culture between the Oder and the Left Bank of the Dnieper.

The neighbors of the primary Proto-Slavs were tribes with other centers of gravity, from which the following groups formed in the same centuries (and in the south, perhaps even earlier): Germans and Celts - in the west; Illyrians, Thracians and, possibly, Iranian-speaking pre-Scythian tribes - in the south; the Balts - in a wide, but deserted northern space. The least definite was the northeastern outskirts of the land of the Proto-Slavic tribes, where there could be Indo-European tribes that are unclear to us, who did not create a strong, tangible unity for us, but turned out to be a substratum for those colonists who slowly settled from the Dnieper for a millennium.

The notion of the Tshinec-Komarov culture as Proto-Slavic is very successful, in my opinion, reconciles two competing hypotheses of the “ancestral homeland”: the Vistula-Oder and the Bug-Dnieper, because. and the Trzynetsk and later Zarubinets-Przeworsk cultures cover both the Vistula-Oder region and the adjacent Bugodneprovsk region.

The elongation of the Proto-Slavic region in the latitudinal direction for 1300 km (with a meridional width of 300-400 km) facilitated contact with different groups of neighboring tribes. The western half of the Proto-Slavic world was drawn into some historical ties, the eastern half into others. This was especially true at the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age, when the western Proto-Slavs were drawn into the orbit of the Lusatian culture, and the eastern, after some time, into the orbit of the Scythian. This did not yet create separate Western and Eastern Proto-Slavs, but, as it were, predicted and determined the future division of the Slavs in the 1st millennium AD. on the western and eastern.

The Proto-Slavic world was like an ellipse, which has a common perimeter, but within which the researcher can find two independent focuses. As soon as external ties were weakened, the unity of the Proto-Slavic world was clearly and tangibly revealed. From the above brief overview of the area of ​​​​settlement of the Slavs in different eras, it can be seen that three times over two millennia this unity manifested itself in the homogeneity of archaeological material in the same territory:

1. After the turbulent era of movements of Indo-European pastoralists (at the turn of the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC), approximately in the 15th century. BC. the unity of Trzynec culture is established. This is our fifth, deepest chronological slice.

2. After the high rise experienced by the Proto-Slavs together with the tribes of the Lusatian culture and the Scythians, and after the fall of the Scythian state, the unity of the Zarubinets-Pshevorsk culture is again manifested within the same geographical boundaries, supported by archaic Slavic hydronymy and the evidence of ancient geographers who stretched "Scythia" or " Sarmatia" to the southern coast of the Baltic Sea inclusive. The date of this unity is the 2nd century. BC. - II century. AD
3. After three centuries of the most lively economic ties with the Roman Empire (II - IV centuries AD) and after the fall of Rome, Slavic unity is once again indicated. This is a culture of the Prague-Korchak type of the 6th-7th centuries. The great resettlement of the Slavs in the VI - VIII centuries. destroyed the boundaries of ancient unity and those common language processes that were experienced by all the Proto-Slavs together.

The two-thousand-year stability of the main area of ​​settlement of the Proto-Slavs (of course, not absolute) allows us to look at the Scythian world of Herodotus from the standpoint of a Slavist: those areas of his "Scythia" that fall within the area of ​​the previous Trzynets culture and, at the same time, the area of ​​the subsequent Zarubintsy culture, should be considered as Proto-Slavic and subject them to analysis from this side.

We have already seen a brilliant confirmation of what has been said in the complete coincidence of the range of archaic Proto-Slavic hydronymy, identified by O.N. Trubachev, with the areas of the Chernolesskaya culture of the pre-Scythian time, firstly, and the Scythian agricultural culture of the Borisfenites, secondly.

Scythian genealogical legends, recorded by Herodotus, are devoted to a huge literature. Recently, two books have been published summarizing the historiography of the issue over the past decades; these are the books of A.M. Khazanov and D.S. Raevsky. Their historiographical chapters save me from analyzing contradictory opinions (A. Christensen, J. Dumézil, E. Benveniste, B.N. Grakov and E.A. Grantovsky), which, in my opinion, contain four erroneous constructions:

1. The two legends told by Herodotus (one in §§ 5-7, and the other in §§ 8-10) are considered as “two versions”, “two variants” of one common Scythian legend, although they are fundamentally different.

2. Both "versions" are dated either to the whole of Scythia as a whole, or specifically to the "alien nomadic environment", although the ritual worship of the plow and yoke speaks against the nomadic, non-plowing Scythians.

3. The gifts of heaven, listed in one of the legends, are considered as a reflection of the "class-caste structure of the Scythian society":

Ax - kings and aristocracy
Chalice - class of priests
Plow and yoke - pastoralists (?)

It is more natural to consider the sacred golden gifts as the embodiment of elementary magical symbolism: a plow with a yoke - a plentiful harvest, a supply of bread, a bowl - a supply of drink (maybe ritual), an ax - a symbol of protection, security.

4. I consider the fourth mistake to be the long-standing desire to distribute the four “kinds” coming from the ancestor kings according to the indicated “estate-caste” scheme:

Such schemes are objectionable. Firstly, the existence of a class-caste structure among the nomadic or agricultural Scythians has not been proven in any way, and secondly, it is very strange to trace the origin of simple shepherds to the king or the son of the king.

The third and most serious objection is that Pliny mentions the Avkhetians not as a social stratum (warriors - according to Dumezil, priests - according to Grantovsky), but as a tribe that has a certain geographical area on Gipanis.

A. M. Khazanov is inclined to admit that the legend shows a desire to “substantiate the divine establishment of social relations inherent in Scythia”, but does not completely break with the ethnic interpretation of the “kinds” of Lipoksai and his brothers.

D.S. Raevsky seeks to reconcile the class-caste hypothesis with the ethnic one, putting forward a new religious and mythological interpretation, which, in his opinion, should complement and explain all perplexities.

Before entering into the consideration of the socio-cosmogonic hypothesis (without denying interesting and fruitful individual provisions), let's try to apply the simplest geographical method, which is fundamentally denied by our authors: Herodotus' geographical "Scythian square" of 4000 x 4000 stages is considered as "a reflection of ideas about the organized universe"; geographical and economic differences are not taken into account, the ethnic side of the legends is ignored.

It seems to me that the analysis of the mythological essence of legends should be preceded by the definition of their tribal affiliation. It seems to me very dangerous to attribute the cult of arable tools to nomadic pastoralists, about whom Herodotus insistently said that "the Scythians are not tillers, but nomads" (§ 2).

Considering the legends, I would like to start not in the order in which I placed them in my book Herodotus. Let's start with the legend about Agathyrs, Gelon and Scythus, told to the historian by the local Greeks (the so-called Hellenic version). Its essence is as follows: the half-snake-half-maiden, the ruler of the lands, who was in Gilea (obviously, the Dnieper), gave birth to three sons from Hercules: Agathirs, Gelon and Scythus. Hercules, leaving the half-snake, bequeathed to her his bow and belt so that she would give her kingdom to one of her sons who could pull the bow and gird herself correctly. Only the youngest son, Skif, was able to fulfill his father's covenant. "Two sons - Agathirs and Gelon - could not cope with the task, and their mother expelled them from the country" (§ 10). Scythian, the son of Hercules, became the ancestor of all Scythian kings.

The legendary events are obviously dated for the “Primordial Scythia”, which stretched from the Danube to Karkinitida. Somewhere in the middle of this strip near the Dniester, the Cimmerian kings died. It is possible that the legend reflects the primary settlement of the Scythian and related tribes in the 7th century. BC. after the extermination of the Cimmerians. Some tribes moved further west to the Carpathians, where they conquered the pampered Thracians and adopted much of their culture (the Agafir union), others (the Gelonian union of tribes) moved north, to the Dnieper Left Bank, subjugating themselves as the native population of the proto-Baltic (?) appearance, the Budins , and recently moved here from the right bank of the Borysfenites along the Vorskla-Pantikape. The Scythians proper remained in the Black Sea and Azov regions. At some time (VI - V centuries BC), part of the Scythians separated from the royal ones and migrated to the Don.

The genealogical legend reflects the quite probable settlement of the Scythian tribes in Eastern Europe, considering the southern Black Sea steppes from where the nomadic newcomers fanned out to the Carpathian pastures, to the steppe and forest-steppe Left Bank of the Dnieper and to the distant lands of the Middle Don. In the areas of settlement of the Agathirs and Gelons, where there were not only steppes, but also forest-steppe, there was a settled native population, which became the substrate of new ethnic formations, which separated them from the steppe Scythians.

D.S. Raevsky owns a very interesting interpretation of the plots of the images on the Scythian royal vessels: in a number of images, he rightly sees illustrations for the genealogical legend mentioned above. Such vessels come from Gerros (Gaymanova Mogila), from the region of the “separated Scythians” (Voronezh Chastye mounds) and from the Cimmerian Bosporus (Kul-Oba), as if outlining the extreme points of the royal Scythians.

The totality of all the numerous plots of Scythian art testifies against the thesis of Khazanov - Raevsky about the general Scythian symbolic meaning of the plow and the team of oxen - neither the Scythians nor their neighbors have this plot at all. Unraveled by D.S. Raevsky illustrations to the legend of the Scythian, the son of Hercules, are not found anywhere except in the area of ​​​​the royal Scythian nomads. Neither the Gelons, nor the Agathyrsians, nor the Borysthenites have them.

Let us put on the map the lands of the Agathyrsians, Gelons and all the nomadic Scythians, including the Alazons, in whose land King Ariant set up his famous memorial vessel. As a result, we will get an almost complete picture of the distribution of Scythian antiquities, a specific Scythian culture of the 6th - 4th centuries. with one extremely important exception: on the map illustrating the resettlement of the mythical sons of Hercules, the land of the Scythians-Borysphenites in the Middle Dnieper region, the main center of farmers, exporters of bread to the emporium of the Borysphenites, to Olbia, remained unfilled.

In the legend about the sons of Hercules, the hero's bow, the main weapon of equestrian archers, nomadic Scythians, appears as the main sacred object. The important role of archery among the Scythians is confirmed not only by many Greek testimonies about the Scythians as excellent horsemen, but also by the legend of Ariantes: he determined the number of Scythians by the number of arrowheads. It is most natural (as a number of researchers did) to connect the legend of the test with a bow with the Scythians proper, with nomadic archer warriors. It is also natural to associate the legend of the sacred plow not with all the Scythians in general, but only with those who were famous for their agriculture. As long as the "Scythian farmers" (Georgoi) were unjustly associated with the mouth of the Dnieper and they appeared before the researchers in some kind of geographical confusion, in a patchwork with callipids and royal Scythians, until then it was still possible to combine two legends into one and spread an artificial construction obtained by such contamination on all areas of Scythian culture, on all Scythians. Now, when the geographical analysis of sources, in full agreement with archeology, has led to a clear demarcation of nomads and farmers, such an association (of course, in case of agreement with the results of the analysis) appears in an extremely unfavorable light. We will proceed from the fact that the legend of the bow of Hercules is associated with nomadic archers, and the legend of arable tools that fell from the sky is associated with plowmen.

The historical information contained in the legend of the three brothers, the sons of Hercules, is relatively simple: the three peoples, occupying the space from the Carpathians to the Seversky Donets, come from one common root and are related to the Scythians. There is no reason to doubt the reliability of these data, because throughout this space, common signs of Scythian culture dominate. The Gelons speak Scythian, but nothing is said about the Agathyrsians about the difference between their language and the Scythian.

The historical information of the legend about the heavenly plow is much more interesting and requires special analysis.

“According to the stories of the Scythians, their people are the youngest of all. And it happened in this way. The first inhabitant of this still uninhabited country was a man named Targitai. The parents of this Targitai, as the Scythians say, were Zeus and the daughter of the Borisfen river. I don't believe this, of course, despite their claims. Targitai was of this kind, and he had three sons: Lipoksai, Arpoksai, and the youngest, Kolaksai.

During their reign, golden objects fell from the sky to the Scythian land: a plow with a yoke, an ax and a bowl.

The elder brother saw these things first; no sooner had he come to pick them up than the gold blazed. Then he retreated, and the second brother approached, and again the gold was engulfed in flames.

So the heat of the flaming gold drove away both brothers, but when the third, younger brother approached, the flame went out, and he took the gold to his house.

Therefore, the older brothers agreed to cede the whole kingdom to the younger one ”(§ 5).

A plow with a yoke is placed in the first place among the sacred gifts of heaven, which makes it necessary to connect this legend primarily with the agricultural forest-steppe zone of Scythia.

The next paragraph of Herodotus' History is of exceptional historical interest and was subjected to numerous comments in its first part, but unfortunately, its second part (about chippings) was often silent on commentators. It is noteworthy that in the books of A.M. Khazanov and D.S. Raevsky not only does not give one or another interpretation of the term "chipped", but even this name itself is never mentioned in both books. Meanwhile, the importance of the theme of "chipped" is beyond doubt:

“So, from Lipoksai, as they say, there was a Scythian tribe called Avkhats. From the middle Arpoksai - catiars with traspians, and from the youngest king - called paralats. All of them together have a name - chipped by the name of their king. Hellenes called them Scythians" (§ b).

Sacred gold is guarded by the kings and honored with annual plentiful sacrifices in the open air (§ 7). Once again, we can make sure that Herodotus clearly distinguished between the Scythians proper and the cleaved farmers - he described their festivities and sacrifices separately, and where the deities of the Scythian nomads are described, sacrificing in the treeless steppe, there is no mention of the veneration of the golden plow and yoke, but it speaks of the worship of the sword and the slaughter of captives (§ 62).

An expert on the Scythian language V.I. Abaev writes about agricultural tools: “Terms such as the names of the yoke and some of its parts, harrows, wheels, sickle, oats, crops, mortars undoubtedly lead to European languages ​​and are alien to the rest of the Iranian world.”

The further fate of the country of admirers of the plow and the yoke is as follows:

“Because the country was vast, then Kolaksay divided it for his sons into three kingdoms, and in one of them, the most extensive, gold is preserved ”(§ 7).

The country of admirers of the arable team of the Skolt farmers is not located in the southern steppe, to the north of which the plowmen live. It is located at the northern limit of reach, at the turn of the snow-covered spaces.

“It is also said that in the countries lying above, to the north of the upper inhabitants of this country, one cannot look into the distance, nor pass because of the flying feathers.” (§ 7).

The only region in Eastern Europe within the Scythian square that can be identified with the country of plow worshipers, a country ruled by the descendants of Targitai and Kolaksai, is the region of the agricultural Scythian tribes of the Middle Dnieper. Following the Hellenic tradition of calling the inhabitants of this country Scythians (which, obviously, was reinforced by its entry into the Scythian federation), Herodotus writes about them as Scythians, but always adds an explanatory epithet: “Scythians-plowmen” (i.e., “fake Scythians” , living a non-nomadic way of life), "Scythian farmers".
In a number of cases, Herodotus replaces an artificial ethnic or economic name with a geographical one: "Borisfenites" - "Dnepryans".

Fortunately, he nevertheless found it necessary to give a final explanation, listing the lands of the descendants of Targitai and saying that all of them in the aggregate were chipped off, and the Greek colonists called them Scythians (obviously, by analogy with the actual Scythians surrounding the Greeks).

So, we got the right to call the Dnieper-Dniester array of agricultural cultures of the Scythian time and the Scythian appearance by its self-name - chipped. The southern border of the Skolots is the steppe with its own Scythian nomadic population; the eastern neighbors are the Gelons, who probably included the Skolot settlers on Vorskla in their union. The northern and western boundaries of the distribution of the collective name “Skoloty” remain unclear to us. It is most likely that the unification of three or four tribes under a common name, which took place several centuries before the campaign of Darius, corresponds to the unity of the Chernoles culture of the 10th-8th centuries. BC, in which four local groups can be seen: Tyasma (with the largest number of fortresses), Kyiv, Podolsk and Vorsklin (the latest).

Unfortunately, we do not have data for the exact geographical distribution of all the Skolot tribes. Only the Avhats are mentioned by Pliny:

“Inside the mainland live the Avkhetians, in whose possessions Gipanis originates, the neurons, from which Boristhenes flows.”

