There are many legends about the Sarmatians that tell us of its origin and development. One of these myths is concerned with the appearance of the Sarmatians as a separate people. Herodotus wrote in the 5th century BC about the Sauromates (who count as ancestors of the Sarmatians) and explained their appearance as follows:

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After the Amazons, a tribe of warlike women, had to leave their home Cappadocia after a battle, they lived a long time in ships on the Black Sea in exile. Finally, they landed in Kremni (Sea of Azov) and were committed there by the Scythians as warriors, who thought the Amazons for men. Certainly they were shocked when they realized that they were dealing with fighting women. So they sent young Scythian warriors in the camp of the Amazons, to learn more about them. After a long peaceful life together, the Scythians married the Amazons and left the coast of the Sea of Azov and settled in the steppes behind Tanais (Don). Their children are, according to Herodotus, the Sauromatae, of which he later reported that they lived in an area to the extent of 15 days’ journey north of the Sea of Azov. Herodotus reasoned the similarity of their language to the Scythian one that it was a dialect of Scythian that the Amazons have never properly learned.

Herodotus also reports that women were doing no typical women’s work and were only allowed to marry after they had killed an enemy in battle. Though these claims may well be tinged mythical, they provide us the reference to a different position of women in early Sarmatian societies, as it was common in Greek societies.

Another ancient author who writes about Sarmatians, Polyaenus, who reports in his work “Stratagens” (around 200 AD) of the fabled Sarmatian queen Amage. According Polyaneus Amage was the wife of the Sarmatian king Medosaccus which dominated the Black Sea coast. Amage gave her husband a life of luxury and instead took over the rule itself: she practiced dish of stationed troops pushed back the enemy and became famous for her skillful style of government throughout Scythia. The inhabitants of the Tauride Chersonesus ( a Greek enclave on the Crimean peninsula, near the present-day Sevastopol ) had heard of the fame Amages and asked them for help because they were hard pressed by the neighboring Scythian Empire. Then the Sarmatin wrote the Scythian prince a letter in which she told him not to take any more raids on the Chersonesus residents.

When the Prince of the Scythians disobeyed this warning, Amage be made immediately with 120 of the best Sarmatian warriors on the way and bridged in just one night and one day a distance of 1200 stadia (about 221.8 km ). In this unexpected attack killed upon arrival at the Scythian palace first all the guards of the prince, and finally his relatives, friends and him self to the displaced inhabitants of Chersonesus they gave their land back, the rightful land of the Scythian empire they gave the descendants of the slain princes and exhorted those at the same time to draw a lesson from the death of his father.