MARDYE´NI
Eth.
MARDYE´NI (
Μαρδυηνοί,
Ptol. 6.12 § 4), a tribe who occupied the lower part of the Sogdian mountains in Sogdiana.
There can be no doubt that these people are the remains of a once very numerous race, whose traces we find spread over a wide extent of country from the Caspian to the
Persian Gulf, and from the Oxus to the Caspian. We find the names of these tribes preserved in different authors, and attributed to very different places. Hence the presumption that they were to a great extent a nomade tribe, who pressed onward from the N. and E. to the S. Thus we find them under the form of Mardi in Hyrcania (
Diod. 17.76; Arrian,
Arr. Anab. 3.24,
4.18;
Dionys. Perieg. 5.732;
Curt. 6.5), in Margiana according to Pliny (
6.16. s. 13), in Persia (
Hdt. 1.125;
Strab. xi. p.524;
Ptol. 6.4.3; Curt. v. un>6), in Armenia (
Ptol. 5.13;
Tac. Ann. 14.23), on the eastern side of the Pontus Euxinus (
Plin. Nat. 6.5), under the form Amardi in Scythia intra Imaum (Mela, 3.5, 4.6;
Plin. Nat. 6.17. s. 19), and lastly in Bactriana. (
Plin. Nat. 6.16. s. 18.)
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