Proceeding from this, with the Avkhats, we must compare for the Cimmerian time the Podolsk group of Chernoles sites, and for the Scythian - the East Podolsk group of monuments of the Scythian culture, which really comes into contact with the southwestern edge of the land of the Nevri. Hypanis in its new sense really originates in these places visited by Herodotus.

Iranians translate the word "paralat" as "pre-established" ("paradata"), "originally appointed". Therefore, the richest and most fortified region of both the Chernoles and Scythian cultures, the region south of Ros along Tyasmin, with a large number of archaeological sites of both eras, should be considered the area of ​​\u200b\u200b"originally assigned" paralats.

It is difficult to say whether the sacred gold of the skolots was kept in this fortified, but also the closest region to the steppe riders. It is possible that a more northern, safer, remote from raids area beyond Ros, along the mountainous bank of the Dnieper, was chosen to store common tribal relics. There are Chernolesk monuments here near Kyiv, in Podgortsy, near Kanev and in other places. In later times, the settlement at the mouth of the Ros near the Great Scythian settlement was the center of the cult of the god of fertility - Rod.

For the Scythian time, such huge settlements as Trakhtemirovskoye in the Dnieper bend or the Great Scythian settlement near Kanev could be a suitable place for sheltering relics in the same places. However, all this is so conjectural that it does not deserve discussion; I just wanted to show that in the northern, Kyiv part of the Chernoless-Scythian monuments of the 10th - 4th centuries. BC. there could be many points suitable for hiding ritual gold.

The attitude of the Skolots to the Proto-Slavs is as follows: the Skolots-farmers of the Middle Dnieper region occupied the eastern tip of the vast Proto-Slavic world, in contact here with the Cimmerian steppes, and later with the Scythian steppes. The presence of the most archaic Slavic hydronymy, revealed, as has been repeatedly said, by O.N. Trubachev specifically for this territory, confirms the Proto-Slavic character of the population of the country of plow admirers - chipped.

In connection with the definition of the place that the Proto-Slavs occupied in the Scythia of Herodotus, we should make a comparison, which, at first glance, may seem far from scientific rigor.

Turning to Herodotus after a whole series of works on the historical geography of the Eastern Slavs of the 9th - 12th centuries. AD, I could not help but notice that a certain geographical similarity was found between a certain part of the ancient Russian tribes and the agricultural tribes of Scythia. Let's try to superimpose the map of the Skolot agricultural tribes of Herodotus' time, developed above, on the general map of the Slavic tribes listed by the chronicler Nestor, the author of the 12th century. The chronological range between the two historians is more than one and a half thousand years, and nevertheless, a certain coincidence stands out quite clearly: where in the time of Herodotus the cleaved farmers were located, in the Nestorian time there are tribes (more precisely, unions of tribes), whose names end in "- ane", "-yane"; all the rest of the space occupied by the Slavs in later times (starting from the first centuries A.D.) contains tribes with names in “-ichi”, “-itsi”. There are four exceptions to this system that require special consideration.

Before delving into the analysis of exceptions, let's consider the issue more broadly, within the framework of the entire Proto-Slavic world. As a basis, let us take all that stable territory, which already three times, on three chronological sections, revealed the sameness of its basic outlines, that which, with a certain right, we have repeatedly called the ancestral home of the Proto-Slavic tribes.

We have just examined the eastern half of it. In the western half, exactly the same division is observed according to the principle “-ane”, “-yane” (“Stodorians”, “Luzhichans”, “Ukrane”, “Milchanes”, etc.) and “-ichi”, “ -itsi" ("encourage", "shkudich", etc.); the second group includes other formations such as "varna", "ploni", etc.

Throughout the territory of the ancestral homeland, only the names of the first, archaic group existed. The area of ​​​​their distribution is even somewhat wider than the Trzynetsk and Przeworsk areas: in the west, a continuous zone of tribes of the Stodoryan type reaches in places almost to the Elbe, and in the south it descends along the river. Morave almost to the Danube. In this form, the closed compact area of ​​archaic tribal names comes closest to the area of ​​Prague ceramics of the 6th century BC. AD The vast tribal union of the Moravans was the southernmost outcropping of archaic terminology beyond the boundaries of the ancient ancestral home. It was in this region that the advance to the south was facilitated by the mountain pass between the Sudetes and the Carpathians (“Moravska Brama”), where the upper reaches of the Oder approached the upper reaches of the tributaries of the Morava. Obviously, this circumstance facilitated the movement of the Proto-Slavs to the south, and the first settlers from the land of the Wends appeared here. Perhaps this explains the mysterious phrase of the chronicler Nestor: “... the Apostle Paul came to Moravia and teaches that one. Tu bo is Ilirik, the apostle Paul reached him: tu bo besha Slovene the first ... "

Usually this phrase is understood as an indication of the ancestral home of the Slavs in Illyria or Pannonia, but archeology and observations on the types of tribal names allow us to understand it as evidence of the primary movement of the Slavs (Slovenes) from the common ancestral home outward. Ceramics of the Prague type of the 6th century. seeps in a narrow stream precisely from Morava to Illyricum, to the Adriatic Sea. “Tu bo besha Slovene first” I would translate as follows: “Here, in Illyricum, the first settlers from the land of the Wends appeared.”

Outside this range, on the left bank of the Elbe and in Mecklenburg, there are both names of the old type (for example, "clay"), and neoplasms of the "non-flying" type are also interspersed with them.

The process of settlement of the South Slavic tribes is reflected in the sources with large gaps: the entire vast area to the north from the Danube to the Carpathians, inclusive, is not covered by sources, and the placement of Slavic tribes there in the 6th - 9th centuries. we know only from unnamed archaeological evidence. To the south of the Danube, on the Balkan Peninsula, exactly the same picture is observed as in the west: both “strumyanes” and “dragoviti”, “bright”, “encouraging”, etc. are found in stripes.

The correlation between the archaeological ancestral home and the stable tradition of naming tribal unions by names in “-an” or “-yan” is complete. Judging by the fact that the zone of continuous designation such as "stodorians" extends beyond the Oder and the upper reaches of the Elbe ("zlichane"), it can be most fully compared with our second chronological cut in the 6th century BC. AD, when the area of ​​ceramics of the Prague type, covering the entire territory of the "ancestral home" in the third and fifth sections, somewhat expanded compared to the "ancestral home", as if foreshadowing the beginning of the great settlement of the Slavs. Linguists believe that common processes in the Slavic languages ​​took place until the 6th century. AD, before the beginning of the great settlement. The unity of the method of forming the names of tribal organisms (unions of tribes and individual small tribes) was preserved throughout the territory of the ancestral home until the 6th century. n. e. After that, the settlers from the ancient ancestral land of the Venedi-Veneti began to use three different forms of tribal names: some formed the name of their tribal union with the suffix “-ichi” (“Radimichi”, “Krivichi”, “Glomachi”), others, on the border with foreign-speaking peoples, on the edge of the settlement area, indicated their connection with the original land of the Venets, taking the name "Slovene" in its various variants ("Slovene" on Ilmen, "Slovenians" near the Baltic Sea west of the Vistula, "Slovenians" on the Middle Danube, "Slovenes" in the Adriatic, "Slovaks", etc.).

The third form of naming small tribes in new places is the traditional one (in "-an", "-yan"), sometimes formed from local substrate elements. So, for example, the Adriatic "Konavlyane" came from the Latin designation "canale"; and "duklyane" from the Latin local name "dioclitia".

Large tribal unions in new places were already named according to the new system: “lyutichi”, “bodrichi”.

So, it can be considered established that up to a certain point, before the start of the great settlement of the Slavs in the VI century. n. e., throughout the old Proto-Slavic land there was a single law for the formation of names of tribal unions according to the type "glade", "Mazovshane". In the process of stratification, a completely new, patronymic form of the “Krivichi” type appeared, which is found in all newly colonized areas: on the Elbe, and in the Balkans, and in Central Russia; the old form is found in new lands, but the new one never occurs in old ones.

Judging by the correspondence of the area of ​​Proto-Slavic tribal names to the area of ​​Prague ceramics of the 6th century BC. in. e., we can assume that the traditional way of forming these names survived to the very last chronological limit of common Slavic unity. But when was he born? When did more or less strong territorial unions of tribes begin to take shape?

Let's return to our fourth (Scythian) chronological section. In the eastern half, already well known to us from Herodotus, local groups of the Scythian archaeological culture are found, which can be considered individually as a cultural unity of stable tribal unions. We will find exactly the same local archaeological groups of the Lusatian culture for this time in the western half of the Proto-Slavic world.

Nestor begins the history of the Slavs with the placement of the Slavs in Europe long before the great settlement, because. on the movement of the Slavs in the VI - VII centuries. AD on the Danube and the Balkans, he writes: “... for many times, the essence of Slovenes sat along the Dunaev ...” Nestor feels the connection of times, and in general he calls the southern steppes Scythia, the region of the Tivertsy (Tirites?) and streets (Alizons?) between the Danube and the Dnieper " ol to the sea "he correctly, according to Herodotus, calls the Great Scythia ("Yes, I call from the Greek" Great Scythia "").

Of the ancient tribal unions, separated from the great settlement for "many times", Nestor names the Pomeranians, Mazovshans, Polyans (glades), Kyiv glades, Drevlyans, Buzhans, Volhynians. Each of these tribal names corresponds to a certain archaeological group both in the Scythian half and in the Lusatian half. In the west, there are more archaeological cultural groups than were included in the Nestorian list of tribes. Therefore, we can use other, more detailed medieval lists of tribes, the location of which is quite well known. We will get the following correspondences (from west to east) with the cultures of the 5th - 4th centuries. BC. :

Large and stable unions of Slavic tribes, vestigial signs of which are felt in medieval archaeological materials, were conceived by Nestor as the most ancient political form of Slavic life in the distant times of the primary settlement of the Slavs in Europe. Of course, we cannot fully rely on the chronological calculations and assumptions of a medieval historian, but we must take into account the fact that these tribal unions were placed by Nestor as the first foundation stones of common Slavic history long before the start of the great settlement in the 6th century. AD

The geography of the archaeological cultures of the Scythian-Lusatian era, the time of the rapid flourishing of the Proto-Slavic life and the time of defensive actions against the Celts in the west and the Scythians in the east, gives us very convincing contours of large and powerful tribal unions precisely in those very places where the annalistic meadows, Mazovshans, then lived. Drevlyans. Should this be considered a coincidence?

So far, we have followed a retrospective path, delving from the known to the unknown. In a consistent development, we will get the following picture of the historical fate of the Slavs.

1. In the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, in the heyday of the Bronze Age, when the widespread settlement of Indo-European shepherds and pastoralists subsided, a large group of pastoral and agricultural tribes emerged to the north of the European mountain barrier, revealing significant unity (or similarity) in the space from the Oder to the Dnieper and even further to the northeast (Tshinecsko-Komarovskaya culture).

The length of the land of the Proto-Slavs from west to east is about 1300 km, and from north to south - 300-400 km.

It is to this time that linguists attribute the isolation, isolation of the Proto-Slavs.

2. By the end of the Bronze Age, by the IX - VIII centuries. BC, the western half of the vast Proto-Slavic world was drawn into the sphere of the Lusatian (Celtic?) culture, and the eastern half came into contact with the Cimmerians (Iranians?), opposing them, but perceiving some elements of their culture.

An amazing coincidence of the configuration of two areas dates back to this time: firstly, the Chernoles culture of the 10th - 8th centuries. BC e., and secondly, the most archaic hydronymy, which leaves no doubt about the Proto-Slavic nature of the Chernoles culture of the Middle Dnieper.

Most likely, the Proto-Slavs of the Chernoles time, forced to repel the raids of the nomadic Cimmerians, not only learned how to forge iron weapons and build mighty fortresses on the southern border, but also created an alliance of several tribes between the Dnieper and the Bug, which was called "Skolots". This name survived until the middle of the 5th century, when Herodotus recorded it as the self-name of a number of agricultural tribes of the forest-steppe Dnieper region. The union of the Skolots could not cover all the Proto-Slavic tribes of the eastern half of the Slavs.

3. Change of the Cimmerians by the Scythians in the 7th century. BC. obviously led to the fact that the Skolot tribal union entered a vast federation, conventionally called Scythia. However, the Proto-Slavs-Skolos, presumably, retained a certain autonomy: the southern system of fortresses that protected against nomads was renovated, and new fortresses were erected. The Proto-Slavs-Dnepryans (Borisphenites) had their own special seaport, which bore their name (Miletian Olbia), the path to which lay away from the land of the royal Scythians. And at the same time, there is no doubt about the strong merging of the Proto-Slavic culture with the Scythian, the perception by the Slavic nobility of all the basic elements of the Scythian equestrian culture (weapons, harness, animal style) and, to some extent, perhaps even the language. IN AND. Abaev noted a number of Scythian elements in Slavic, V. Georgiev, making a periodization according to the form of the name of the supreme deity (“Daivas - Deus” - “God” - “Lord”), establishes that it was during the Scythian time that a significant Iranianization of the Proto-Slavic language took place and instead Indo-European Daiwas (Div) the Iranian designation God, Boh, was established among the Slavs.

Herodotus does not speak about the difference between the Skolot language and the Scythian language, but warns against confusion, noting that the Greeks called them Scythians, Skolots. This could be the result of the quite natural similarity of clothing and weapons in those conditions, as well as the bilingualism of the Borisfenite merchants and the nobility, who constantly communicated with the Scythians. The sharp separation by Herodotus of the Scythians proper (who do not know arable land, do not sow bread, owning only herds in the treeless steppe, roaming in wagons) from those tribes for whom the main sacred object was a golden plow that fell from the sky (chips, erroneously called Scythians), did not gives us the right to distribute data about non-Scythian farmers to Scythian nomadic tribes even if the names of agricultural kings have an Iranian appearance.

The western half of the Proto-Slavic world at that time was still part of the vast Lusatian community, which led to a difference in the archaeological appearance of the eastern and western halves, but does not in the least contradict the existence of ethnic unity and the sameness of linguistic processes, which linguists insist on. Until now, the words of Lubor Niederle, which he said after he outlined the common ancestral home, remain in force (although often forgotten): Eastern Slavs".

Despite the external differences between the Lusatian and Scythian halves of the Slavs, the commonality of the historical process is clearly felt in the fact that in this era of rise, vast territorial unions of tribes were formed, which, judging by archaeological data, were located exactly in the very places where they are indicated (sometimes retrospectively, as , for example, Nestor) later written sources. The form of the formation of the names of these unions (“Polyane”, “Mazovshan”) outlines a single vast area that completely covers both the Lusatian and Scythian halves of the Proto-Slavic world of the 6th - 5th centuries. BC.

4. The disappearance of the Lusatian culture and the fall of Scythia as a great federative power led to the elimination of those two external forces that made differences in different halves of the Proto-Slavic world. The overall level has gone down. For several centuries, a certain unity of the two archaeological cultures (Zarubintsy and Przeworsk) is established, although external ties reappear: in the west, the influence of Germanic tribes is growing, and in the east - Sarmatian.

5. A new rise and significant changes in culture occur in the II - IV centuries. AD, when the Roman Empire, as a result of Trajan's conquests in Dacia and the Black Sea region, became almost a direct neighbor of the Slavs and, with its insatiable import of bread, had a beneficial effect on the forest-steppe part of the Slavic tribes (Chernyakhov culture). The appearance of the eastern and western halves of the Slavs again began to differ, but, in addition, the Roman export of various products greatly leveled the culture of the Slavic and Germanic (Goths) tribes, which often confuses researchers.

6. The fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century. AD, the cessation of the favorable "Trojan Ages", the replacement of Iranian nomads in the steppes by the Turks - all this led to a new decline in culture and to a new (this time the last) resurrection of the all-Slavic unity, expressed in wide distribution in the old Tshinetsk-Pshevor-Zarubynets within the framework of the last pan-Slavic culture of the Prague type. This was followed by the great settlement of the Slavs, the collapse of the Slavic unity and the creation of large feudal states, which became new centers of attraction and consolidation.

