the name given by the ancients to an extensive tract of country lying to the east of the ancient Germania, bounded on the N. by the Baltic and the unknown country to the E. of that sea, E. by the Volga (Rha) from its confluence with the Kama to its mouth, and by the Caspian Sea, S. by Mount Caucasus, the Euxine Sea, and Dacia, and W. by the Vistula. It thus included eastern Prussia, parts of Poland and Galicia, and the whole centre and south of European Russia. All this country is now included within the limits of Europe; but as in ancient times the arbitrary boundary between the two continents was formed by the river Don (Tanais), Sarmatia was divided into European and Asiatic; the former lying to the west, and the latter to the east of that river. This vast region was occupied by a great number of warlike nomadic tribes, whose names are given by ancient writers, but whose respective localities are for the most part merely matters of conjecture. The history of Sarmatia presents us with no event of any importance. Its wild and fierce tribes were not subdued by any of the great empires of antiquity, and are only known to us by the incursions that they made into the more civilized countries to the south. The Romans frequently encountered them on the borders of Pannonia and Moesia, and after the conquest of Dacia, also in that province. But they never inflicted any serious damage on the empire; and in later times, when the people of these countries came into historical prominence, the name of Sarmatians had disappeared, superseded by the better known appellation of Vandals and Huns. It is to be observed, that the people described by Herodotus under the name of Sauromatae, which is merely a different form of Sarmatae, did not occupy the whole of the country known in the time of Ptolemy as Sarmatia, but only that portion of it which lies between the Don, the Volga, and Mount Caucasus; the rest being inhabited by the Scythians. Whether or not the Sarmatians were a distinct people from the Scythians, is a somewhat doubtful point; but it is probable that the two were distinct, and that the former belonged to the Slavonic and Lithuanic, the latter to the Turkish races. See SCYTHIA. The Sarmatians wandered about in large waggons, surmounted by tents, and drawn by oxen, wherever their pastoral avocations, the pursuit of game, or their warlike passions, might direct their movements. A vivid description of these savage barbarians is given in the poetical epistles, which were written by Ovid from his place of banishment, near the mouth of the Danube; where he was exposed to the assaults, probably, of the Jazygae, one of the fiercest and most powerful of these tribes.