Roxolani

the name of one of the cattle-breeding Sarmatian tribes, who created a large military and political alliance of nomadic tribes centered in the northern Azov region.

In the late second century B.C., the Roxolani, in an alliance with the Scythians, waged war in the Crimea against Diophantos, commander of Pontos. During the second and first centuries B.C., the Roxolani reconquered the steppes between the Don and the Dnieper from the Scythians. In the first century A.D., the Roxolani also occupied the steppes west of the Dnieper. They raided Moesia in approximately A.D. 70. In the second and third centuries, the Roxolani waged war with Rome on the Danube, although it is probable that a considerable number of the Roxolani continued to inhabit the Black Sea steppes until the invasion in the fourth century of the Huns, who destroyed the Sarmatian alliance and drew some of the Roxolani into their own ranks.