Having considered all the arguments in favor of attributing the northwestern agricultural part of Scythia to the Proto-Slavs, let us turn to part of Herodotus' records about the local legends of the tribes, revering the plow with a yoke as a sacred gift from heaven and the main shrine of the whole people.

We can compare the records of Herodotus with some valuable passages of other authors (Alkman, Valery Flakk, Diodorus Siculus), which has already been done by researchers more than once, with the “archaeological history” of the Middle Dnieper and with Ukrainian and Russian folklore, which gives interesting parallels to the testimonies of ancient authors.

The story of Herodotus about the origin of the four Skolot tribes is a record of the local Middle Dnieper epic legend with elements of the myth of the first man. The Middle Dnieper, Borisfenite origin of the legend is firmly determined by two signs: the veneration of agricultural tools and the origin of the first man from the daughter of the Dnieper; the combination of these features excludes the Scythian nomadic, arable environment and transfers the scene of the legend up the Dnieper, to the agricultural forest-steppe of the Middle Dnieper, so well known to us from the abundant archaeological materials of the 10th-4th centuries. BC.

The genealogical scheme of the Skolot tribes looks like this:

The chronology reported to Herodotus is epic: from the first king of Targitai to the campaign of Darius, no more than a thousand years passed in round numbers (§ 7). For us, this must mean several centuries. Alkman, poet of the 7th century. BC, already mentions the swift horse Kolaksai, which means that the name Kolaksai had already become epic by this time. The Roman poet, a contemporary of Pliny, Valery Flaccus, speaking of the Argonauts, lists the leaders of countless tribes of Scythia (drawn by him extremely vaguely) and in second place in a long list of generals mentions Colax, the son of Jupiter and Ora, whose coat of arms was three lightning bolts. The phrase is somewhat mysterious: "Kolax gathered air dragons, the difference of mother Ora and opposing snakes on both sides approach with their tongues and inflict wounds on a chiseled stone." It is possible that we are talking about the image of the Dnieper snake-footed goddess on the banners (?). Following Kolax, the aged Avkh, the owner of the "Cimmerian riches", is mentioned. Avkhat warriors are famous for their ability to wield a lasso.

It is impossible to rely on Flakka's poem as a historical source, because the geography and chronology of numerous tribes are fantastically mixed up in it. One can only extract from it that fragments of the Scythian epic survived (perhaps only in writing) until Roman times, when the Scythian heroes were erected to the era of the Argonauts. It seems that Valery Flakk merged the details of the two genealogical legends of Herodotus, preserving and poeticizing some interesting details: Abkh, the descendant of the eldest son, is represented here by an old man; The Avkhetians, who live along Gipanis, where, according to Herodotus, wild horses were found, are excellent at lassoing. All this Flaccus could draw from both Herodotus and numerous compilers.

The myth of the fall from the sky of agricultural implements, axes and bowls, we can in the most general terms date the time of the appearance in the Middle Dnieper, firstly, of arable farming, and secondly, the time of the allocation of squads armed with axes. The emergence of arable farming in the Middle Dnieper should be attributed, in all likelihood, to the turn of the Bronze and Iron Ages - to the beginning of the 1st millennium BC.

Mythological and epic concepts are created among all peoples at certain key moments in their history, when in real life either internal shifts occur (the birth of new economic forms, the emergence of a new social organization), or a sharp contact with the outside world (wars with neighbors, the invasion of enemies and etc.).

For the Proto-Slavs-Skolots, such a stormy era of internal and external innovations was the time of transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, the time of the Chernoles culture. The appearance of a new metal, iron, the deposits of which were abundant in the swamps and lakes of the Slavic region (bog ore), the increase in the role of agriculture and the appearance of the ral occurred simultaneously with the raids of the southern nomadic Cimmerians, against whom the Skolt-Chernolesians built their first fortresses along the southern outskirts of their land . The Skolots defended their independence; new iron weapons and mighty fortresses one and a half kilometers across allowed them to resist the battle with the steppes attacking from the sea.

This whole complex of real events, which dramatically changed the former slow life of the Proto-Slavic tribes, was reflected in primitive mythological and epic tales, fragments of which survived until the 20th century. and were recorded by folklorists. Some of these ancient pre-Slavic ideas were reflected in fairy tales; the attention of researchers was drawn to them from time to time, while some of the fragments survived without a definite folklore form, only in the form of a retelling of ancient legends, and this half-forgotten part of ancient creativity remained essentially in the position of an ethnographic archive, despite two most interesting publications by V.V. Gippius and V.P. Petrova.

The hero of these legends is the magic blacksmith Kuzmodemyan (or two blacksmiths - Kuzma and Demyan). Sometimes he looks like the first person (“sh buv the first cholovsh with God, as if he were resurrecting”). In other materials, Kuzma and Demyan look like the first plowmen: “guessing that K. and D. buli plowman) adamovsyu”, “persh) on the ground buli orachi’1”, “they thought it was better” . Magic blacksmiths forged a plow for 40 years and this wonderful first plow weighed 300 pounds. The blacksmith-bogatyr acts at that epic time when the people suffered from a snake, which always flew in from the sea (i.e. from the south); sometimes the kite is even called "Black Sea". The blacksmiths build a strong smithy, which is not accessible to the snake, where the fugitives fleeing from the ferocious monster rush. Girls, the tsar's daughter and even a hero on horseback run to the forge. Sometimes this is the hero who has already fought with the snake somewhere in other expanses. The forge is always protected by an iron door. Enraged by the chase, the snake is always invited to lick a hole in the door and stick its tongue into the forge, which the snake always does, because. he is promised to put on the tongue of his victim. But here the most stable element of the legends appears: the magic blacksmith (or blacksmiths) grabs the snake by the tongue with red-hot tongs, harnesses the monster to a huge plow and plows furrows on it either to the Dnieper or to the sea itself. And here, near the Dnieper or on the seashore, the snake, having drunk half the sea, bursts and dies.

Sometimes a snake captured by blacksmith tongs is forced to plow the city: “Dem’yan, standing behind the plow, and Kuzma led by the tongue, yell at the snake, equip [plow] Kshv. I melted the greatness of the skibis turned - zavbshshki like a church. the trochs didn’t finish screaming, for the snake was tired. ”

The famous “serpent shafts” in Ukraine, dating back to Scythian times, are considered to be the trace of the victory over the serpent.

Of particular interest is the geography of records about Kuzma-Demyan: Kiev region, Poltava region, Cherkasy region, Priluki, Zolotonosha, Zvenigorod, Zlatopol, Belaya Tserkov. It is easy to see that the legends about Kuzma-Demyan (sometimes they are replaced by Boris and Gleb) geographically close in the ancient region of the Chernoles culture, in the area of ​​archaic Slavic hydronymy, in the land of the Herodotian skolot farmers.

However, Herodotus did not know such legends. Stage by stage, the legends about magic blacksmiths, the creators of the first plow and the defenders of people from the Black Sea snake, date back to a time much more distant than the time of the historian's travels. Based on the appearance of the first iron forgings and the construction of the first powerful fortifications, the legends about blacksmiths, dated in the Middle Ages to Kuzma and Demyan, should be erected by the beginning of the 1st millennium BC.

What in folklore records goes back to the primitive heroic epic, the epic of struggle and victory, was told to Herodotus in the form of a more generalized genealogical legend, and the only point of contact - the appearance of the plow - is associated with magic farriers. However, the very appearance of the first plow in the Ukrainian legends about Kuzma and Demyan is not depicted at all, since their main task is to tell how blacksmiths protected people who were already plowing the land from an evil snake. The first plow is only a side feature in the characterization of the magical blacksmiths-winners, acting on earth, but also connected with the sky ("God's forged", saints). By the time of Herodotus, this, so to speak, prehistory of the first plow was already obscured by another plot, closer to Herodotus' informants: the competition between the prince-brothers and the determination of the hegemonic tribe.

The names of mythical kings are interpreted from Iranian languages ​​as follows:

Targitai - "Long-powered";
Lipoksay - "Mountain-King";
Arpoksay - "Lord of the Depths";
Kolaksay - "The Sun-King".

The youngest son of Targitai, the winner in the competition for the possession of golden national relics, the organizer of the kingdom of "paralats" (they think that "paradats" are more correct), i.e. “ruling”, and the main figure of the legend recorded by Herodotus turns out to be the Sun King. Here it is impossible not to recall the entry in the Russian chronicle of the 12th century. about the Sun King. The chronicler visited Ladoga in 1114, discovered ancient beads on the shore, collected a whole collection of them and listened to stories from the local population about wonderful clouds, from which not only beads fall, but also “veils” and “small deer”. On this occasion, the well-read chronicler cited an extract from the chronicle of John Malala about the fall of various objects from the sky, providing it with precious Russian folklore parallels.

Once in Egypt, King Feost (Hephaestus), called Svarog, reigned. “During the reign of his kingship, the klPshchP fell from heaven and began to forge weapons. Before that, I fought with clubs and stones.” Svarog-Hephaestus established firm monogamy, "for this reason, the god Svarog was nicknamed." After Svarog, his son reigned "by the name of the Sun, he is called Dazh-god."

"The sun is a psar, the son of Svarogov, if there is Dazhbog, if the husband is strong."

“From now on, the people have begun to pay tribute to the priests.”

Chronicle tradition gives us a two-stage relative periodization, correlated, to a certain extent, with the genealogy of the Skolot kings according to Herodotus:

Svarog (Hephaestus) - Targitai;
Sun-Dazhbog - Sun-Kolaksay.

All chips are named after the king of the Sun; Russian people of the XII century. considered themselves (or their princely family) the descendants of Dazhbog, the Sun Tsar (“dazhbozhi vnutsi” “The Tale of Igor's Campaign”).

The parallels cited so far are fragmentary and cannot yet be brought together into a coherent system. We get rich comparative material for Herodotus' story about three sons, about three kingdoms and about the youngest son - the winner in the competition with his older brothers. This time, it is not Ukrainian half-forgotten legends that help us out, but a powerful layer of the entire East Slavic fairy tale fund, widespread and well studied.

Determining the most favorite plots, out of several hundreds, researchers put the “serpent winner” plot in the first place, and the “three kingdoms” divided among the three brothers in the third place. Three brothers have different names, but one of the most interesting and quite common is the name of Svetovik, Zorevik, Svetozar. He is the youngest son, like Kolaksay the Sun, but he is the strongest: the brothers have clubs of 160 and 200 pounds, and Svetovik has 300 pounds; the brothers are armed with sticks, and Svetovik is uprooting a tree with a root for a club. As in the Scythian legend, in the East Slavic tales, the competition of three brothers appears in various forms, always ending in the victory of the younger brother, like in Herodotus. The names of the brothers in the fairy tales change, but the fairy tales, where the youngest son is called the "Sunny" name, turn out, according to the observations of N.V. Novikov, the most archaic.

Competitions are different: who will throw a club higher, who will kill the "Black Sea reptile", who will move a huge stone, who will shoot farther, etc. The victory of the youngest son is stable, who, after the competition, becomes the leader, the leader of the heroes.

One of the feats of the heroic brothers is the victory over the vicious and gluttonous snake (usually from the sea side) that eats people. The motif of blacksmiths forging heroic weapons is almost obligatory. Three brothers, after defeating the serpent, take possession of three kingdoms: gold, silver and copper.

The golden kingdom always goes to the younger brother, the winner of the competition. Kolaksay-Sun owned, as we remember, one of the three kingdoms of the sons of Targitai and kept in it the sacred gold of the chipped.

Often the sea appears in fairy tales; from here a snake threatens the Russian people, devouring and leading away into full, bloody victories often end here; here the hero is looking for his captive mother.

Sometimes an island in the sea seven versts from the coast is mentioned. The whole fairy-tale setting is very reminiscent of long-term Slavic-nomadic relations: hordes of horse warriors rise from the sea, burn villages, demand tribute, and lead them away to full. And, obviously, a very long time ago, in distant semi-mythical times, the raids of the Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians were clothed in epic poetry in the image of a flying fiery serpent.

Turning to the treasury of Russian, Ukrainian and partly Belarusian fairy tales helps us more accurately correlate the archaic layer of the fairy tale fund with the legends about the Sun King Kolaksai recorded by Herodotus. Alkman's poem allows us to define the era of Kolaksay even more ancient time - until the 7th century. BC, i.e., obviously, the Cimmerian time itself, in which, as in a focus, various manifestations of a new pore in the life of the Proto-Slavs-Skolots converged (blacksmiths, fortifications, the fight against the "Black Sea serpent", etc. ).

In Proto-Slavic myths and epic tales there are common Indo-European motifs about three brothers, known to us both from Iranian versions (on which supporters of common Scythian mythology relied), and from others. Suffice it to recall the German legend cited by Tacitus about the first man named Mann (!) and his three sons - the founders of the three Germanic tribes.

Now, even after such an extremely brief digression into the field of archaic folklore, we can bring all our disparate data into a single system:

The records of Herodotus, made by him, in all likelihood, during his journey to the land of the Skolt farmers, are extremely precious to us, because they allow us to determine the great chronological depth of the whole layer of East Slavic fairy-tale folklore. A fairy tale, as you know, is often the latest transformation of a myth or ancient epic tales.

Folklore records of the 19th - 20th centuries. inevitably give us these rudiments of ancient narratives in a one-dimensional, flattened form, without chronological depth. Herodotus, who turned out to be the first folklorist of the agricultural tribes of the Middle Dnieper, gave them the missing depth, created a chronological stereoscopicity with a range of more than two and a half thousand years. Let us add to this that Herodotus did not record legends that were modern or close in time to him (such as the legends about the abuse of Darius by the Scythians), but what was already considered a distant antiquity, almost a thousand years away.

The records of the echoes of the primitive epic and mythology, dating back to the Bronze Age and to the most important historical event - the discovery of iron, probably contain a considerable share of the common Indo-European heritage, such as the legends of the three brothers, but there are also local specifics. Apparently, the “golden kingdom” should be attributed to such local features.

Herodotus speaks of the most extensive kingdom, where the Sun King Kolaksay keeps sacred gold.

In Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian fairy tales, as we have seen, there is an extensive section of fairy tales about three kingdoms, and the youngest son (like Kolaksay) always becomes the owner of the golden kingdom; the motif of heavenly gifts has already faded away, only the name of the kingdom of gold remains.

No less interesting and original is the second tsar of the mythological genealogy - the Herodotus conqueror Kolaksay, corresponding to the ancient Russian Dazhbog tsar and hero (“The sun is Caesar. The husband is strong”), reflected in the fairy-tale fund under the significant name of the hero “Svetovik”. Is not the pagan Slavic Svyatovit, close to Dazhbog, hiding in this later fabulous name?

Due to the fact that researchers usually extend the Herodotus record of the ancestral kings to all the peoples called “Scythians” by the Greeks, including the nomadic Iranian Scythians (and often to them predominantly), attention should be paid to the Iranian form of royal names. The Iranian character of the second half of each name - "ksai" - is beyond doubt.

The first half of the names is etymologized from Iranian with great difficulty.

IN AND. Abaev even refused to explain the name of Lipoksay, and this was done later by Grantovsky.

Let us pay attention to the fact that in the pantheon of ancient Russian deities we will find both an archaic Indo-European layer (Rod, Svarog, Perun, Belee, etc.), and a layer very definitely associated with the Scythian era, which gave rise to partial (maybe temporary?) bilingualism Eastern Proto-Slavs: Dazh-god, Stri-god, where the second half of the name, certifying their divinity, is Iranian.

Exactly the same thing happened, obviously, with the names of the mythical sons of Targitai: in the Scythian era, their kingship was certified by the Iranian term "ksai", which, in all likelihood, was as widespread as the archaeological "Scythian triad". The tribes and peoples that were part of the political framework of Scythia, who firmly accepted the Scythian squad culture and called their gods by semi-Iranian names, could well have adopted the Iranian, proper Scythian term “ksai” to designate the subject of supreme power.

