On the eastern coast of the Black Sea--which, previously almost unknown, was first opened up to more general knowledge by Mithradates--the region of Colchis on the Phasis (Mingrelia and Imeretia) with the important commercial town of Dioscurias was wrested from the native princes and converted into a satrapy of Pontus.

Of still greater moment were his enterprises in the northern regions.( 5) The wide steppes destitute of hills and trees, which stretch to the north of the Black Sea, of the Caucasus, and of the Caspian, are by reason of their natural conditions--more especially from the variations of temperature fluctuating between the climate of Stockholm and that of Madeira, and from the absolute destitution of rain or snow which occurs not unfrequently and lasts for a period of twenty-two months or longer--little adapted for agriculture or for permanent settlement at all; and they always were so, although two thousand years ago the state of the climate was presumably somewhat less unfavourable than it is at the present day.( 6) The various tribes, whose wandering impulse led them into these regions, submitted to this ordinance of nature and led (and still to some extent lead) a wandering pastoral life with their herds of oxen or still more frequently of horses, changing their places of abode and pasture, and carrying their effects along with them in waggon-houses.
Their equipment and style of fighting were consonant to this mode of life; the inhabitants of these steppes fought in great measure on horseback and always in loose array, equipped with helmet and coat of mail of leather and leather-covered shield, armed with sword, lance, and bow--the ancestors of the modern Cossacks.

The Scythians originally settled there, who seem to have been of Mongolian race and akin in their habits and physical appearance to the present inhabitants of Siberia, had been followed up by Sarmatian tribes advancing from east to west,--Sauromatae, Roxolani, Jazyges,--who are commonly reckoned of Slavonian descent, although the proper names, which we are entitled to ascribe to them, show more affinity with Median and Persian names and those peoples perhaps belonged rather to the great Zend stock.

Thracian tribes moved in the opposite direction, particularly the Getae, who reached as far as the Dniester.

Between the two there intruded themselves--probably as offsets of the great Germanic migration, the main body of which seems not to have touched the Black Sea--the Celts, as they were called, on the Dnieper, the Bastarnae in the same quarter, and the Peucini at the mouth of the Danube.