Tomyris

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Tomyris ( ostiranisch : Tahmirih "Brave Glory" also Thamyris, tamyris or Tamiri) was a queen of the south-east of the Aral Sea settled Massagetae , against the great Persian king Cyrus II. V 530. BC allegedly went on a campaign and fell.

Report of Herodotus

The name Tomyris comes from the Iranian Tahm-rayis “Brave Glory”. The oldest surviving Greek writer, Herodotus , offers the longest account of this version of Cyrus' death. After that, Tomyris, as a widow, was the sole ruler of the massagers. But Cyrus wanted to incorporate their kingdom after his numerous earlier conquests. At first he tried this peacefully by asking for the massage queen's hand. After their rejection, Cyrus took to the field against them. When he reached the border river Jaxartes , Tomyris conveyed to him the offer that he should either advance three days' marches unmolested into her realm or, conversely, allow her an equally long advance into his realm in order to then lead the decisive battle. On the advice of the former Lydian king Croesus , who is said to be still alive , and who thus prevailed against the opinion of the Persian nobles, Cyrus and his army advanced into the territory of the Tomyris and lured a third of their army into a trap. The Persians deliberately defended their camp, which was well stocked with food and delicious wines, only with a small contingent that the massagers could easily defeat. They got intoxicated with alcohol and could easily be taken by surprise by the main Persian power, whereby Spargapises , the son of Tomyris, was also captured. When the king's son came to after his intoxication and was untied at his request, he immediately committed suicide out of shame. Even before Tomyris learned of her son's death, she asked Cyrus to release him through messengers. If the Persian king should refuse this request, they threatened to satisfy his bloodthirstiness. Unimpressed by this, Cyrus prepared himself for the fight against the massage queen herself, but was defeated (at a place not specified by Herodotus) and fell. Tomyris had the head of his corpse stuck into a tube full of human blood. She said that she had now complied with her warning to saturate him with blood.

Other representations

The story of Tomyris and Cyrus was well known in ancient times. Accordingly, there are numerous reports by other authors, all of whom wrote much later than Herodotus. Your representations are also much shorter and more or less different. They can be traced back to representations by older historians that are comparable in detail to Herodotus, but differ in content from him. In particular, all accounts different from Herodotus set a trap for Tomyris instead of Cyrus.

So the collector of war lists, Polyainus , exchanged the role of the massage queen and the Persian king with Herodotus: Tomyris apparently fled from Cyrus and left her camp, filled with dishes and wines of all kinds, to the Persians in order to attack these opponents, weakened after the consumption of alcohol, at night to defeat. Even after Frontinus , who published a work comparable to Polyainus, Tomyris deliberately fled from the Persian king, ambushed her pursuer in a bottleneck and killed him.

Justin mixes the account of Herodotus with that on which Frontinus is based. Tomyris then allowed the Persians to cross the border river unhindered in the hope of being able to use the familiar geography of their homeland to choose a battleground that was favorable for the Scythians . As with Herodotus, Cyrus then lured part of their army under the leadership of their son into his richly filled camp and cut them down after they had enjoyed the wine. Now Tomyris fled - similar to Frontinus - only apparently from the Persians, attacked them in a bottleneck where the Scythians were positioned on the surrounding hills and allegedly killed 200,000 Persian soldiers including the king Cyrus. The Queen had its head cut off - with Justin following Herodotus again - and put into a blood-filled tube; she said scornfully that he could now fill himself with blood that he had never had enough of in his life. In contrast to Herodotus, however, according to Justinus, all Persians without exception perished.

Like Iustinus, Diodorus makes Tomyris a Scythian queen, but without giving her name. After her victory over the Persians, she lets Cyrus die by crucifixion. For the Sicilian historian, this act of Tomyris serves as proof that Scythian women were just as warlike as the legendary Amazons .

The portrayal of the Gothic historian Jordanes , who lived in the 6th century AD , who, as he himself says, relies on Pompey Trogus (as well as Iustinus), but still depicts Tomyris as Queen of the Geten, is completely twisted . After her victory over Cyrus she went to the part of Moesia , later known as Kleinskythien , and founded a city named after her named Tomi there on the Mösian coast .