The Iranian element in the names of the three brothers - Kolaksai, Lipoksai and Arpoksai - does not in the least prevent the attribution of the chipped farmers to the Proto-Slavs, just as it does not prevent the recognition of Stribog and Dazhbog as Slavic (Proto-Slavic in time of origin) deities.

176 Abaev V.I. Scythian language. - In the book: Ossetian language and folklore, vol. 1. M.-L., 1949, p. 151-190; Georgiev V. Trite phase on Slavic cat mitology. Sofia, 1970.
177 (Gornung B.V. Review of the book by F.P. Filin “Education of the language of the Eastern Slavs”. M.-L., 1962. - Questions of linguistics, 1963, No. 3, p. 135.
178 Rusanova I.P. Slavic antiquities of the 6th - 7th centuries. M., 1916, p. 74-76, maps.
179 Lehr-Splawinski T. O pochodzeniu i praojczyznie Slowian. Pozanan, 1946.
180 “The most plausible, from our point of view, is the hypothesis of the Middle Dnieper-Western Buzh ancestral home of the Slavs. Zarubinets culture, as we are told by linguistic data, should be considered Slavic” (Filin F.P. Origin of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages. L., 1972, pp. 24, 26).
181 As you know, the name Veneti (Vendov, Vindov) for a long time denoted the Slavs or some part of the Slavic world. So, among the Germans, the ancient Slavic villages were called Wendendorf - “Venedian village”. Finns call Russians venaia, venat, Estonians - vene (see: Lowmionski H. Pocz^tki Polski, t. 1. Warszawa, 1964, p. 91). I think that the long dispute about the origin of the word "Slavs", "words stump" can be resolved with a strict attitude to the chronology and geography of this term: it appears no earlier than the 6th century. (i.e. not earlier than the great settlement of the Slavs) and is found only outside the ancestral home, i.e. outside the land of the ancestors of the Veneti, in areas colonized by people from the indigenous territory of the Veneti. These are: Slovaks, Slovenes, Slovenes, "Slovenes" of Novgorod and others. "Slovenes", in my opinion, are "slys", deportees from the land of "Vene" - Venets. The word "sl'", "s'ly" denoted ambassadors, people sent on a mission ("let them go" - see: Sreznevsky I.I. Materials for a dictionary of the Old Russian language. St. Petersburg, 1883, stb. 141).
182 See, for example: Mishulin A.V. Materials for the history of the ancient Slavs. - VDI, 1941, No. 1, p. 230-231. Tacitus' information here is greatly distorted.
183 Latyshev V.V. News of ancient writers about Scythia and the Caucasus. - VDI, 1947, No. 2, p. 320.
184 Kukharenko Yu.V. Archeology of Poland. M., 1969, p. 105, map.
185 Latyshev V.V. News. - VDI, 1947, No. 4, p. 258.
186 Pomponius Mela, vol. III, ch. IV.- In the book: Ancient geography. M., 1953, p. 225.
187 An interesting reconstruction of the map of Pomponius Mela was given by Fridtjof Nansen (Nansen F. Nebelheim, vol. 1,
p. 95).
188 Lowmionski H. Pocz^tki Polski, s. 156-159.
189 Latyshev V.V. News. - VDI, 1948, No. 2, p. 232-235 (459-462).
190 Georgiev V.I. Studies in Comparative Historical Linguistics. M., 1958, p. 224; Gornung B.V. From the prehistory of the formation of a common Slavic linguistic unity. M., 1963, p. 3, 4, 49, 107.
191 Berezanskaya S.S. The middle period of the Bronze Age in Northern Ukraine. Kyiv, 1972, fig. 45 and 50 (cards). It is possible that the northeastern part of the area outlined by the author is in closer relationship with the Sosnitsa culture, which goes north from the Desna and the Seim.
192 Some isolation of the Komarovo culture and its somewhat higher level is explained, as it seems to me, by the proximity to the Carpathian mountain passes, to those “gates” (“gates”) through which the tribes living north of the mountains communicated with the south. The presence of salt deposits in the area of ​​the Komarovo culture (Galych, Kolomyia, Velichka) could attract Proto-Thracians here.
193 Khazanov A. M. Social history of the Scythians. M., 1975; Raevsky D.S. Essays on the ideology of the Scythian-Sak tribes. M., 1977.
194 Khazanov A. M. Social history of the Scythians, p. 53 and others; Raevsky D.S. Essays. With. 29 and others.
195 Khazanov A. M. Social history of the Scythians, p. 53.
196 Raevsky D.S. Essays., p. 28, 70-73. “The ethnological content of the P and VF versions of the Scythian legend (Shb horizon) is the substantiation of the three-member estate-caste structure of society, consisting of a military aristocracy, to which kings, priests and free community members - pastoralists and farmers belong. This structure models the structure of the universe as Scythian mythology thinks it” (ibid., p. 71).
197 Raevsky D.S. Essays., p. 114, 84. The author wrongly applies the ancient idea of ​​a square arable field, which comes from the Eneolithic, to a purely geographical, measurable real concept. The recognition of Exampai as the center of the “organized world model” is also unjustified - after all, the side of the Scythian square was equal to 20 days of travel, and there were only four days to Exampai (see ibid., p. 84).
198 The meeting place of Hercules with the half-snake was called Gilea, but we do not have full confidence that this is the Lower Dnieper Oleshye: named Gilea. There, in a cave, he found a creature of mixed breed - a half-maiden, half-snake. (§ eight).
There are no caves in the lower reaches of the Dnieper. There are caves on the banks of the Dniester, where the forest zone descends to the south closer to the sea. Perhaps, in this case, the Dniester forests are called hylaea? At the Dniester, a giant footprint of Hercules was shown in the rock (§ 82).
199 Vulpe Alexandra. Forschungen uber das 7 bis 5 Jh. v. u. Z., s. 12.
200 Raevsky D.S. Essays., p. 30-39.
201 D.S. Raevsky cited a very interesting parallel from Celtic customary law: among the inhabitants of Wales, the youngest of the sons inherits a house with a manor, part of the land, a plowshare, an ax and a cauldron (Raevsky D.S. Essays., p. 182) . The set of objects is really very close to the Herodotus record, but D.S. Raevsky did not pay attention to the fact that the Celtic law does not speak in favor of the theory of estate-caste symbolism (an ax - aristocrats; a bowl - priesthood; a plow - ordinary people), but against her: after all, here we are not talking about the sum of various symbolic objects, but about a single complex of necessary things, without which the conduct of a peasant agricultural economy is unthinkable. Obviously, the golden heavenly gifts were a later transformation of the folk agricultural tradition of the Borisfenites.
202 See indexes in the book: Khazanov A. M. Social history of the Scythians, p. 331; Raevsky D.S. Essays., p. 210. The word "chipped" is missing in both cases.
203 I give the last two phrases in the translation of A.Ch. Kozarzhevsky, to whom I express my gratitude for
help.
204 Abaev V.I. On some linguistic aspects of the Scythian-Sarmatian problem. - In the book: Problems of Scythian archeology. M., 1971, p. 13.
205 The border settlements of the Skolots on the Vorskla, perhaps, explain the name of this river: in the Russian chronicles the river is called Vorskol. The word "thief" meant a fence, a log fortification, a fence. "Vor-skol" could mean "border fortification of the chipped".
206 Pliny the Elder, book. IV, § 82. - VDI, 1949, No. 2, p. 282-283.
207 Abaev V.I. Scythian language, p. 175.
208 See: Rusanova I.P. Slavic antiquities of the 6th - 7th centuries, p. 75 (cards).
209 Niederle L. Slovanske Starozitnosti, d. II, sv. 2. Praha, 1902, s. 397.
210 Exceptions to this rule (“North”, “Croats”, “Dulebs” and some others) are obviously explained by the presence of a non-Slavic substratum element that passed its name on to the Slavic assimilators.
211 Glades
212 Kostrzewski J., Chmielewski W., Jazdzewski K. Pradzieje Polski. Wroclaw - Warszawa - Krakow, 1965, s. 220, map. The map is repeated in a generalized form by Yu.V.Kukharenko in the book "Archaeology of Poland" (M., 1969, p. 96). Lusatian culture XII - IV centuries. BC. covered the entire western half of the Proto-Slavs (west of the Western Bug) and a number of surrounding tribes.
213 The tribes mentioned by Nestor are marked with an asterisk.
214 On the archaeological map of this era, only two very small groups remained nameless: one in the bend of the Vistula, where we do not know the tribes from written sources, and the other along the San (maybe Lendzyans?).
215 See: Archeology of Ukraine, vol. II, map 2.
216 From the nomenclature of Nestor it is difficult to associate any tribal name with the tribes of the Milograd culture. It is most likely that Radimichi (and Vyatichi?) later formed from the Milogradians who settled in the northeast direction, whom Nestor remembered that they came “from the Poles”.
217 Georgiev V. Trite at once., p. 472-473.
218 Niederle L. Slavic Antiquities, p. 33.
219 Latyshev V.V. News ... - VDI, 1947, No. 1, p. 297.
220 Latyshev V.V. News. - VDI, 1949, No. 2, p. 344-345, 348.
221 Gshshus Vasil. Koval Kuzma-Dem'yan (folklore) - Ethnographer) chny V) snik, vol. VIII. Kiv, 1929, p. 3-54; Petrov V) ctor. Kuzma-Demyan in Ukrainian folklore). - There, Prince. IX, 1930, p. 197-238.
222 Petrov V)ctor. Kuzma-Dem'yan., p. 231.
223 Ibid.
224 Petrov V)ctor. Kuzma-Dem'yan., p. 202.
225 Ibid., p. 203.
226 Abaev V.I. Scythian language, p. 243; Raevsky D.S. Essays., p. 62, 63.
227 The Tale of Bygone Years. Pg., 1916, p. 350.
228 Ibid., p. 351. The Sun King reigned for 20 and a half years.
229 Novikov N.V. Images of the East Slavic fairy tale. L., 1974, p. 23.
230 Ibid., p. 67
231 However, the Sarmatian time introduced a new fabulous image into the Slavic primitive epic poetry. Sarmatian female warriors left a trace in the form of a tsar-maiden, a girlish kingdom beyond the fiery sea, where “heroic heads on stamens”, like those of Herodotus Taurus.
232 Abaev V.I. Scythian language, p. 243.
233 Grantovsky E.A. Indo-Iranian castes and Scythians. - XXV Intern. congr. orientalists. Reports of the Soviet delegation. M., 1960, p. 5, 6.

We draw information about the customs and lifestyle of the inhabitants of Ancient Scythia primarily from books. For us, they are important as the oldest written news about South Russia. According to Herodotus, the main food of the Scythians was horse meat and mare's milk. With milk, they acted like this: “The Scythians pour milk into wooden vessels and shake them; from shaking it foams and its constituent parts are separated: fatty ones float to the top, because they are light; heavy and thick settle down; the Scythians separate them from the liquid and dry them; when hard and dry, it is called pirrake (mare's cheese), and the watery part remains in the middle. The churning of the milk was done by slaves, who were probably mostly prisoners of war.

Ancient Greek historian Herodotus

Herodotus says that the clothes of the Scythians are the same both in summer and in winter; we learn from other writers that they wore shalvars and an outer dress, usually sewn from the skins of wild animals and "mice" (that is, rodents, which are many in that area: rabbits, marmots). The Scythians provided all crafts to women and slaves; the men looked with contempt at all who were engaged in these works; crafts were limited to the manufacture of carts, tents, the most necessary utensils (wooden vessels for milk, bowls, clay pots, knives), clothing and weapons. Men were engaged in war, hunting, robbery; they were considered noble occupations in Scythia. The Scythians skillfully shot from a bow; they raced over the vast plains on their small but hot horses, which the pursuer could not overtake and on which they overtook every enemy. They pulled the bow with equal dexterity with both the left hand and the right. Herodotus reports that the arrows of the Scythians were poisoned, in addition, they had spears, swords, battle axes; there were shells and shields made of elk skin. Whoever did not bring the head of a slain enemy to the king did not have the right to drink from a common honorary cup at public feasts; who killed especially many enemies, he drank at once from two goblets. The skulls of the enemies served the Scythians as bowls; often they covered these bowls with cowhide or set them in gold. Some tribes of Ancient Scythia, such as the Taurians, stuck the heads of their dead enemies on high poles, which they placed on the roofs, as if they were guardians of their dwellings. The skin of the killed enemies of the Scythians, according to Herodotus, was tanned and hung, as an ornament, on the harness of horses. Of the captives, out of every hundred, they sacrificed one to the god of war, whom they worshiped in the form of a sword stuck on a raised platform made of turf; the rest they gouged out the eyes and then instructed them to milk the mares and shake the milk. When the Scythians got acquainted with Greek wine, they drank it without mixing it with water, and poured it so much that the expression "to drink in the Scythian way" became a proverb among the Spartans for drunkenness. Sorcerers, soothsayers, interpreters of signs enjoyed great respect in Ancient Scythia.

Herodotus writes that in the east of the Tanais (Don) the Sauromates or Sarmatians, wild people. The Greeks considered them to be the descendants of the Amazons. In terms of language and customs, the Sarmatians resembled the Scythians, but the Greeks call them people of a different tribe. Further behind them lived the Budins, "a large and numerous people with blue eyes and blond hair"; their country was wooded; between them lived the Gelons - a people descended from a mixture of Greeks and natives. The Gelons had a wooden city and a king; Budins also had a king. Further to the north lived, according to Herodotus' story, two hunting peoples, the Tissagetes and the Iirki, and behind them the "bald", peace-loving Argippeas, who spent the cold winter time under white felt tents that covered the trees; The Argippeans had no weapons. Along the upper reaches of the Bug (Gypanis), behind the agricultural Scythians, in present-day Podolia and Volhynia, the Alazons and Neuri lived, and to the west of them, the Agathyrsians, “the most luxurious of people”, wearing gold jewelry; their wives were in common. Their land extended to the valleys of present-day Transylvania. Herodotus collected correct information about all these peoples; but the countries further north from Scythia, the regions of snow and fog, were unknown regions for him, about which only legends and fairy tales reached him, of course, sometimes having some poorly understood facts as their basis.

Map of ancient Scythia and neighboring countries around 100 BC.

Herodotus heard that great rivers flowing into the Black Sea and Meotida (Sea of ​​Azov) take their origin there from lakes or swamps. There, allegedly, there is a country in which snow flies through the air like fluff, so thick that you can’t see anything in the distance, and you can’t pass. In these northern lands of an unknown climate and unknown vastness, according to Herodotus, there lived androphagi (cannibals), impious lawless people who had neither judgment nor truth, and mysterious melanchlens (people in black clothes). Both of these peoples were not of Scythian origin, but resembled the Scythians in morals; they roamed the swampy deserts.

About the lands to the east of the Argippeans and Sarmatians, where impenetrable wooded mountains prevented them from penetrating, only rumors reached Herodotus, absolutely fabulous, transmitted from the Issedons to the Scythians, from the Scythians to the Greek colonists of the Black Sea coast; Herodotus himself says that he considers these rumors to be fairy tales. He was told that there were goat-legged people and other people who slept six months a year (this rumor was probably a reworking of misunderstood stories about the length of nights in the far north); there lived the Arimaspians, people with one eye, who took from the vultures the gold of the mountains of that country; this story, a hundred years before Herodotus, had already been heard from the Issedons by the poet Aristaeus of Proconesus; Aeschylus also knew, in which the chained Prometheus speaks of a wandering And about so that she beware of "the dogs of Zeus, the ferocious, hard-biting vultures, and the cavalry of the one-eyed Arimasp living on the stream of Hades, on the gold-bearing water." Perhaps this is a vague echo of the Scythian stories about gold and precious stones mined in the Urals. But it is more likely that this is only a fiction of the fantasy of the childhood of peoples, carrying to the ends of the world treasures that a person passionately desires to possess, and making fabulous creatures that are difficult to overcome as guardians of these riches - a symbolic expression of the thought that the acquisition of what a person cherishes is connected with labor and danger. The legend about vultures, “four-legged birds”, which have eagle wings and a head, and eyesight as keen as an eagle’s, and legs, body and strength, like a lion’s, and which guard gold, seemed to have its homeland in the east, Bactria and India, and transferred from there by visiting merchants to the peoples of the Caspian and Black Seas.

