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  • The Scythians

  • Nomad Warriors of the Steppe
  • By: Barry Cunliffe
  • Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
  • Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (27 ratings)
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The Scythians

By: Barry Cunliffe
Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
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Summary

The Scythians were nomadic horsemen who ranged wide across the grasslands of the Asian steppe from the Altai mountains in the east to the Great Hungarian Plain in the first millennium BC. Their steppe homeland bordered on a number of sedentary states to the south and there were, inevitably, numerous interactions between the nomads and their neighbours. The Scythians fought the Persians on a number of occasions, in one battle killing their king and on another occasion driving the invading army of Darius the Great from the steppe.

Relations with the Greeks around the shores of the Black Sea were rather different - both communities benefiting from trading with each other. It is from the writings of Greeks like the historian Herodotus that we learn of Scythian life: their beliefs, their burial practices, their love of fighting, and their ambivalent attitudes to gender. It is a world that is also brilliantly illuminated by the rich material culture recovered from Scythian burials, where all the organic material is amazingly well preserved.

Barry Cunliffe here marshals this vast array of evidence - both archaeological and textual - in a masterful reconstruction of the lost world of the Scythians, allowing them to emerge in all their considerable vigor and splendor for the first time in over two millennia.

©2019 Barry Cunliffe (P)2020 Tantor
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

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Wonderful book - What a waste..

A book as valuable and significant as this one deserved a maximum effort for the audio-book.
Instead, it appears that a semi-literate actor was hired, who, though he has acquired an actorly diction and accent, has not managed to acquire either an education, or even the ability to look up the phonetics of words with which he is not familiar.
All of this begging the question as to why this was not read by Cunliffe himself?
The quality and worth of the work outweighs the poor delivery, but this book deserved a five-star performance.

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Annoying audio edits ruined it for me

It is great that one tries to be accurate in pronunciation but the obvious inserts of a later moment and recording setup ruin the flow of the story for me. It’s like mental speed bumps. My brain thinks ‘whoops’ every time I hear one. And there are many. So with 8 hours to go… I give up :(

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