Question of historicity

The historian Konrat Ziegler still considers the Herodotus version to be the most credible, although he says that in general the tradition about the earliest Persian history seems to be quite unreliable. It should also be noted that according to a surviving fragment of the last Babylonian historian Berossus , who is usually considered to be more reliable than Herodotus, Cyrus fell during a campaign on the Daas plain, while according to Ctesias of Knidos he was killed fighting the Derbikers . Herodotus also emphasizes that he knows several variants about the end of Cyrus and that he only wants to tell the one that seems most credible to him.

Reception in the Middle Ages and Modern Times

Andrea del Castagno , Queen Tomyris, fresco on wood, 1450

In the Middle Ages, the fate of Tomyris was best known for the portrayal of Valerius Maximus. In the literature , this material worked among others Giovanni Boccaccio in De claris mulieribus (1356-64), Christine de Pizan in Epître d'Othéa (1402) and Dante Alighieri in his "divine comedy". The motif of women avenging themselves on men is illustrated by a few examples in the Speculum humanae salvationis (1324), including that of Tomyris, e.g. B. also that of the biblical Judith , who beheaded Holofernes . Some poems of the 14th century introduce a group of nine brave women (English: The Nine Worthy Women , French: Neuf Preuses ), including Tomyris and the legendary Babylonian queen Semiramis . In German poetry there is a similar group of nine important women, including the heroic Roman Lucretia ; there, however, the focus is not on the motive of bravery, but on the chastity of those women. Notwithstanding the historical tradition holds Tomyris in the drama La Morte de Cyrus by Philippe Quinault (1656) love for Persian king and disembodied after his assassination itself. A similar love motif appears in the novel Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus the French writer Madeleine de Scudéry (1649 -1653).

In music there are some operas on the theme of Tomyris, e.g. B. by A. Vitali (1680).

The theme of the Neuf Preuses is depicted in the performing arts of the 15th and 16th centuries on a number of rows of frescoes and carpets. A pupil of Peter Paul Rubens depicted Tomyris with the severed head of the Persian king on a painting after a drawing by his teacher (1622/23 in the Louvre in Paris ).

In the computer game Civilization VI , Tomyris is the playable leader of the Scythian Empire.

The asteroid (590) Tomyris is named after her.

literature

Remarks

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini , The Queen Tomyris , 1708/13
  1. ↑ a b For the etymology see: F. Altheim and R. Stiehl, Geschichte Mittelasiens im Altertum (Berlin, 1970), pp. 127-8
  2. ↑ Name variants Thamyris (e.g. with Orosius ), Tamyris (e.g. with Iustinus ), s. Compilation in Ziegler (see lit.), col. 1702
  3. ↑ Encyclopædia Iranica: "AMAZONS IN THE IRANIAN WORLD"
  4. ↑ Herodotus 1: 204-215; then Lukian of Samosata , Charon 13; Valerius Maximus 9, 10 ext. 1
  5. ↑ Polyainus 8, 28
  6. ^ Frontinus, Strategemata 2, 5, 5
  7. ↑ Justin 1, 8; then Orosius 2, 7 u. a.
  8. ↑ Justinus makes Tomyris - like some other authors - the queen of the Scythians instead of the massagers, although Herodotus (1, 215f.) Clearly emphasizes the difference between the two peoples
  9. ↑ Diodor 2, 44, 1f.
  10. ↑ Jordanes, de origine Getarum 10, 61f.
  11. ↑ Ziegler, Col. 1704
  12. ↑ Berossus with Eusebius of Caesarea , Chronik , p. 23 ed. Karst; Ktesias, p. 133ff. ed. Gilmore
  13. ^ Moormann / Uitterhoeve (see lit.), pp. 685ff. with numerous other examples of the reception of the Tomyris theme
  14. ^ Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Volume 1 in the Google Book Search

Web links

Commons : Tomyris  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Tomyris
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Queen of the massagers
DATE OF BIRTH 6th century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 6th century BC Chr.