Beyond the northern mountains, beyond the vultures and the Arimaspians lived, according to Greek myth, the blessed hyperboreans, a happy people, innocently and peacefully leading a long joyful life in a beautiful country, illuminated by the eternal light of the sun, beloved by Apollo, who stays in it more willingly and longer than in other lands.

INTRODUCTION TO SLAVIC PHILOLOGY

LITERATURE

Mandatory

1. Optional:

a) Yakovleva G.A., Skupsky B.I., Eloeva R.K. Introduction to Slavic Philology. Tutorial. Rostov on Don: Publishing house Rost. un-ta, 1988.

b) Suprun A.E., Kalyuta A.M. Introduction to Slavic Philology. Minsk: Higher. school, 1981 (any year of publication)

c) Suprun A.E. Introduction to Slavic Philology. Minsk, 1989 (any year of publication)

d) Dulichenko A.D. Introduction to Slavic Philology. Tartu /Tart. un-t/, 1978.

2. Sedov V.V. Origin and early history of the Slavs. M., 1979 (any year of publication).

3. Bernstein S.B. Essay on comparative grammar of Slavic languages. Moscow: Nauka, 1961 (any year of publication).

4. Kobychev V.P. In search of the ancestral home of the Slavs. M., 1973.

5. Niderle L. Slavic Antiquities. M., 1956.

6. Trubachev O.N. Ethnogenesis and culture of the ancient Slavs. M., 1991 (any year of publication).

Additional

1. Samsonov N.G. Lectures on Slavic Philology. Yakutsk: Yakut Publishing House. un-ta, 1978.

2. Sedov V.V. East Slavic ethno-linguistic community // Questions of Linguistics, 1994, No. 4. P. 3 - 16.

3. Selishchev A.M. Slavic linguistics. T.I. West Slavic languages. Moscow: Uchpedgiz, 1941.

4.Filin F.P. Origin of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages. L.: Nauka, 1972.

5. Alekseeva T.I. Ethnogenesis of the Eastern Slavs according to anthropological data. M., 1973.

6. Alekseev V.P. Origin of the peoples of Eastern Europe. M., 1969.

7. Derzhavin N.S. Slavs in antiquity. M., 1945.

8. Kalinina T.M. Arab geographers of the 9th century. about the Slavs // Slavs and their neighbors. International relations in the era of feudalism. M., 1989.

9. Kalinina T. M. Arab sources of the VIII-IX centuries. about the Slavs // The most ancient states of Eastern Europe. M., 1994.

10. Letseevich L. Baltic Slavs and Northern Russia in the Early Middle Ages. A few discussion notes. // Slavic archeology. Ethnogenesis, resettlement and spiritual culture of the Slavs. M., 1993.

11. Slavs and their neighbors in the 1st millennium BC. e. and in the I millennium AD. e. M., 1993.

12. Tretyakov P.N. East Slavic tribes. M., 1953.

13. Tretyakov P.N. In the footsteps of the ancient Slavic tribes. L., 1982.

14. Trubachev O.N. Linguistics and ethnogenesis of the Slavs. Ancient Slavs according to etymology and onomastics. // Questions of linguistics, 1982, No. 4 - 5.

Sources

1. Ancient Slavs in excerpts from Greco-Roman and Byzantine writers in the 7th century. n. e. // Bulletin of ancient history. 1941. No. 1. Page. 230. Internet resource. Access mode: http://www.junik.lv/~vasilevs/viz_slav/prokopii3.htm

2. Procopius of Caesarea. War with the Goths. M., 1996. T. 1, 2.

3. Code of ancient written news about the Slavs. T. 1 (I - VI centuries). M., 1991; T. 2. (VII - IX centuries). M., 1995.

4. Tacitus K. On the origin of the Germans and the location of the Germans // Tacitus K. Works in two volumes. T. 1. St. Petersburg, 1993. S. 337 - 356.

Lecture number 1. The first information about the Slavs.

Plan.

1. Indo-Europeans and Slavs

2. Herodotus about the Slavs

3. Greek, Roman Byzantine authors about the Slavs

4. Arabic sources about the Slavs

Differentiation of the Indo-Europeans (according to V.V. Sedov)

Recording of an interview with Herodotus about the ancient Slavs

Question	Herodotus' answer
Dear Herodotus, tell me what was in your time the life of people on both sides of the Dnieper?	Borisfen- the most profitable river: along its banks stretch lovely obese pastures for livestock; in it found in large quantities the best fish; the water tastes good to drink and is clear(compared to the water of other muddy rivers of Scythia). crops along the banks of the Borysthenes excellent and where the land is not sown, tall grass spreads. At the mouth of Borysfen it settles by itself countless amounts of salt. In the river there are huge boneless fish called "Antakei" and there are many other curiosities.
At the mouth of the Dnieper, Mykolaiv region, who lived except for the Greeks?	Behind Borysthenes, from the side of the sea, Hylaea first extends, and to the north of it live Scythian farmers.
How far north were their lands?	These Scythian farmers occupy the area for three days' journey to the east .., and to the north - for eleven days' sailing up the Borisfen.
Eleven days of sailing up the Dnieper - this is to large rapids, that is just below modern Dnepropetrovsk. BUT north of the Scythians who lived?	Above them, the desert stretches far. beyond the desert live androfagi - a special, but not a Scythian tribe. And to the north there is a real desert, and there are no people there, as far as I know, no more.
Our archaeologists have evidence that someone lived there at that time.	I have not seen a single person who would say that he knows these lands as an eyewitness. ... However, I will tell exactly and in as much detail as possible everything that I, albeit by hearsay, had a chance to learn about these northern countries
Be kind.	Closest of all from the trading harbor of the Borisfenites ... live the Callipids - the Hellenic Scythians; behind them there goes another tribe called alyzones. They, along with the Kallipids, lead the same way of life as the rest of the Scythians, however, they sow and eat bread, onions, garlic, lentils and millet. To the north of the Alizons live Scythian farmers. They sow grain not for their own subsistence, but for sale. Finally, more live above them neurons, a north of the neurons as far as I know, it's already deserted desert. These are the tribes along the Hypanis River west of Borysthenes
All in one place - Greeks, Scythians, Alizons... Who else?	Taurus. They sacrifice to the Virgin the shipwrecked sailors and all the Hellenes who are captured on the high seas. ... With the captured enemies, the Taurians act like this: the severed heads of the captives are taken to the house, and then, sticking them on a long pole, they put them high above the house, usually above the chimney. These heads hanging over the roof are, they say, the guardians of the whole house. Taurians live by robbery and war
Cruel people. Heads are cut off...	All these peoples, except for the Hyperboreans, are constantly at war with their neighbors.
There is a hypothesis that the Hyperboreans, that is, "those who live in the north", are one of the ancestors of the Slavs.	Neither the Scythians nor other peoples know anything about the Hyperboreans. this part of the world, except for the Issedones. However, as I think, the Issedones also do not know anything about them. ... But still, Hesiod has news of the Hyperboreans; Homer also mentions them in Epigones.
But did anyone live there?	Northern parts of Scythia, extending inland, up the Istra border first with Agathyrsae, then with Neurii, then with Androphages and, finally, with Melanchlens
The Agathyrs lived up the Istra, that is, the Danube. It is in the southwest of Hungary, in Pannonia. And Pannonia, according to Nestor, is the ancestral home of the Slavs. Agathirs - Proto-Slavs. And what were their personalities? Probably ill-mannered, rude, cruel? What can you tell about them?	Agathyrses- the most pampered tribe. They usually wear gold jewelry and get together with women so that they can be brothers to everyone and, like relatives, not envy and not be at enmity with each other. Otherwise, their customs are similar to those of the Thracians.
Dear Herodotus, you mentioned neuro s who lived, according to our experts, on the northern border of Scythia along the entire right-bank Ukraine from Lvov to Kyiv. Nevrov is also called the ancestors of the Slavs. What can you tell about them?	At neurons Scythian customs. One generation before the campaign of Darius, they had to leave their whole country because of the snakes. For not only did their own land produce many snakes, but even more attacked them from the desert inland. Therefore, the neurons were forced to leave their land and settle among the Budins.
The invasion of snakes is a Scythian legend. snakes- the embodiment of an evil inclination, hostile aliens who expelled the neurons to the Budins (in the Donetsk region). What are neurons by nature?	These people appear to be sorcerers. At least the Scythians and the Hellenes living among them claim that each neuron annually turns into a wolf for several days, and then again takes on a human form. These stories don't convince me. But they say so, and even affirm it with an oath.
Tell about androphage ah, in Greek - cannibals. They, in your words, lived between the neurons and boudins, that is, in the Poltava and Dnepropetrovsk regions.	Among all the tribes, the Androphages have the wildest customs. They know neither courts nor laws and are nomads. They wear clothes similar to the Scythian, but they have a special language. This is the only tribe of cannibals in that country.
What can you say about melanchlena x, who lived, according to researchers, in Chernihiv and Sumy regions?	All melancholy wear black clothes which is where their name comes from. Their manners are Scythian.
Well and Budins, so to speak, "Donets" who sheltered the brothers "Lviv"?	The Budins are a large and numerous tribe; they all have light blue eyes and red hair. ... They are the indigenous inhabitants of the country - nomads. ... Their whole land is covered with dense forests of various kinds. In the middle of the thicket there is a huge lake surrounded by marshes and reed beds. Otters, beavers and other square-faced animals are caught in this lake. With the fur of these animals, the boudins turn off their fur coats, and the testicles of beavers are used as a remedy against diseases of the uterus.
So, in modern Russia, who lived?	In the region lying even further north of the land of the Scythians, how they transmit nothing can be seen and it is impossible to penetrate there because of the flying feathers. And indeed, the earth and air there are full of feathers, and this is what interferes with vision.
What feathers?	To the north of the Scythian land, there are constant snowfalls, less in summer than in winter. Anyone who has seen such flakes of snow will understand me; for snowflakes are like feathers, and because of such a severe winter, the northern regions of this part of the world are uninhabited. The Scythians and their neighbors call snow flakes feathers.
Venerable Herodotus, in your time everyone was at war with each other. You, for example, mentioned the campaign of Darius. How did other tribes prove themselves in that war?	The Scythians were convinced that they alone were not able to repel the hordes of Darius in open battle and sent ambassadors to neighboring tribes. The kings of the latter gathered in council to consider what they should do in view of the invasion of such a huge army. The meeting was attended by kings taurus, agafirs, neurons, androphages, melanchlens, gelons, Budinov and Sauromatians.
And how was the council?	Scythian envoys arrived at the assembly of kings and asked to speak unanimously towards the enemy. The opinions of the participants were divided: the kings of the Gelons, Budinov and the Savromats came to an agreement and promised to help the Scythians. The kings of the Agathyrs, Nevri, Androphagi and others gave the following answer to the Scythians: “You offended the Persians before. You invaded the land of the Persians and owned it. Now the Persians want to repay you in kind. But even then we did not offend these people in any way and now we will not be the first to be at enmity with them. If the Persians enter our country and attack us, then we will not allow this. But for now, let's stay in our country. The Persians did not come against us, but against their offenders"
Having received such an answer, what did the Scythians do?	The Scythians decided not to engage in open battle with the Persians. ... began to slowly retreat, stealing cattle, filling up wells and springs and destroying grass on the ground. ... it was necessary to lure the Persians into the lands of those tribes that refused the alliance with the Scythians in order to involve them in the war
How did events develop further?	Darius walked with the army very quickly and, having arrived in Scythia, met there detachments of the Scythian army. Faced with enemies, the king began the pursuit, the Scythians were one day ahead of him. Darius did not stop the persecution. The Scythians, according to their military plan, began to retreat into the possessions of those tribes that refused to help them - to the country of the Melanchlens ..., to the region of the Androphagi, to the land of the Neuros. ... inducing fear, the Scythians retreated to the Agathirs
The pampered agafirs, of course, got scared?	Agathyrsi sent a herald... with a ban on entering their borders.
They dared to contradict the Scythians themselves?	The Agathyrsians told the Scythians that if they dared to invade their country, they would first have to endure a mortal battle with the Agathyrsians.
They, in fact, declared war on the Scythians!	After that, the Agathirs set out with an army to their borders to repel the attack
And how did the Scythians react to their ultimatum?	The Scythians, however, did not go to the country of the Agathyrs, since they did not want to let them through, but began to lure the Persians from the country of the Nevri to their land.
What about melanchlens, androphagi and neurons?	Melanchlens, Androphagi and Neurians did not dare to resist the Persians and Scythians. Forgetting their threats, they fled in fear further north into the desert.
How did all those tribes deal with education, culture?	Of all the countries where Darius set out on a campaign, in addition to the Scythian peoples, the most ignorant tribes live on the Euxine Pontus. After all, not a single enlightened tribe can be named on this side of the Pontus, and we do not meet a single famous person among them ... In addition to many huge rivers, there is nothing more remarkable in this country.
What kind of religious cults did they have? For example, among the Hyperboreans?	The Delians tell much more about the Hyperboreans. According to them, the Hyperboreans send sacrificial gifts wrapped in wheat straw to the Scythians. From the Scythians, gifts are received by the closest neighbors, and each people always passes them on further and further, as far as the Adriatic Sea in the extreme west. From there, gifts are sent south: first they go to the Dodonic Hellenes, and then they are taken to the Malian Gulf and transported to Euboea. Here they are transported from one city to another up to Carista. However, Andros is bypassed, as the Caristians transport the shrine directly to Tenos, and the Tenos to Delos. So, according to the stories of the Delians, these sacred gifts finally arrive on Delos.
What are these sacred gifts? Why did the Hyperboreans pass them on to the Scythians, who then went on to Greece, to Delos?	For the first time, the Delians say, the Hyperboreans sent with gifts two girls, named Hyperochus and Laodice. Together with them, five Hyperborean citizens were sent as escorts for the safety of the girls. But when the envoys did not return to their homeland, the Hyperboreans were afraid that misfortune could befall the envoys every time and they would not return home. Therefore, they began to bring sacred gifts wrapped in wheat straw to the border of their possessions and pass them on to their neighbors with a request to send them to other nations. And this is how the gifts were sent and arrived on Delos. I know that in other places the same happens with sacred gifts. And the Hyperboreans give gifts to Apollo.
According to myths, Apollo was born in the country of the Hyperboreans. What about boodins? Did they worship Hellenic gods?	Yes. ... [they] have shrines to the Hellenic gods, with statues, altars, and temple buildings made of wood built after the Hellenic model. Every three years, the Boudins celebrate a feast in honor of Dionysus and go into a Bacchic frenzy.

Round table with the participation of ancient historians.

The problem of discussion “Ancient Slavs.

Features of life, character, worldview "

Members:

Julius Caesar- Roman emperor (II - I century BC),

Procopius of Caesarea- Byzantine historian, writer (VI century),

Mauritius(Mauritius Strategist, Pseudo-Mauritius) - Byzantine military historian, Eastern Roman emperor (VI century),

Jordan- Gothic historian (first half of the 6th century),

Agathius(Agathius of Mirinea, Agathius Scholastic) - Byzantine poet, historian, lawyer (VI century),

protector(Menander the Byzantine) - Byzantine writer, historian, lawyer (second half of the 6th century),

John of Ephesus- Byzantine historian, Bishop of Ephesus (VI century),

Fiophylact Simocatta- Byzantine historian, writer (first half of the 7th century),

Feofan(Theophanes the Confessor) - Byzantine monk, chronicler (VII-VIII centuries),

Fredegar(Fredegar Scholastic) - Frankish chronicler (VII century),

Photius- Patriarch of Constantinople (IX century).

