People
Suani Sarmatae
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The Suani Sarmatae were a people of the steppe and mountains beyond the Sea of Azov, their name joined into a single word on the map and later separated into its two parts. The second part marks them as Sarmatians, the nomadic horsemen of the steppe. Scholars link the first with the Suanoi of the Caucasus, and the geographer Ptolemy seems to know them as the Surani, placed between the Hippic and Ceraunian mountains. The Roman writer Pliny has a similar people, the Suarni. One reading places them on a river near the Caspian coast.