People
Rumi Scythae
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Rumi Scythae, the Rumi Scythians, labels a nomad people of the steppe, and the name has come down garbled, or perhaps shortened to fit the space. Behind it stand the Rumnici of the Roman writer Pliny and the Rhymmoi of the geographer Ptolemy, who lived on the north-eastern shore of the Caspian Sea along the river Rhymnos, a tributary of the Volga. Both authors list them beside the Dahae, the Massagetae and other tribes counted among the Scythians, drawing ultimately on Demodamas, who wrote in the third century BC, so the name reaches back to Hellenistic times.