Issues for discussion

1. Places of residence of the ancient Slavs

2. The appearance of the ancient Slavs

3. The nature of the ancient Slavs

4. The lifestyle of the ancient Slavs

5. Religion of the ancient Slavs

6. Social arrangement

7. Attitude to war, to battle, to prisoners

Question	Members	Answer
Places of residence of the ancient Slavs	Procopius of Caesarea Protector, Phiophylact Simocatta, Agathius	In the Danube and the Balkans
	Mauritius	They settle in forests, impassable rivers, swamps and lakes., arrange many exits in their dwellings due to the dangers that happen to them, which is natural
	Jordan	Sklavins live from the city of Novietun and the lake, which is called Mursian, to Danastra, and in the north to the Vistula. The place of cities is occupied by swamps and forests. The Antes, the bravest of them, living on the bend of Pontus, extend from Danastra to Danaper.
	Julius Caesar	Their settlements were located on capes and spits jutting out into the sea, so that they were impregnable from land due to the sea tides that blocked the approaches to the settlements.
What were their names?	Jordan	They are in the list of peoples, coming from the same tribe, now they have three names: Wends, Antes and Sklavins
What is the language of the Slavs?	Procopius Caesarean Mauritius	Both have the same language...
The appearance of the ancient Slavs	Procopius Caesarean	Huge and strong body
		They are very tall and have great strength.
		Their skin and hair color is very light or golden and not very black.
		Their skin and hair color is not very white or golden and not quite black, but they are still dark red.
	Mauritius	In appearance, they do not differ from each other
	Theophylact Simocatta	The Romans wondered the size of their bodies and beauty
		They marveled at their growth and praised them stately appearance
The character of the ancient Slavs	Procopius Caesarean	Patiently endure terrible suffering.
		Highly energetic.
		In essence, they are not bad people and not at all. not vicious
	Jordan	Although now, according to our sins, they rage everywhere
		Superior to the Germans both in body and spirit
	protector	Brash in speech with curses and mutual insults, with cruel and pompous words
		hard to conquer
	John of Ephesus	Damned people of the Slavs
	Mauritius	Because of their love of freedom, they can in no way be persuaded into slavery or submission in their own country.
		They are easier to subdue with fear than with gifts.
		They are numerous hardy, easily tolerate heat, cold, rain, nudity, lack of food
		Modesty of their women exceeds all human nature, so that most of them consider the death of their husband their death and voluntarily strangle themselves, not counting being a widow for life
		They are insidious and do not keep their word regarding contracts
		Since there is no unanimity between them, they do not gather together, and if they do, then what they decide is immediately violated by others, since they all hostile to each other and no one wants to give in to the other
	Theophylact Simocatta	Peacefully and without rebellions, their life passes
		Having fallen into despair and expecting death, they did not pay attention to the torment, as if these sufferings and blows of the scourge were related to someone else's body.
	Photius	"Ros", a people well known for their autonomy and militancy
		Proud of weapons. The unnoticed people
The lifestyle of the ancient Slavs	Procopius Caesarean	Similar in their way of life and in their customs
		Never married foreign women
		Their lifestyle is rough, without any amenities.
		Forever they covered in mud
	Mauritius	The tribes of Slavs and Antes are similar in their way of life, in their customs.
		They bury the things they need in hiding places.
		They do not openly own anything
		Lead a wandering life
	Theophylact Simocatta	They wear the harp because they are not accustomed to clothe their bodies in iron weapons: their country does not know iron. …
		They play the lyre because they are not trained to blow trumpets. For those to whom war is an unknown thing, they said, indulge more intensely in musical exercises.
	Feofan	People, dirty, unclean
	Photius	The people of the Ross are an unnamed people, not considered for anything, but having received a name since the time of the campaign against us, insignificant, but having received significance, people humiliated and poor, but reaching a brilliant height and untold wealth, a people living somewhere far from us, barbaric, nomadic, ... so quickly and so menacingly swept over our borders, like a wave of the sea, and destroyed those who live on this earth, like a wild beast, grass or reeds or harvest ...
social device	Procopius Caesarean	They are not ruled by one person, but since ancient times they live in the rule of the people, and therefore they consider happiness and unhappiness in life to be a common matter. Similarly, in everything else, all life and laws are the same.
		The tribes are very populous, and each tribe has its own leader.
		They are since ancient times lived independently
Religion of the ancient Slavs	Procopius Caesarean	They believe that one lightning god- is the lord over all, and bulls are sacrificed to him and other sacred rites are performed
		They don't know fate and generally do not recognize that it has any power in relation to people
		When they are about to die, whether afflicted with illness or in war, caught in a dangerous situation, they make a promise if they are saved, immediately make a sacrifice to god for their souls, and, having escaped death, they sacrifice what they promised, and think that their salvation was bought at the price of this sacrifice
		They revere rivers, and nymphs, and all sorts of other demons, make sacrifices to all of them, and with the help of these sacrifices they also perform divination.
	Feofan	Believe in false gods
	Photius	Russian pagan people
Attitude to war, to battle, to prisoners	Jordan	Always fought with bestial ferocity
	Julius Caesar	Difficult opponent. They were excellent sailors, and their ships had a certain advantage over the Romans.
		They were hard to beat they owned all the harbors in Gaul and had strongholds in Britain. During a long siege, the Slavs on ships took out all the inhabitants and property to another place, leaving no valuables to the enemy
		Dominating the sea, the Slavs made all those sailing on this sea their tributaries.
	John of Ephesus	They learned to make war better than the Romans; [and yet they are] simple people, who did not dare to appear from the forests and steppes
	Mauritius	They are do not have a military system and a single chief; such are the Slavs and Antes, as well as other barbarian tribes, unable to obey or fight in the ranks
		They love to fight with their enemies in places overgrown with dense forests, in gorges, on cliffs; they take advantage of (ambushes), surprise attacks, tricks, day and night, inventing many ways. They are also experienced in crossing rivers.
		They bravely endure being in the water, so that often some of those who remain at home, being caught by a sudden attack, plunge into the abyss of water. At the same time, they hold in their mouths specially made large reeds hollowed out inside, reaching the surface of the water, and themselves, lying supine on the bottom (of the river), breathe with their help; and this they can do for many hours, so that it is absolutely impossible to guess their (presence).
		If it happens that they dare to go into battle, then during it with a cry
		They are masters of doing in a variety of ways they come up with in order to lure the enemy
	Theophylact Simocatta	Roman soldiers said that the cold here is unbearable, and countless crowds of Slavs are invincible
	Fredegar	Already from antiquity, the Wends are used by the Huns as "befulci", so that when the Huns go on a campaign against some people, they themselves stand in front of the camp, and the Wends had to fight. If the latter were victorious, then the Huns went ahead to seize the booty, but if the Wends were defeated, then, relying on the help of the Huns, they gathered new forces, therefore the Huns called them befulci, since they went into battle ahead and experienced battle during the fight. at both sides.
	Procopius Caesarean	They killed those who came across to them not with swords and spears or by any of the usual methods, but, having driven stakes firmly into the ground and making them as sharp as possible, they impaled these unfortunates on them with great force, making the point of this stake enter between the buttocks. , and then under pressure (of the body?) reached the insides of a person.
	Feofan	They marveled at their weapons and courage
	Photius	They are fought bravely, killed the people as much as they could, and then triumphantly returned home
		Russian warlike people
	Mauritius	Those who are in their captivity they do not keep in slavery, like other tribes, for an unlimited time, but, limiting (the term of slavery) to a certain time, they offer them a choice: do they want to return home for a certain ransom, or remain there (where they are) in the position of free and friends?
How did the Slavs treat guests, strangers?	Mauritius	To coming to them foreigners they treat them affectionately and, showing them signs of their location, (when they move) from one place to another they guard them in case of need, so that if it turned out that, due to the negligence of the one who receives a foreigner, the latter suffered (any) damage, the one who received him earlier starts a war (against the guilty), considering it a duty of honor to avenge the stranger.

Collection of works of the round table participants

Author	Annotations, quotes
Herodotus "History", 4 book	a story about Scythia, interesting ethnographic details, confirmed in the images on the recently found Scythian antiquities; A story about the various branches and tribes of the Scythians and their neighbors, in particular about the Scythian farmers ( plowmen), nevra, budinakh
Mauritius "Strategikon"	The tribes of the Slavs are numerous, hardy, easily endure heat, cold, rain, lack of food. Arriving foreigners are treated kindly and, showing them signs of their disposition, guard them.<...> The modesty of their women exceeds all human nature, so that most of them consider the death of their husband their death and voluntarily strangle themselves.<...> They love to fight with their enemy in places overgrown with dense forest, in gorges, on cliffs; they use ambushes, surprise attacks, and tricks to their advantage.<...> They are also experienced in crossing rivers, surpassing all people in this respect. They bravely endure being in the water.<...>. Having no head over them and being at enmity with each other, they do not recognize the military system, they are not able to fight in the right battle, they do not appear on open flat places.<...>Having great help in the forests, they go to them, because. among the gorges they know how to fight well.
Cornelius Tacitus "Germany"	Wends lived among the peoples of Peukins ( northern part of the Lower Danube) and the Fenns, who occupied the territory of the forest belt of Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Urals.
Pliny the Elder "Natural History"	Some report that she Eringia - a mythical island or peninsula, which is identified with the Vistula-Oder interfluve) is inhabited up to the Visula River by Sarmatians, Wends, Skirs and Khirrs,
Ptolemy Claudius "Guide to Geography"	European Sarmatia is surrounded from the north by the Sarmatian Ocean along the Venedsky Gulf ... And Sarmatia is surrounded by other mountains, of which they are called ... and the Venedian Mountains ... And Sarmatia is occupied by very large peoples - Wends along the entire Venedsky Gulf ... And smaller peoples inhabit Sarmatia: along the Vistula River, below the Wends, the Gitons, then the Finns, then the Sulons; below them are frugudions, then Avarins at the source of the Vistula River; below these are ombrions, then anartophracts, then bourgions, then arcietes, then saboks, then piengites and biesses near the Carpathian mountain. To the east of those named, again below the Wends, are the Galindas and the Vedics and Stavans up to the Alans ... And again, the coast of the Ocean along the Venedian Gulf is successively occupied by the Velts, above them the Osii, then even to the north the Carbonifers, to the east of which the Kareotes and Sals, followed by the Gelons, and hippopods, and malanchlens; behind them are the agathyrsae, then the aorses and pagirites; behind them are Savars and Borusks up to the Riphean Mountains
Jordan "Getica" - "On the origin and deeds of the Getae"	Starting from the birthplace of the Vistula River, a large tribe of Veneti settled down in the boundless spaces. Although their names now change according to different genera and localities, they are still predominantly called Sclaveni and Antes. The Sklavens live from the city of Novietun and the lake called Mursian to Danastra, and north to Visla; instead of cities, they have swamps and forests. Ants are the strongest of both ( tribes) - spread from Danastre to Danapra, where the Pontic Sea forms a bend; these rivers are separated from each other by a distance of many crossings
Procopius of Caesarea "War with the Goths"	once even the name of the Slavs and Antes was the same. In ancient times, both of these tribes were called disputes (" scattered"), I think because they lived, occupying the country ... "scattered", in separate villages ... They live, occupying most of the coast of Istra ( lower Danube), on the other side of the river
anonymous essay "Raven Cosmography" ( world description)	anonymous divides the world into 24 hours, 12 days and nights, night hours are the northern countries: "About 6 o'clock in the morning is the homeland of the Scythians, where the Slavs come from."
John of Ephesus "Church History" Book 6, Chapter 48	the story of the Slavic attacks on Byzantium

In this way:

1) Jordan directly stated that the ancestors of the Slavs were the Venets;

2) the Veneti, according to Pliny, Tacitus and Ptolemy, lived in Povislenie;

3) the Vistula basin - the center of the Slavic lands in the historical era; it was here that the most ancient indisputably Slavic archaeological monuments were concentrated, language materials are also “pulled” here;

4) therefore, it can be taken as an axiom that the Wends of ancient sources are Slavs.

