Iazyges

The Iazyges (Jazyges is an orthographic variant) were a nomadic tribe. Speaking an Iranian language, they were a branch of the Sarmatian people who, c. 200 BC, swept westward from central Asia onto the steppes of what is now Ukraine. The Iazyges first make their appearance along the Sea of Azov, known to the Ancient Greeks and Romans as the Maeotis. For this reason they are referred to by the geographer Ptolemy as the Iazyges Metanastae. From there, the Jazyges moved west along the shores of the Black Sea to what is now Moldova and the southwestern Ukraine.

They served as allies of Mithradates VI Eupator, king of Pontus (in what is now western Turkey), in his wars against the Romans (c. 88-84 BC). In 78-76 BC, the Romans sent a punitive expedition over the Danube in an attempt to overawe the Jazyges.

The prime enemy of Rome along the lower Danube at this time were the Dacians, in what is now Romania. In 7 BC the Dacian kingdom built up by Burebista began to collapse into one of the bouts of anarchy that plagued many nomadic kingdoms. The Romans took advantage of this to encourage the Jazyges to settle in the Pannonian plain, between the Danube and the Tisza (Theiss) Rivers.

They were divided into freemen and serfs (Sarmatae Limigantes). These serfs had a different manner of life and were probably an older settled population, enslaved by nomadic masters. They rose against them in 34 AD, but were repressed by foreign aid.

The Romans wanted to finish off Dacia, but the Jazyes would not cooperate. The Jazyges remained nomads, herding their cattle across what is now southern Romania every summer to water them along the Black Sea. A Roman conquest of Dacia would cut that route. The Roman emperor Domitian became so concerned with the Jazyges that he interrupted a campaign against Dacia to harass them and the Suebi, a Germanic tribe also dwelling along the Danube.

In early 92, the Jazyges, in alliance with the Sarmatians proper and the Germanic Quadi, crossed the Danube into the Roman province of Pannonia (mod. Croatia and western Hungary). In May, the Jazyges shattered the Roman legio 21 Rapax, soon afterwards disbanded in disgrace. The fighting continued until Domitian’s death in 96.

In the years 101-105, the warlike Roman Emperor Trajan finally conquered the Dacians, reducing it to a Roman province. In 107, Trajan sent his general, Hadrian, to force the Jazyges to submit.

In 117, Trajan died, and was succeeded as emperor by Hadrian, who moved to consolidate and protect the gains Trajan had made. While the Romans kept Dacia, the Jazyges stayed independent, accepting a client relationship with Rome.

As long as Rome remained powerful, the situation could be maintained, but in the late second century, the Roman Empire found itself increasingly overstretched. In the summer of 167, while the Romans were tied down in a war with Parthia, the nomadic peoples north of the Danube, the Marcomanni, the Varistae, the Vandals, the Hermanduri, the Suebi and the Quadi all swept south over the Danube to invade and plunder the exposed Roman provinces. The Jazyges joined in this general onslaught. The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius spent the rest of his life trying to restore the situation. In 170, the Jazyges defeated and killed Claudius Fronto, Roman governor of Dacia and Lower Moesia. Operating from Sirmium (near Mitrovica in Vojvodina, in today's Serbia and Montenegro) on the Sava river, Marcus Aurelius moved against the Jazyges personally. After hard fighting, the Jazyges were pressed to their limits. But in 175, Avidus Cassius led a revolt in the East, interrupting the campaign. At this point, the leading king among the Jazyges, Zanticus, made peace with Marcus Aurelius, yielding up, it is said, 100,000 Roman captives. The Jazyges were also forced to provide the Romans with 8,000 cavalry to serve in the Roman army as auxiliaries. Some 5,500 of these were shipped off to Britain, where, it is theorized, they played a part in the development of the Arthurian legend.

Marcus’ victory was decisive in that the Jazyges did not again appear as a major threat to Rome. Around 230, the Asding Vandals pushed in to the north of the Jazyges. The Vandals, and new Germanic tribal coalitions like the Alamanni and the Franks now became the Roman’s primary security concerns. But as late as 371, the Romans saw fit to build a fortified trading center, Commercium, to control the trade with the Jazyges.

In late Antiquity, records become much spottier, and the Jazyges generally cease to be mentioned as a tribe. But in 1238, the Jazyges are mentioned again, fighting alongside the Cumans against the Mongols on the Volga River. Defeated, the Jazyges and the Cumans were granted asylum by Bela, king of Hungary, where they were ultimately absorbed. In other words, the Jazyges either migrated back east onto the steppes in the confusion of the Hun and Avar invasions of the 5th-7th centuries, or a fresh branch of the Jazyges that had never moved west before remained throughout this period in what is now southern Russia.

Sources:

Bennett, Julian: Trajan: Optimus Princeps (1997) Indianapolis University Press, Bloomington

Birley, Anthony: Marcus Aurelius: A Biography (1987) Yale University Press, New Haven.

Bunson, Matthew: Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire (1994) Facts on File Inc., NY

Kerr, William George: A Chronological Study of the Marcomannic Wars of Marcus Aurelius (1995) Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995, 295 p.

Macartney, C.A.: Hungary: A Short History (1962) Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.

Maenchen-Helfen, J. Otto: The World of the Huns (1973) University of California Press, Berkeley.

Strayer, Joseph R., Editor in Chief: A Dictionary of the Middle Ages (1987), Charles Scribner’s Sons, NYbg:Язиги de:Jazygen pl:Jazygowie