By 50 to 150 AD, most of the Scythians had been assimilated by the Sarmatians.[19] The remaining
Scythians of Crimea, who had mixed with the Tauri and the Sarmatians, were conquered in the 3rd
century AD by the Goths and other Germanic tribes who were then migrating from the north into the
Pontic steppe, and who destroyed Scythian Neapolis.[159]
In subsequent centuries, remaining Scythians and Sarmatians were largely assimilated by early
Slavs.[13] The Scythians and Sarmatians played an instrumental role in the ethnogenesis of the Ossetians,
who are considered direct descendants of the Alans.[14]
Legacy
The Graeco-Roman peoples were profoundly fascinated by the Scythians. This fascination endured in
Europe even after both the disappearance of the Scythians and the end of Graeco-Roman culture, and
continued throughout Classical and Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, lasting till the 18th century in
the Modern Period.[160]
Antiquity
The ancient Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus wrote legendary accounts of the arrival of the
Scythians into the lands of the Cimmerians for which evidence is lacking:[161][162]
in one story, Herodotus claimed that the approach of the Scythians led to a civil war among the
Cimmerians because the "royal tribe" of the Cimmerians wanted to remain in their lands and
defend themselves from the invaders while the rest of the population wanted to leave. This
conflict allegedly resulted in the death of the royal tribe, whose bodies were buried near the
Dnister river.[163] in another account, Herodotus claimed that that the Scythians chased the Cimmerians out of
their lands and forced them to migrate to the south into West Asia.[161][162]By the 5th century BC, the image of the Scythians in Athens had become the quintessential stereotype
used for Barbarians, that is for non-Greeks.[164] Following the Greeks' caricatural representation of
foreigners as being unmoderated drinkers, they moreso associated the Scythians with drunkenness.[165]
Later Graeco-Roman tradition transformed the Scythian prince Anacharsis into a legendary figure as a
kind of "noble savage" who represented "Barbarian wisdom," due to which the ancient Greeks included
him as one of the Seven Sages of Greece.[166] Consequently, Anarcharsis became a popular figure in
Greek literature,[19] and many legends arose about him, including claims that he had been a friend
of Solon.[166] Eventually, Anacharsis completely became an ideal "man of nature" or "noble savage"
figure in Greek literature, as well as favourite figure of the Cynics, who ascribed to him a 3rd-century BC
work titled the Letters of Anacharsis .[19]
The 4th century BC Greek historian, Ephorus of Cyme, used the perception of Anacharsis as a
personification of "Barbarian wisdom" to create an idealised image of the Scythians being as an
"invincible" people, which became a tradition of Greek literature.[19] Ephorus created a fictitious account
of a legendary Scythian king, named Idanthyrsos or Iandysos, who, 1500 years before the reign of the
mythical first Assyrian king Ninus and 3000 years before the first Olympiad, allegedly defeated the
equally legendary pharaoh Sesostris and became the ruler of all Asia. This story was a continuation of
Ephorus of Cyme's idealisation of the Scythians as an "invincible" people, and was drawn from
Herodotus of Halicarnassus's accounts of the Scythian invasion of Asia and the campaign of Darius in
Scythia.[167]