People
Meote
Listen to the story
Meote marks the Maeotians, a collective name for the peoples living around Lake Maeotis, the Sea of Azov, along its eastern shore and the lower and middle Kuban river. Unlike their Sarmatian neighbours they were settled farmers, living mainly from crops and fishing, and they traded busily with the city of Tanais. They also paid tribute to the Bosporan Kingdom. The map sets them by the lower Tanais, the Don, just where Herodotus and Pliny located them. Most ancient writers derived the people's name from the lake, but Pliny turned it round: the lake, he said, was named after them.