Gelonus ( grc, Γελωνός) was, according to

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 fo ...

, the capital of the Gelonians.

Search for Gelonus

In his account of

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. ...

(''Inquiries'' book 4),

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 r ...

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

''The Budini for their part, being a large and numerous nation, are 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...Above the Sauromatae (
Sarmatians The Sarmatians (; grc, Σαρμαται, Sarmatai; Latin: ) were a large confederation of ancient Eastern Iranian equestrian nomadic peoples of classical antiquity who dominated the Pontic steppe from about the 3rd century BC to the 4th cen ...
), possessing the second region, dwell the Budini, whose territory is thickly wooded with trees of every kind. The Budini are a large and powerful nation: they have all deep blue eyes, and bright red hair. The Budini, however, do not speak the same language as the Geloni, nor is their mode of life the same. They are the aboriginal people of the country, and are
nomads A nomad is a member of a community without fixed habitation who regularly moves to and from the same areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the po ...
; unlike any of the neighbouring races, they eat 'phtheir'. Their country is thickly planted with trees of all manner of kinds. In the very woodiest part is a broad deep lake, surrounded by marshy ground with reeds growing on it. Here otters are caught, and beavers, with another sort of animal which has a square face. With the skins of this last the natives border their capotes: and they also get from them a remedy, which is of virtue in diseases of the womb...Beyond the Budini, as one goes northward, first there is a desert, seven days' journey across...''

The fortified settlement of Gelonus was reached by the Persian army of Darius in his assault on Scythia during the late 6th century BC, already burned to the ground, the Budini having abandoned it before the Persian advance. The Scythians sent a message to Darius: "We are free as wind and what you can catch in our land is only the wind". By employing a

scorched earth A scorched-earth policy is a military strategy that aims to destroy anything that might be useful to the enemy. Any assets that could be used by the enemy may be targeted, which usually includes obvious weapons, transport vehicles, commun ...

strategy, they avoided battles, leaving "earth without grass" by burning the

steppe In physical geography, a steppe () is an ecoregion characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes. Steppe biomes may include: * the montane grasslands and shrublands biome * the temperate gras ...

in front of the advancing Persians (Herodotus). The Persian army returned without a single battle or any significant success. According to some researchers, the

s were a Finnic tribe ruled by the

Scythian The Scythians or Scyths, and sometimes also referred to as the Classical Scythians and the Pontic Scythians, were an ancient Eastern * : "In modern scholarship the name 'Sakas' is reserved for the ancient tribes of northern and eastern Centra ...

Excavations at ''Bilske Horodyshche'' ( :uk:Більське городище) near the village of Bilsk near

Poltava Poltava (, ; uk, Полтава ) is a city located on the Vorskla River in central Ukraine. It is the capital city of the Poltava Oblast (province) and of the surrounding Poltava Raion (district) of the oblast. Poltava is administrativel ...

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inva ...

(Coordinates ) have led to suggestions by 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 ...

and others identifying it as the Scythian capital Gelonus. It is strategically situated on the exact boundary between the

and forest-steppe. Several other locations have traditionally been named by Russian archaeologists, such as

Saratov Saratov (, ; rus, Сара́тов, a=Ru-Saratov.ogg, p=sɐˈratəf) is the largest city and administrative center of Saratov Oblast, Russia, and a major port on the Volga River upstream (north) of Volgograd. Saratov had a population of 901, ...

(according to Ivan Zabelin) or a location near the

Don River The Don ( rus, Дон, p=don) is the fifth-longest river in Europe. Flowing from Central Russia to the Sea of Azov in Southern Russia, it is one of Russia's largest rivers and played an important role for traders from the Byzantine Empire. Its ...

closer to the

Volga River The Volga (; russian: Во́лга, a=Ru-Волга.ogg, p=ˈvoɫɡə) is the longest river in Europe. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Caspian Sea. The Volga has a length of , and a catch ...

. According to Herodotus each side of Gelonus is 30 stades long, the area in today's units would be about 30 square kilometres. The archeological site around Bilsk, including necropolis, comprises about 80 km², and the fortifications enclose some 40 km². The north-south axis, along the

Vorskla River The Vorskla (; ) is a river that runs from Belgorod Oblast in Russia southwards into northeastern Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, w ...

is 17 km long. The remains of walls up to 12 metres are visible today and stretch over the horizon. The total length of the ramparts is 33 km. Inside the fortification, lay three "keeps", 150,000 m², 650,000 m², and 720,000 m² in area, surrounded by eroded earth walls still up to 16 metres high. Several

kurgans A kurgan is a type of tumulus constructed over a grave, often characterized by containing a single human body along with grave vessels, weapons and horses. Originally in use on the Pontic–Caspian steppe, kurgans spread into much of Central As ...

reminded the inhabitants of the ancient Scythian burial tradition.

Mythology

In Greek

mythology Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narra ...

, Gelonus was the son of

Echidna Echidnas (), sometimes known as spiny anteaters, are quill-covered monotremes (egg-laying mammals) belonging to the family Tachyglossidae . The four extant species of echidnas and the platypus are the only living mammals that lay eggs and the ...

and

Heracles Heracles ( ; grc-gre, Ἡρακλῆς, , glory/fame of Hera), born Alcaeus (, ''Alkaios'') or Alcides (, ''Alkeidēs''), was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon.By his adoptiv ...

, he had an older brother

Agathyrsus The Agathyrsi ( Ancient Greek: ; Latin: ) were a people belonging to the Scythian cultures. The Agathyrsi were a people of mixed Iranian Scythic and Geto-Thracian origin whose bulk were Thracian while their aristocracy was closely related to th ...

and a younger Scythes.Herodot iv 8-10 L.S. e p-3. Hylea is pointed to be where was the Echidna's cave between people Arimi or Harimi, the Greeks on the

Euxine The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia ...

believed that this was somewhere in Scythia.

References

Bibliography

*Мурзін В., Ролле Р., Супруненко О. Більське городище. – Київ-Гамбург-Полтава, 1999. – 104 с. *Боплан Г.Л.де. Опис україни. – К., 1990. – 254 с. * Шрамко Б.А. Крепость скифского времени у с.Бельск – город Гелон // Скифский мир. – К., 1975. *Шрамко Б.А. Бельское городище скифской эпохи (город Гелон). – К., 1987. – 182 с. *Більське городище в контексті вивчення пам’яток раннього залізного віку Європи. – Полтава, 1996. – 408 с.

External links

Photos from Site

Russian military topographic map. On it in SW part : visible miles of black crossed lines - the rest of ancient walls
*https://web.archive.org/web/20070926223733/http://www.e-paranoids.com/g/ge/gelonus.html *

*

{dead link, date=January 2017 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes * ttps://web.archive.org/web/20070310230837/http://www.saratov-digital.com/presentation/past/gelon/eng_index.html The Legend about the city of Gelon
Antiquity Reviews: A platform for studying the Scythians
Archaeological sites in Ukraine Scythia Iranian archaeological sites Former populated places in Eastern Europe Wooden architecture Hill forts in Ukraine Locations in Greek mythology