The Gelonians (or Geloni) ( grc, Γελωνοί), also known as Helonians (or Heloni), are mentioned as a nation in northwestern

Scythia Scythia (Scythian: ; Old Persian: ; Ancient Greek: ; Latin: ) or Scythica (Ancient Greek: ; Latin: ), also known as Pontic Scythia, was a kingdom created by the Scythians during the 6th to 3rd centuries BC in the Pontic–Caspian steppe. His ...

Herodotus Herodotus ( ; grc, , }; BC) was an ancient Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus, part of the Persian Empire (now Bodrum, Turkey) and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria ( Italy). He is known f ...

. Herodotus states that they were originally Hellenes who settled among the

Budinoi The Budini (Ancient Greek: Βουδίνοι; ''Boudínoi'') was a group of people (a tribe) described by Herodotus and several later classical authors. Described as nomads living near settled Gelonians, Herodotus located them east of the Tanais ri ...

, and that they are bilingual in Greek and the Scythian language. Their capital was called Gelonos or Helonos, originally a Greek market town. In his account of

writes that the Gelonii were formerly Greeks, having settled away from the coastal emporia among the

Budini The Budini (Ancient Greek: Βουδίνοι; ''Boudínoi'') was a group of people (a tribe) described by Herodotus and several later classical authors. Described as nomads living near settled Gelonians, Herodotus located them east of the Tanais ri ...

, where they "use a tongue partly Scythian and partly Greek": :The

for their part, being a large and numerous nation, is all mightily blue-eyed and ruddy. And a city among them has been built, a wooden city, and the name of the city is Gelonus. Of its wall then in size each side is of thirty stades and high and all wooden. And their homes are wooden and their shrines. For indeed there is in the very place Greek gods’ shrines adorned in the Greek way with statues, altars and wooden shrines and for triennial Dionysus festivals in honour of Dionysus... The fortified settlement of Gelonus was reached by the Persian army of

Darius Darius may refer to: Persian royalty ;Kings of the Achaemenid Empire * Darius I (the Great, 550 to 487 BC) * Darius II (423 to 404 BC) * Darius III (Codomannus, 380 to 330 BC) ;Crown princes * Darius (son of Xerxes I), crown prince of Persia, ma ...

in his assault on Scythia during the 5th century BC, and burned to the ground, the Budini having abandoned it in their flight before the Persian advance. Recent digs at Bilsk in Ukraine's Poltava Oblast have uncovered a vast city identified by the Kharkiv archaeologist

Boris Shramko Boris Andriyovich Shramko ( uk, Борис Андрійович Шрамкo; 1921 – 8 July 2012) was a Ukrainian historian and professor of history. Excavations at ''Bilske Horodyshche'' (Більське городище) near the village of ...

as the Scythian capital Gelonus. The name according to Herodotus, who took his mythology from "the Greeks who dwell about the Pontos", derives from their eponymous mythical founder, Gelonus brother of Scythes, sons of Heracles, an expression of observed cultural links in genealogical terms. Herodotus also mentions that the Greeks apply the ethnonym both to the actual Gelonians of Greek origin and by extension to the ''Budinoi''. At the end of the fourth century AD,

Claudian Claudius Claudianus, known in English as Claudian (; c. 370 – c. 404 AD), was a Latin poet associated with the court of the Roman emperor Honorius at Mediolanum (Milan), and particularly with the general Stilicho. His work, written almost ent ...

in his ''Against Rufinus'' (book 1) polemically portrays the tribes of Scythia as prototypical

barbarian A barbarian (or savage) is someone who is perceived to be either Civilization, uncivilized or primitive. The designation is usually applied as a generalization based on a popular stereotype; barbarians can be members of any nation judged by som ...

s: :There march against us a mixed horde of Sarmatians and

Dacians The Dacians (; la, Daci ; grc-gre, Δάκοι, Δάοι, Δάκαι) were the ancient Indo-European inhabitants of the cultural region of Dacia, located in the area near the Carpathian Mountains and west of the Black Sea. They are often consid ...

, the

Massagetes The Massagetae or Massageteans (Ancient Greek: ; Latin: ), also known as Sakā tigraxaudā ( Old Persian: , "wearer of pointed caps") or Orthocorybantians (Ancient Greek: ; Latin: ),: As for the term “Orthocorybantii”, this is a translat ...

who cruelly wound their horses that they may drink their blood, the Alans who break the ice and drink the waters of

Maeotis' lake The Sea of Azov ( Crimean Tatar: ''Azaq deñizi''; russian: Азовское море, Azovskoye more; uk, Азовське море, Azovs'ke more) is a sea in Eastern Europe connected to the Black Sea by the narrow (about ) Strait of Kerch, ...

, and the Geloni who tattoo their limbs: these form Rufinus' army. Sidonius Apollinaris, the cultured Gallo-Roman poet of the fifth century, includes Geloni, "milkers of mares" (''equimulgae'') among tribal allies participating in the

Battle of Chalons The Battle of the Catalaunian Plains (or Fields), also called the Battle of the Campus Mauriacus, Battle of Châlons, Battle of Troyes or the Battle of Maurica, took place on June 20, 451 AD, between a coalition – led by the Roman general ...

against

Attila Attila (, ; ), frequently called Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th century AD. According to European traditio ...

in 451 AD. E.A. Thompson expresses his suspicions about some of these names: :The Bastarnae, Bructeri, Geloni and Neuri had disappeared hundreds of years before the times of the Huns, while the Bellonoti had never existed at all: presumably the learned poet was thinking of the Balloniti, a people invented by Valerius Flaccus nearly four centuries earlier.Thompson, E.A. ''The Huns''. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996, p. 149.П.М.Золин. Гелоны http://www.proza.ru/2010/04/02/272

Notes

References

* {{Scythia Ancient Greeks Scythian tribes Tribes described primarily by Herodotus

See also

Notes

References