Recording of an interview with Herodotus about the Scythians

Question	Herodotus' answer
Dear Herodotus, what can you tell about the Scythians?	According to the stories of the Scythians, their people are the youngest of all.
Who are they? Who are their ancestors?	They are believed to be descended from Zeus himself, I do not believe it, despite their claims.
As we know, the Scythians were good warriors.	Following the Cimmerians, they penetrated into Asia and crushed the power of the Medes. The horde of rebellious Scythian nomads moved to the Media land. The king of the Medes at that time was Cyaxares.
You said the horde "moved". It was previously mentioned that the Scythians "crushed" the Medes.	The king at first received the Scythians in a friendly manner, since they had come to seek asylum, and even gave them his sons to be trained in the art of archery. However, after some time, it turned out that the Scythians, who were constantly engaged in hunting and always got game, did not kill anything. When they returned empty-handed, Cyaxares treated them harshly and insultingly. Having received such an undeserved insult from Cyaxares, the Scythians decided to cut into pieces one of the boys who were in their training. Then, gutting, as usual, gutting game, they served Cyaxares on the table as hunting prey.
And what is Cyaxares?	Cyaxares and his guests tasted this meat
And what's next?	There was a battle between the Medes and the Scythians. Huge hordes of Scythians invaded the kingdom [Cyaxares]
Did you come to help?	The Scythians drove the Cimmerians out of Europe and pursued them into Asia, and now they have invaded the Median land. The Medes were defeated and their power was broken. The Scythians spread their dominion throughout Asia
How long did they rule Asia?	Scythians ruled Asia for 28 years and with their arrogance and outrage brought everyone into complete disorder. Indeed, in addition to the fact that they collected the established tribute from each people, the Scythians still traveled around the country and robbed everything that came across. ... Then the Scythians went to Egypt
Scythians conquered Egypt?	On the way there in Palestine Syria, the Scythians met Psammetich, the Egyptian king, with gifts and requests persuaded the conquerors not to go further
So the Scythians rampaged in Asia for 28 years?	When then, after a 28-year absence, after so much time, the Scythians returned to their country, a disaster awaited them, no less than a war with the Medes: ... the wives of the Scythians, due to the long absence of their husbands, entered into a relationship with slaves. From these slaves and wives of the Scythians a young generation grew up
Therefore, since that time, the Scythians, as a people, no longer existed?	According to some reports, the Scythians are very numerous, and according to others, there are very few indigenous Scythians.
Why did the Scythians easily take possession of the territory from the Carpathians to the Don? Why did the formidable, brave, warlike Cimmerians give them their lands so easily?	The nomadic tribes of the Scythians lived in Asia. When the Massagetae forced them out of there by military force, the Scythians crossed the Araks and arrived in the Cimmerian land. With the approach of the Scythians, the Cimmerians began to hold advice on what to do in the face of a large enemy army. ... The people were in favor of retreat, considering it unnecessary to fight with so many enemies. The kings, on the contrary, considered it necessary to stubbornly defend their native land from invaders. The people did not heed the advice of the kings, and the kings did not want to obey the people. ... The Cimmerians were divided into two equal parts and began to fight among themselves. The Cimmerian people buried all those who fell in the fratricidal war near the Tiras River. After that, the Cimmerians left their land, and the Scythians who came took possession of a deserted country
So, the Scythians came and settled down. And took up farming?	They do not sow or plow anything at all. ... All they are horse archers and live not in agriculture, but in cattle breeding.
Did they have settlements?	Their dwellings are in tents. After all, the Scythians have neither cities nor fortifications, and they carry their dwellings with them
Like gypsies. And who are the royal Scythians?	Behind the river Herr are the royal possessions. The most valiant and numerous Scythian tribe lives there. These Scythians consider other Scythians to be subject to them.
Did they also live in tents?	The Scythians have neither cities nor fortifications
Mr. Herodotus, what do you like most about the Scythians?	Among all the peoples known to us, only the Scythians have one, but the most important art for human life. It consists in the fact that they do not allow a single enemy who attacked their country to be saved; and no one can overtake them unless they themselves allow it
Please tell us about the Scythian military customs	When the Scythian kills the first enemy, he drinks his blood.
Is it true that the Scythians tore off the heads of their enemies? What for?	The Scythian warrior brings the heads of all those killed by him in battle to the king. Only he who brings the head of the enemy receives his share of the booty
They are said to have skinned their captives	The Scythian warrior uses dressed leather like a towel. Whoever has the most of these leather towels is considered the most valiant husband. Some even make cloaks out of flayed skin, sewing them together like goatskins. Others, from the skin torn off along with the nails from the right hand of enemy corpses, make covers for their quivers.
Was it pleasant for them to enjoy the brilliance of the enemy's skin?	Human skin is, indeed, thick and shiny, and shines brighter than almost any other. Many Scythians rip off all the skin from an enemy corpse, stretch it on boards and then carry it with them on horseback.
Did they sign peace treaties?	All treaties of friendship, consecrated by an oath, are made like this among the Scythians. Wine mixed with the blood of the parties to the agreement is poured into a large clay bowl (for this, an awl is pricked on the skin or a small incision is made with a knife). Then the sword, arrows, ax and spear are immersed in the bowl. After this rite, long incantations are pronounced, and then both the parties to the agreement themselves and the most respected of those present drink from the cup.
Did the Scythians like to drink?	Once a year, each ruler in his district prepares a vessel for mixing wine
And treated everyone to wine?	Only those who have killed the enemy drink from this vessel. Those who have not yet had a chance to kill the enemy cannot drink wine from this vessel, but must sit aside, as disgraced. For the Scythians, this is the most shameful of all. Everyone who has killed many enemies is offered two cups, and they drink them all at once.
We heard that the Scythians liked to drink from skulls. Did they make glasses out of them?	First, the skulls are sawn off to the eyebrows and cleaned. The poor man covers the skull only on the outside with rawhide cowhide and uses it in this form. Rich people cover the outside of the skull with rawhide, and then cover the inside with gilding and use it instead of a bowl.
It must be nice to drink from the skull of an enemy...	So the Scythians do even with the skulls of their relatives.
Relatives?..	If they quarrel with them, and when before the court of the king one will prevail over the other. When visiting distinguished guests, the host displays such skulls and reminds the guests that these relatives were his enemies and that he defeated them. Such an act among the Scythians is considered a valiant deed.
And what did they eat?	After peeling off the skin of the sacrificial animal, they clean the bones from the meat ... all the meat is placed in the stomachs of the animals ... and then thrown into the cauldrons ... The meat, cleaned of bones, freely fits in the stomachs. So the bull cooks himself
What did they do after dinner?	In the Scythian land, hemp grows - a plant very similar to flax, but much thicker and larger. ... Taking this hemp seed, the Scythians crawl under a felt yurt and then throw it on hot stones. From this rises such strong smoke and steam that no Hellenic steam bath can be compared with such a bath. Enjoying it, the Scythians scream loudly with pleasure. This soaring serves them instead of a bath, since they do not wash themselves with water at all.
Even women?	Scythian women grind pieces of cypress, cedar and incense on a rough stone, adding water. Then the whole body and face are smeared with the dough obtained from rubbing. From this, the body acquires a pleasant smell, and when the smeared layer is washed off the next day, it becomes clean and shiny.
Please tell us about the Scythian religion.	The Scythians revere Hestia, then Zeus and Gaia (Gaia is the wife of Zeus); after them - Apollo and Aphrodite, Hercules and Ares. These gods are recognized by all the Scythians, and the royal Scythians also make sacrifices to Poseidon
They worshiped not their own gods, but the Greek ones?	In the Scythian language, Hestia is called Tabiti, Zeus is called Papey, Gaia is Api, Apollo is Goytosir, Heavenly Aphrodite is Argimpas, Poseidon is Fagimasad
Dear Herodotus, from your books we know that the Greek influence on the Scythians was very strong, there were entire Hellenized Scythian tribes	Callipids - Hellenic Scythians.
You write that not only simple Scythians, but also their kings accepted the faith and customs of the Hellenes. In your fourth book, Stories. Melpomene" you mention one of these kings - Skyla. Please tell us about him.	Reigning over the Scythians, Skil did not like the way of life of this people at all. By virtue of the upbringing he received, the king was much more inclined to Hellenic customs and acted, for example, as follows: when he had to enter the city of Borisfenites with an army ... he left his retinue in front of the city gates, and he himself entered the city and ordered the city gates to be locked. gates. Then Skil took off his Scythian dress and dressed in Hellenic clothes. In this attire, the king walked around the market square without bodyguards and other companions (the gates were guarded so that none of the Scythians would see the king in such an outfit). The king, however, not only adhered to the Hellenic customs, but even performed sacrifices according to the rites of the Hellenes. For a month or even more, he remained in the city, and then put on Scythian clothes again and left the city. Such visits were repeated many times, and Skil even built himself a house in Borisfen and settled his wife there, a local native.
And how did this love story end?	A sad fate, however, was destined to Skil. The king wished to be initiated into the mysteries of Dionysus Bacchus. And when the sacraments were about to begin, a great sign appeared. The king had a large luxurious palace in the city of Borisfenites, surrounded by a wall. All around stood white marble sphinxes and griffins. God brought down his wrath on this palace, and it all perished in flames. But Skil performed the rite of passage. The Scythians condemn the Hellenes for their Bacchic frenzy. After all, according to them, there can not be a deity that makes people crazy. When the king was initiated into the mysteries of Bacchus, some Borisfenite, turning to the Scythians, mockingly remarked: “Here you Scythians are laughing at us because we are serving Bacchus, and at this time we are seized by a divine frenzy. And now your king is also possessed by this god: he not only performs the mysteries of Bacchus, but also goes mad, possessed by a deity. If you don't believe me, then follow me and I'll show you!" The Scythians followed the borisfenite. He secretly led them to the city wall and put them on the tower. At the sight of Skil, passing by with the crowd in a Bacchic frenzy, the Scythians were in terrible indignation. Returning, they then told the whole army about what they had seen. After Skil returned home, the Scythians rebelled against him.
Tell me, what kind of gods did the Scythians build temples for?	The Scythians are not in the habit of erecting idols, altars and temples to gods, except for Ares. They build structures for him. In each Scythian region, sanctuaries to Ares were erected by districts: mountains of brushwood were piled one on top of the other ... A quadrangular platform was arranged at the top. ... An ancient iron sword is hoisted on each such hill. This is the idol of Ares. Horses and cattle are sacrificed annually to this sword, and more than other gods.
Please tell me about rite e sacrifices.	The rites of sacrifice to all the gods and at all the festivities are the same for them. and they are performed like this: the sacrificial animal is placed with its front legs tied. The sacrificer, standing behind, pulls on the end of the rope and then throws the victim to the ground. During the fall of the animal, the priest calls out to the god to whom he makes a sacrifice. Then he throws a noose around the neck of the animal and, by turning the stick inserted into the noose, strangles him. At the same time, no fire is kindled and no initiation or libations begin. After the victim is strangled, they peel off the skin and start cooking the meat. They do not sacrifice pigs and generally do not want to breed these animals in their country.
And there were human sacrifice?	Out of every hundred captives, one person is sacrificed., but not in the same way as cattle, but according to a different rite. The captives' heads are first sprinkled with wine, and the victims are slaughtered over the vessel. Then they carry the blood to the top of the pile of brushwood and sprinkle it on the sword. Below, at the sanctuary, the following rite is performed: the right shoulders with arms are cut off from the slaughtered victims and thrown into the air; then, after slaughtering other animals, they finish the rite and leave. The hand remains where it fell, and the corpse of the victim lies separately.
Did the Scythians have magicians, wizards?	The Scythians have many soothsayers.
What did they predict?	When the king of the Scythians is struck by an illness, he orders three of the most respected soothsayers to be brought to him. ... They guess with the help of many willow twigs as follows. They bring huge bundles of rods and put them on the ground. Then the bundles are untied and each rod is laid out one by one in a row and then predictions are made.
And how did the Scythian clairvoyants proclaim the diagnosis?	Usually a prediction is made approximately in this way: such and such of the inhabitants (calling him by name) took a false oath by the gods of the royal hearth ... and that because of this the king fell ill
What happened next?	Accused of a false oath, they immediately seize and bring to the king.
Did the accused confess?	The accused indignantly denies guilt.
How did the king act in this case?	If he continues to deny, then the king orders to call on more soothsayers in double numbers. If, after divination, they also admit his guilt, then this person is immediately cut off his head, and his property by lot goes to the first soothsayers.
What if they don't recognize it?	On the contrary, in the case of the acquittal of the accused by the second soothsayers, more and more soothsayers are called. If the majority of them still pass an acquittal, then the first soothsayers themselves are sentenced to death.
And how did the Scythians execute the unsuccessful soothsayers?	The type of execution of soothsayers is as follows. On a cart harnessed by bulls, brushwood is piled to the top. Soothsayers with their feet tied and their hands twisted behind their backs are stuffed into a pile of brushwood. The brushwood is set on fire and then they frighten and drive the bulls. Often, along with the soothsayers, bulls also die in the fire. But still, when the drawbar burns, the bulls sometimes manage to escape by getting burned. In the manner mentioned, the soothsayers are burned, however, for other offenses, calling them false prophets. The king does not even spare the children of the executed: he executes all the sons, but does not harm the daughters
How was the funeral rite of the Scythians?	The tombs of the kings are located in Gerra (up to this place Borisfen is still navigable). When the king dies among the Scythians, then there dig a large rectangular hole. Having prepared a pit, the body is lifted onto a cart, covered with wax; then they cut the stomach of the deceased; then they clean it and fill it with crushed keper, incense and seeds of celery and anise.
And before burying the king...	They are being taken on a cart to another tribe. Inhabitants of each area, where they bring the body of the king ... cut off a piece of their ear, cut the hair on the head in a circle, make an incision on the arm around, scratch the forehead and nose and pierce the left arm with arrows. Then from here they carry the deceased on a wagon to another area of ​​their kingdom. Accompany the body of those to whom it was brought before. After a detour of all regions, they again arrive in Gerra ... to the royal graves. There the body on straw mats is lowered into the grave, spears are stuck into the ground on both sides, and boards are laid on top and covered with reed mats. In the rest of the vast space, the graves bury one of the king's concubines, having previously strangled her, as well as the butler, the cook, the groom, the bodyguard, the herald, horses, the first-born of all other domestic animals, and they also put golden bowls ( Scythians do not use silver and copper vessels for this at all). After that, all together pour a large hill over the grave.
These hills are still preserved.	A year later, they again perform the following funeral rites: ... they kill 50 people from the servants by strangulation (also 50 of the most beautiful horses), ... then, having pierced the horses with thick stakes in the entire length of the body to the very neck, they raise them to the rims. ... Then they put on bridles with bits for the horses, pull the bridles and tie them to the pegs. All 50 strangled young men are put on horses: a straight stake is stuck into the body of each along the spine up to the very neck. The lower end of the stake protruding from the body is inserted into a hole drilled in another stake, pierced through the horse's body. Having placed such riders around the grave, the Scythians leave. So the Scythians bury their kings
And how are ordinary citizens buried?	When all the other Scythians die, the next of kin they put the body on a wagon and take it around to friends. All friends accept the deceased and arrange refreshments for those accompanying them, and they also bring the deceased to taste the same dishes as the others. Ordinary people are taken thus around the county forty days, a then buried.

The first historical information about the Slavs appears relatively late; BC there is not a single reliable mention of them.

However, the Slavs, as we have just seen, have long lived in Central and Eastern Europe and have undoubtedly undergone many different changes here under the influence of events that took place before our era and before the era of their settlement. However, history does not tell us anything that would refer directly to the Slavs. We can only make indirect assumptions that in an era when various groups that later formed entire tribes still lived together on a common territory, some significant historical events should have influenced the fate of the Slavs.

So, it can be assumed that in the VIII and VII centuries BC. e. the Slavs established relations with the Iranian Scythians, who then penetrated from Asia into the southern Russian steppe regions 1 . I do not hesitate to assert that among the northern neighbors of the Scythians mentioned by Herodotus are not only the Neuri in Volhynia and Kiev region, but, probably, the Boudins who lived between the Dnieper and the Don, and even the Scythians, who are called both plowmen and farmers (Σκύθαι άροτήρες, γεωργοί) and placed by Herodotus 2 to the north of the actual steppe regions between the upper Bug and the middle Dnieper, were undoubtedly Slavs who were influenced by the Greco-Scythian culture, as evidenced by the numerous mounds of the Kyiv and Poltava regions.

On the other hand, from the message of Herodotus about the campaign of Darius in Scythia in 513-512 (or 507-505) BC. e. we know that Darius also penetrated into the regions inhabited by the Slavs (Nevri) and forced them to retreat to the north 3 . In addition, certain linguistic data, namely the rather significant number of Celtic names in the toponymy of the rivers in the Carpathian, the Celtic names of the cities indicated by Ptolemia καρρόδουνον, Βριτολάγαι), indicate that the lands of the Slavs in the Carpathian region were subjected, at least in part, to the invasion of the Gauls, who in the III and II centuries BC. e. reached the coast of the Black Sea, which is proved by the Γαλάται of the decree of Protogenes in Olbia. The invasion of the Gauls was undoubtedly caused by the pressure of the Germans, moving from the north to central Germany, but what was the fate and duration of this invasion remains completely unknown to this day. To regard these Gallic conquerors as Wends, mentioned on the Vistula by later historical sources, seems to me impossible for the reasons stated below 4 .

I also believe that the Germanic tribes of Bastarns and Skirs, who left the coast of the Baltic Sea and lived from the 3rd century BC. e. on the Black Sea coast, penetrated through the territory inhabited by the Slavs, in much the same way as the Goths did in the 3rd century AD. e. This happened in the period between the death of Herodotus, who knew nothing about them, and 240-230 years, when the Bastarnae are mentioned on the Danube (28. Prologue of the history of Pompey's Trogus), that is, between the middle of the 5th and the middle of the 3rd century.

These are the most significant and noteworthy historical events that affected the Slavs even before the beginning of our era.

Another hypothesis, however, deserves special mention, since its conclusions are of great importance in the study of the foundations of Slavic history. I have in mind Peisker's point of view, according to which the Slavic people long before our era and up to the 11th century A.D. e. was subordinate to various conquerors, now the Germans, now the Turko-Tatars, and was in constant and cruel slavery, which supposedly determined his character and gave special features to his later life and development 5 . Here I cannot show in detail why this hypothesis is devoid of a serious basis, how some insignificant and exorbitantly exaggerated facts lead the author to inadmissible conclusions; on this subject I refer the reader to my Zivot starych Slovanu 6 . Here I will give only a few data necessary for orientation in this matter.

Professor Peisker basically builds his theory on just a few Old Church Slavonic words related to Slavic culture. These words, borrowed partly from the Germanic, partly from the Turkic-Tatar languages, prove, in his opinion, that the Slavs, while they lived in their common ancestral home in the Pripyat basin, were subordinate to either the Germans or the Turko-Tatars. These words are: mammal, livestock and chickpeas(cattle), on the one hand, and, on the other hand, bull, ox, goat and curd. From the fact of borrowing these words, it allegedly follows that the Slavs were prohibited from cattle breeding and that they spoke of cattle and dairy products only as a privileged property of their German or Turko-Tatar rulers. Peisker comes to the conclusion about the cruel slavery of the Slavs on the basis of late news about the attack of the Turko-Tatars on the Slavs, according to which there were neither horses nor cattle in Russia 7 .

However, in objecting to Peisker, I have already briefly pointed out earlier that the premises underlying his hypothesis are, for the most part, untenable in all respects. According to a number of other historical and archaeological evidence, the Slavs have long been independently engaged in cattle breeding and had their own rich terminology associated with it. The few borrowed words cited by Peisker as really foreign 8 confirm only what is known from history, namely, that the Slavs have long lived in southern Russia in the neighborhood of the Turko-Tatars and were closely connected with them. History again shows us that subsequently, within a short time, the Slavic tribes survived one invasion after another of the Huns, Avars, Pechenegs, Polovtsians and Bulgarians. But it in no way follows from this that "since the era of their unity, all the Slavs have been in slavery either to the Germans or to the Tatars." If Peisker's arguments were true, then in this case it would also be impossible to draw such conclusions. True, it can be assumed that the connections of the Slavs with the Turko-Tatars began even before the arrival of the Avars, namely, back in the Neolithic era, when several millennia BC swarthy brachycephals that came out of Central Asia flooded Europe. However, in that era there were no Slavs yet: the Proto-Indo-European people were only being formed somewhere in Central Europe, and the Slavs, who had not yet separated from its mass, could not feel the consequences of this invasion more than the rest of this mass.

