Alan Military Tactics

[Michael Kerr]

Alanus wrote:

Although Goar was described as "idol worshiping," there are absolutely no indications, from Anything ever written by "real" Roman historians, or ever found in Sarmatian-Alanic graves by archaeologists,, that the Alans worshipped idols.

I think you are correct and you raise a good point about lack of idols as grave-goods but it makes me think what was their religion? Although he would not be classed as a ‘real Roman historian’, the Rhetor from Marseilles Claudius Marius Victor who died about 425AD mentions in his religious work Alethia (Truth) about primitive religions still prevalent in his time, complaining about local barbarians and the “cult of the dead” he writes

“this evil deed is the more degrading because it has the appearance of virtue; for, at once, all peoples consecrated themselves to this endless iniquity, making funeral offerings to the spirits of the dead, as now the Alans give testimony to, and each of them venerated their ancestors instead of their own gods.”

So maybe some of King Saul’s original Alans were settled near the Rhone Valley and Claudius probably witnessed these rites himself as no previous source has mentioned this practice, which was common practice amongst Ossetes up to the end of the 19th century, according to “Sources on the Alans” it goes on to say that the function of this cult was to feed the deceased, as people were convinced that the latter gave the earth abundance, and the worst possible way of insulting someone was to say that his dead were hungry.
While on ‘idol worshipping’ the poor old Alans cop it from both sides, Christian and Muslim, Ibn Rustah a 10th Century Iranian scholar who. wrote about the Alans

“The king of the Alans is Christian at heart but all the people who inhabit his kingdom are heathens, worshipping idols.”

His source was a lost work written about 200 years before so maybe he had never seen an Alan.

Regards
Michael Kerr