Between the Colchians and the Medians: Re-Assessing Herodotus’ Saspeires

Although Herodotus was not the first to describe a map of the world, the Histories contain the oldest extant Greek treatise on the geography and the peoples of the whole world as known to the Greeks. Within the Histories, Herodotus also provides us with the earliest detailed account of the Caucasus and its environs (amongst many other areas). In it, Herodotus marks the border between western and eastern Asia, with four peoples living between the Persian Gulf and the Black Sea: the Persians, Medes, Saspeires, and Colchians. The Saspeires do not figure with that exact name in any other work, but later authors speak of Sapeires, as well as more dissimilar names such as the Hesperites, and the region of Syspiritis. Some authors have tried to link all these, as well as the later region of Speri in the Upper Euphrates, locating the Saspeires in that area. Others place them rather on the valley of the Aras, in what is now mostly modern Armenia, or instead the Kura, in modern Georgia. For Georgian-speaking scholars, the name of Saspeires invites arguments in favour of them being Kartvelian speakers, as the name could follow a Georgian construction for toponyms (such as the name of Georgia, ‘sa-kartvel-o’) that see their name as deriving from some form such as ‘sa-sper-o’. The identity and location of the Saspeires have been argued to be an important part of the Georgian ethnogenesis, and like many other similar aspects of history, it can be abused for nationalistic and irredentist goals. It is therefore important to be highly precise and rigorous when analysing and interpreting the available evidence. For this reason, in this work I sought to re-examine the available ancient evidence relevant for uncovering the location and identity of the Saspeires of Herodotus, as well as perform a brief evaluation of the linguistic arguments in favour of their Kartvelian-ness. The results of this enquiry reveal a far more ambiguous and unclear situation than has normally been portrayed so far, and a people whose geography and identity arguably cannot be reliably ascertained.