So, we have no evidence of the cruel slavery of the Slavs under the German and Tatar yoke, either for the most ancient period of their history, or for later times. Such slavery has never existed anywhere, except in the imagination of Peisker, who belittles Slavic primitiveness. Therefore, we must decisively reject his interpretation of the beginning of the history of the Slavs and take into account only those events that we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter.

The first reliable news about the Slavs dates back to the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. e. Slavs appear in them under the name of Wends (Venedi, Venadi, Veneti, Ούενέδαι). These reports include those of Pliny (Nat. Hist., IV.97; his work was written about 77): "quidam haec habitari ad Vistulam usque fluvium a Sarmatis, Venedis, Sciris, Hirris (corr.) tradunt";

Tacitus (Tac., Germ., 46, written in 98): “hic Suebiae finis. Peucinorum Venetorumque et Fennorum nationes Germanis an Sarmatis ascribam dubito ... gaudent; quae omnia diversa Sarmatis sunt in plaustro equoque viventibus";

Птолемея (умер около 178 года, Geogr., III.5.7): ««κατέχει δε τήν Σαρματίαν εθνη μέγιστα οι δε Ούενέδαι παρ’ δλον τον Ούενεδικόν κόλπον καί ύπέρ την Δακίαν Πευκΐνοί τε καί Βαστέρναι»; Geogr. III.5.8: "παρά τον Ούιστούλαν ποταμόν ύπό τούς Ούενέδας Γύθωνες, εΐτα Φίννοι, έΐτα Σοςω"; Geogr., 111.56: "τά Ούενεδικά όρη".".

To these testimonies one should add others, somewhat later: firstly, these are the inscriptions on the Peutinger map, which, in my opinion, dates back to the end of the 3rd century and on which the Sarmatians are mentioned twice, once in Dacia, another time between the Danube and the Dniester; Secondly, this is the Greek list of various peoples, composed approximately at the beginning of the III century (διαμερίσμου τής γης άποσπασμάτιον), in which the names βαρδουλοί, κουαδροί, βεριδοί, which is obviously a distortion of the words βανδοίhod and βενιδοM. And finally, this is the testimony of Marcianus in his Periplus (about 400), where again the name Οόενδικός κόλπος (ΙΙ.38, 39, 40) is found, which is available from Ptolemy. In these primary sources of the Wends, the Slavs are presented as a numerous people (μέγιστον έ "θνος), settled beyond the Vistula between the Baltic Sea (Venedian Gulf), the Carpathians (Venedian Mountains) and the lands pevkinov and fennians.

This is how the Slavs appear to us in the first centuries of our era. We have no earlier evidence. Of all the news brought in to exalt the ancient historical past of the Slavs, only two can be considered plausible to a certain extent.

First of all, these are the notes of Cornelius Nepos (94-24), which speak of the Indians, brought by a storm from the "Indian Sea" (indica aequora) to the shores of the "North Sea", where the king of the Batavians captured them and presented them as a gift in 58 proconsul A. Metellus Celer 9 . Then there is a series of ancient legends, according to which amber came from the land of the Genets or Eneti, located at the mouth of the river called Eridanos, later identified with the river Po 10 .

Names India and indica aequora(Indus and Indian Sea) cannot refer to India, since the storm could not carry the ship from India to the coast of Germany. Obviously, here we are not talking about the Indians, but about another people with a similar name, in particular, the "Vendi" of Roman authors or the "Vindi" ( Vindy) - in German Wenden. As for the legend about the origin of amber, it should be remembered that this rare substance was not found in the lands of the Italian "Veneti", while it was the Baltic States that once supplied the Mediterranean countries with a huge amount of amber and trade between them took place already during the second millennium. BC e. It can also be assumed that the traditional idea of ​​the presence of amber in northern Italy (historical Venice) appeared as a result of mixing the Baltic Venedi with the Italian Veneti, which were, of course, better known to historians than the former. However, it must be admitted that such an explanation of these two ancient testimonies can rightfully be rejected.

The Baltic Wends were, of course, Slavs. There are several proofs for this. Firstly, their habitats in the I-II centuries AD. e. coincide with the habitats of the Slavs in the VI century. The spread of the Slavs was quite insignificant during the period of the migration of peoples. Secondly - and this is a very important argument - the name of the Wends, Wends 11 was preserved in the German language ( Wenden, Winden) throughout the entire historical era, up to the latest, as a common name for the Slavs. Old villages, which their German neighbors wanted to distinguish from the German villages of the same name, were designated in contrast to them. windisch or wendisch. Finally, Jordan, the historian of the 6th century, who was the first to give an outline of the beginning of the history of the Slavs, knows that the names "Vend", "Vend" and "Slav" were used to refer to the same people; he uses these names alternately, 12 from which it can be concluded that in the 6th century the identity of the Slavs with the Wends was recognized.

The above evidence simultaneously refutes both the point of view of Tacitus, who hesitated whether to attribute the Wends to the Sarmatians or to the Germans, and finally settled on their Germanic origin, and the archaeological hypotheses of R. Mucha, in whose opinion the Wends were an Illyrian people, as well as the latter the hypotheses of Shakhmatov and Peisker, who consider the Wends to be Celts on the basis of the supposedly Celtic terminology of the waterways on the territory of the ancestral home of the Wends 13 . If this nomenclature were really of Celtic origin (and this can be doubted, at least in relation to some of these names), then this would only prove to us that the Celts once penetrated into these parts, obviously under the pressure of the Germans, advancing from the north to Germany 14 . However, this is by no means proof that the Wends of the 1st-7th centuries AD. e. were Celts. The most that can be assumed is that if the Wends were of Celtic origin, then their Slavization took place long before the 1st century AD. e. As for my point of view, I have no doubt that the Wends of Pliny, Tacitus and Ptolemy, as well as the Wends of Jordanes, Procopius and later historians, have always been Slavs. Their name - Vendy, Venedi - was not actually Slavic, but was, obviously, the name of an alien origin, which was given to the Slavs by their neighbors. Significant prevalence of names with stem windows or vend on the lands once inhabited by the Celts, suggests that these names are of Celtic origin 15 .

Finally, this numerous people, who in the first centuries of our era inhabited the vast lands between the Vistula, the Baltic Sea, the Carpathians and the Dnieper and Desna, had their own local name "Slavs" in that era. One can also guess the existence of an even more ancient name Serb(plural Serbs). This conjecture, by the way, is based on the obscure commentary of Procopius, which wrote about the Slavs and Ants 16: “σπόρους γάρ τό άαιόν άμφωτέρους έκάλουν δή σποράδηνοι την ώραν iodΰ” ”.

Procopius' message can be supplemented by a tradition preserved by an anonymous Bavarian geographer of the 9th century: "Zeruiani (we are talking about the Carpathian people), quod tantum est regnum ut ex eo cunctae gentes Sclavorum exortae sint et originem sicut affirmant ducant" 17 . Obviously, there was a name close to the Greek Σπόροι (which is probably an abbreviation of Βοσπόροι - the name of a famous kingdom on the coast of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov), but it is impossible to assume that here we are talking about Serbs, since there are too few grounds for this. The ancestors of historical Serbs never lived beyond the Sea of ​​Azov. The word "Serbs" serbi) is nowhere attested as a common name for all Slavs, and the form " sorb”, which allegedly was the original form of the Greek word Σπόροι, is not found in ancient sources about Eastern Serbs 18 .

It remains for us to consider only one common, genuine and ancient name, namely the name slovenes, slovenes(plural form; in the singular - Slovenia). This name is found in history for the first time at the beginning of the 6th century by Pseudo-Caesar Naziansky 19, then around 550 repeatedly by Procopius and Jordanes, and finally by later historians. It is not without probability that this name is also found in Ptolemy's list of the tribes of Sarmatia. The name Σουοβηνοί (Geogr., VI.14.9), used by the author, is indeed very close to the Slavic form Slovenia, and it can be assumed that Ptolemy borrowed it from some source, not even knowing, of course, what kind of people they were and what was their attitude towards the Wends living in the west of Sarmatia 20 .

Explaining the etymology of the word "Slovene", Fr. Mikloshich suggested that it was used at first to refer only to those Slavs who moved south in the 6th century (Slovenes, Dacian Slavs and future Bulgarians), and that it was allegedly extended to all Slavs only over the following centuries. However, it seems to me already proved that this name from the VI century denoted all Slavic tribes. It is found not only among those Slavs who then penetrated into Italy, Istria and the Balkan Peninsula, but also among the Slavs who lived in the center of Russia (Suavi at Jordan, Get., 250, not to mention the Σουοβηνοί mentioned by Ptolemy). Finally, we meet this name in the 7th century in Bohemia (Samo rex Sclavinorum at Fredegar) and in Lusatia (Surbi gens ex genere Sclavinorum, Sclavi cognomento Winadi, ibid., Chron., IV.48, 68), and in the 8th century on coast of the Baltic Sea (Einhard, Ann. Franc., 782, 789; Ann. Alem., 790). In the earliest Slavic written documents from the beginning of the 9th century, the general term “Slovensk language” is used to designate the Slavic language; there are also “Slovenian tribe”, “Slovenian people vs” (“Slavic tribe”, “all Slavic people”). Finally, the fact that derivatives of the word "Slav" have been preserved everywhere testifies in favor of the original broad meaning of this name. Since the 9th century Novgorod Slovenes have been known in Russia, Slovenians who still live at the mouth of the Vistula, Slovenes in Carinthia and Slovaks in Slovakia. The Albanians called the Serbian and Macedonian Bulgarians Skja, Skjeji, i.e. Slavs.

The name "Slav" is of Slavic origin, but we do not know, oddly enough, neither its etymology nor its original meaning. Along with the forms Σκλαυηνοί, Στλαυηνοί, Sklaveni, Stlaveni, formed directly from the form "Slovene", in Latin and Greek there are short forms Σκλάβοι, Σθλάβοι, Sclavi, Stlavi, Sclavi, Stlavi of unknown origin. They probably arose under the influence of the end - glorify which is often found in proper names. Short forms are already known in the 6th century, and since the 8th century they are very common in written documents.

Based on these short forms (as well as the Russian term “Slavs”), the origin of the name “Slavs” even before the beginning of the 13th century began to be associated with the word “glory” and translated as “gloriosi”, “αίνετοί”. This interpretation was held until the 19th century, and the famous Slavic poet and archaeologist J. Kollar supported him with his authority. Another interpretation, no less ancient, attested already at the beginning of the 14th century, connects the name Slavs - Slovene with the concept of "word" and translates it as "verbosi, sermonales, όμογλόττοι".

This explanation was adopted by such prominent researchers as I. Dobrovsky and P. Shafarik. The latter relied, in particular, on a similar fact, namely that the Slavs called the neighboring people, whose language they did not understand, the word "Germans" (singular - "German", derived from "nem", "dumb"). Although this second hypothesis had a large number of supporters, nevertheless, most modern linguists reject it on the grounds that the Slavic suffix is ​​ey, – jopgp, – janin always indicates belonging to a certain locality and that, therefore, the name Slovenia should have been formed from the name of the locality (Word?), a name that, unfortunately, is not found anywhere 21 .

So, the origin of the name of the Slavs remains unclear. However, we know that its bearer appeared at the beginning of our era as a powerful people who settled in the vast territory between the Vistula and the Desna: "natio populosa per immensa spatia consedit" - Jordan wrote about him in the VI century 22 . It is also now known that this numerous people did not appear in Europe during this period, but lived there for a long time in close interaction with other Indo-European peoples. Today this proposition is recognized in science and does not need proof, as 100 years ago, when Shafarik wrote his "Antiquities" with the aim of proving mainly the antiquity of the Slavs, which some Germans doubted 23 .

1 For details, see "Slav, star.", I, 221, and also in this book, p. 176 et seq.
2 Herod., IV.17-18 and 53-54.
3 Ibid., IV.83-98 and 118-143.
4 See below, p. 38–39.
5 Czech researcher J. Peisker presented his views in several works, such as “Die alteren Beziehungen der Slaven zu Turkotataren und Germanen” (Berlin, 1905); Neue Grundlagen der Slavi-schen Altertumskunde; Vorbericht" (Stuttgart, 1914); "The expansion of Slavs" (reprinted from the Cambridge Medieval History, II, 1914). cm. a critical summary published by me in the Archives of Slavic Philology (1909, p. 569) under the title "J. Peiskers neue Grundlagen der sl. Altertumskunde" and in "Revue des Etudes slaves" (II, 1922, pp. 19-37) under the title "Des theories nouvelles dej. Peisker sur les anciens Slaves”, as well as the article by J. Janka “On stycich starych Slovaniis Turkotatary a Germany hlediska jazykozpytneho”, published in the Bulletin of the Czech Academy (XVII, 1908, p. 101) and in the journal “Wórter und Sachen” ( 1, p. 109).
6 See “Źivot st. Slov., I, p. 162; III, p. 135, 146 et seq., and the articles cited in the previous note.
7 Const. Porphyr. Deadm. imp., 2.
8 On the part of linguists, there were quite a few objections, especially against the assumption that the terms "mleko" and "creature" were borrowed. Professor of Slavic philology V. Yagich considers them to be Slavic (see the work of I. Yank, cited above).
9 See Pomp. Mela, III.5, 45. Cf. Plin., II. 170. 10 Herodotus (III. 115) and Hesiod (Hes. fragm., ed. Marckscheffel, 355), Skylax (p. 19), Skymnos (v. 188) already knew this legend. See also Berger, Geschichte der wissenschaftlichen Erdkunde der Griechen (I, p. 29).
11 The form "vend" (vend) was probably the original form; the common form "vened" (vened) arose in Greek and Roman literature, apparently under the influence of the well-known names of the Adriatic venets. 12 lord., Get, V.34, XXIII. 119.
13 See criticism of these theories by M. Vasmer and K. Bugy (M. Vasmera a K. Bugy, Rocznik slawistyczny, IV.3, p. 189).
14 See above, p. 27.
15 For example, Vindana, Vindalum, Vindonissa, Vindeleia, Vendovera, Vindobriga, Pennovindos, Vindobala, Vindolana, Vindomova, Vindogladia, Vindogara in Gaul and Brittany; Vindelici, Vindonianus vicus, Vindobona, Magiovindus, Vendidora, etc. in the eastern alpine lands. Wed d'Arbois de Jubainville, Les premiers habitants de l'Europe, II, p. 264, 294. The etymology of the words Vend, Vind is unclear (vindos - "white"?). For other possible interpretations of this word, see Slov. star.", I, p. 201. There is also a Slavic etymology. Pervolf immediately finds the root vent - "great", the Old Slavonic form of the comparative degree "vętsij" - "greater". 16 Proc., B. G. III. fourteen.
17 See above, p. 24.
18 It appears only in the sources of the 8th century (“Slov. star.”, II, p. 487; III, p. 114) and only to designate the Polabian Serbs (sorabi in the annals of Einhard, Fredegar, IV.68).
19 Dialogi, 110 (Mignę, Patrologia graeca, 38, 847). Wed Mtillenhoff, Deutsche Altertumskunde, 11.347, 367.
20 There are no more ancient references. A. Pogodin considered two proper names worthy of attention in this regard - Stlabonius Fuscinus ("Corpus inscr. lat.", 111.4150) and M. Slavus Putiolanus (ibid., III, addition, p. 1958); both are highly questionable. 21 In conclusion, Rozvadovsky gives a number of names of rivers in Poland and Russia, formed from the form "glory" and "words", and suggests that there was a river called Slovo or Slava, or at least a swampy area called "Slovo", and the people, who lived in this area, received from him the name "slovek". These names of the rivers are supposedly formed from the root "y/em" - meaning "to fill in" (water), "to clean". Milan Budimir expresses the same opinion (Zbornik A. Beliće, Beliće, 1921, pp. 97–112, 129–131).
22 lord. V.34.
23 See Cesky Casopis historicky, I, 1895, p. 19.