Maeotae

Map of the Roman empire under Hadrian (ruled 117-38 AD), showing the location of the Maeotae on the eastern shore of the eponymous Palus Maeotis (Sea of Azov)

Maeotae or Mæotæ or Maeotici (Greek: Μαιῶται) were an ancient people dwelling along the Palus Maeotis (to which they lent their name) in antiquity.^[1] William Smith considers Maeotae a collective name which was given to the peoples about the Palus Maeotis. It is not clear whether they spoke an Iranian language or were related to the modern-day Adyghe. The best attested tribe among them was the Sindi.

Strabo describes them as living among the Dandarii, Toreatae, Agri, Arrechi, Tarpetes, Obidiaceni, Sittaceni, Dosci, and Aspurgiani, among others.^[2] The earliest reference may be the logographer Hellanicus, if we read with his editor Sturz (for Μαλιῶται, Μαιῶται). According to Strabo (l. c.) they lived partly on fish, and partly tilled the land, but were no less warlike than their nomad neighbors. These wild hordes were sometimes tributary to the factory at the Tanais (modern Don River), and at other times to the Bosporani, revolting from one to the other. The kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosporus in later times, especially under Pharnaces, Asander, and Polemon, extended as far as the Tanais.

There are speculations that the Maeotes and the Sindes may have been Indo-Aryans, connected with the Mitanni rulers of Assyria one millennium before Herodotus.[1] One princess of the Maeotes, a wife of a Sindic king, from the tribe of Ixomates, was called Tirgatao by Polyaenus ^[3] comparable to Tirgutawiya, a name from a tablet found in Hurrian Alalakh.^[4] Karl Eichwald^[5] even proclaimed them to have been a Hindu colony, but this view was rejected by the vast majority of scholars.^[6]

References

• This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography by William Smith (1856).
• Strabo's book 11 on-line
• Trubachov, Oleg N., 1999: Indoarica, Nauka, Moscow.