The Roxolani or Rhoxolāni ( , Ρωξολανοι ; ) were a Sarmatians people documented between the 2nd century BC and the 4th century AD, first east of the Borysthenes (Dnieper) on the coast of Lake Maeotis (Sea of Azov), and later near the borders of Roman Dacia and Moesia. They are believed to be an offshoot of the Alans.
Name
The name
Roxolani is generally interpreted as a compound formed with the
Alanic language root *rox- (modern Ossetian or 'light, luminous';
Avestan raox-šna- and
Persian language rošan, 'luminous, shining') attached to the tribal name
Alān. This would make
Roxolani an
endonym translatable as the 'luminous' or the 'shining Alans'.
[
] The name could be linked to aspects of worship or the supernatural, as suggested by the modern Ossetian expression rūxsag ū ('may you be blessed'), addressed to the deceased, or the name
Wacyrūxs ('divine light'), mentioned in the
Nart sagas.
Historian George Vernadsky suggested that the Rocas (or Rogas), a tribe conquered by the Ostrogoths in the 4th century, may be a corruption of Ruxs-As. He also argued that the Rosomoni mentioned by Jordanes could be also related, and their name interpreted as the 'Ros Men'.
Geography
Their first recorded homeland lay between the
Volga River, Don and
Dnieper rivers; they migrated in the 1st century AD toward the
Danube, to what is now the Baragan steppes in
Romania.
History
1st century BC
Around 100 BC, they invaded the
Crimea under their king
Tasius in support of the Scythian warlord
Palacus but were defeated by Diophantus, general of
Mithradates VI.
1st century AD
In the mid-1st century AD, the Roxolani began incursions across the
Danube into Roman territory. One such raid in
Anno Domini 68/69 was intercepted by the Legio III Gallica with Roman auxiliaries, who destroyed a raiding force of 9,000 Roxolanian cavalry encumbered by baggage.
Tacitus describes the weight of the
armour worn by the "princes and most distinguished persons" made "it difficult for such as have been overthrown by the charge of the enemy to regain their feet".
[Tacitus, Histories. Book 1.79.] The long two-handed kontos
lance, the primary melee weapon of the Sarmatians, was unusable in these conditions. The Roxolani avenged themselves in AD 92, when they joined the
Dacians in destroying the Roman Legio XXI Rapax.
2nd century
During Trajan's Dacian Wars, the Roxolani at first sided with the
Dacians, providing them with most of their cavalry strength, but they were defeated in the first campaign of AD 101–102 at Nicopolis ad Istrum. They appear to have stood aside as neutrals during Trajan's final campaign of AD 105–106, which ended in the complete destruction of the Dacian state. The creation of the Roman province of
Dacia brought Roman power to the very doorstep of Roxolani territory. The Emperor
Hadrian reinforced a series of pre-existing
fortifications and built numerous
along the Danube to contain the Roxolani threat. Later,
Marcus Aurelius also campaigned against the Roxolani along the Danubian frontier.
3rd century
They are known to have attacked the Roman Province of
Pannonia in 260; shortly afterwards contingents of Roxolani troops entered Roman military service.
4th century
Like other Sarmatian peoples, the Roxolani were conquered by the
Huns in the mid-4th century.
Culture
The
Greek people-
Roman Empire historian
Strabo (late 1st century BC-early 1st century AD) described them as "
wagon-dwellers" (i.e.
).
[Strabo's Geographika, Book VII] According to him, they were the most remote of
Scythian peoples.
[Strabo's Geographika, Book II, page 441]
Legacy
George Vernadsky theorized about the association of Rus and
Alans. He claimed that
Ruxs in Alanic means "radiant light", thus the ethnonym
Roxolani could be understood as "bright Alans".
He theorized that the name
Roxolani a combination of two separate tribal names: the Rus and the Alans.
It is not widely accepted. The most common theory about the origin of the word
Russian is the Germanic version. The name
Rus, like the Proto-Finnic name for
Sweden (
*roocci),
from which the modern Finnish name
Ruotsi is derived, is supposed to be descended from an
Old Norse term meaning "the men who row" (
rods-).
[Stefan Brink, 'Who were the Vikings?', in The Viking World , ed. by Stefan Brink and Neil Price (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), pp. 4–10 (pp. 6–7).]
See also
Sources
Further reading
