SoA Forums

Having finally got round to reading Procopius as a primary source, as opposed to him being heavily referenced in secondary works, I noticed that he describes a Sasanian army in Armenia during Kavad's reign as being composed of Persarmenians, Sunitae "who live by the lands of the Alani", and Huns of the specific Sabir flavour; the only Persian element seems to be its general.  Leaving aside the fact that if we take his description at face value it is a salutary reminder that a Sasanian army away from the heartlands might possibly be entirely proxies and allies, it also left me wondering what, if anything, is known or guessed about the Sunitae.

My Google Fu may have let me down, but I cannot find any references to them other than this single entry in Procopius Book 1.  Furthermore, I have never come across them in any previous reading of primary or secondary sources, though I would readily accept this is a specific period a little later than anything on which I have hitherto focused.  I cannot think of any mention of Sunitae in earlier periods, so I feel fairly confident that this is not some classicising usage comparable to "Scythians" or "Massagetae" (the latter is one that Procopius uses a lot, perhaps for some flavour of Huns, since some Roman generals are described as being of Massagetae stock).

Has anyone ever come across anything on the Sunitae, or any reasonable speculation?  Given the theatre of operations, and the description of them as neighbours of the Alani, it would seem that they might be either resident in the Caucasus, or else living to the north of the mountains, perhaps at the top end of the Caspian...

Probably a wild goose chase after a single, potentially dodgy, reference in a slightly confused East Roman author writing about far away places about which he only cares when they impinge on the Roman conflicts with Persia, I fully realise.

Could they be from Suania (Souania) - mentioned in the Gothic Wars as an area subject to the Lazi? (Wars VIII.ii.23)
Or the Sani - the Tzani/Chani. (VIII.i.. Not sure if they are close enough to the Alani to fit the description, though they are close enough to the Persarmenians for it to be logical for them to be used together.

Procopius' spelling in a less Latinised form is "Sounitai" - not that that helps the googling much. The only non-Procopian reference I can find is in the Armenian Geography of Ananias of Sirak  which suggests it refers to the inhabitants of the Armenian province of Siwnik/Syunik. Since Syunik is in southern Armenia, I am not wholly convinced that this is what Procopius meant.

I think Peter's suggestion of Souania/Svaneti is most likely.

Thank you both very much.  Given that Procopius specifically talks about the Tzani (and says that they used to be referred to as the Sani) at some length only shortly after the reference to the Sounitai, then I suspect they are not a likely candidate.  In addition, he specifically states that they had been won over to the Roman side immediately before the Armenian war in which the Sounitai were fighting on the Persian side.  So unless Procopius was really confused, I think it fair to say that he himself could not have thought that Sounitai equals Tzani/Sani.

I also agree that Sounitas is unlikely to equate to Syunik.  As you say, would seem to be the wrong end of Armenia for people living next to the Alans.

I therefore agree that, if this is not a one-off surviving reference to some "barbarian" fringe entity right on the edge of "civilised" perception, and therefore insoluble, then Souania/Svaneti does indeed seem the best guess.  The possible Strabo reference helps in that regard, as it indicates that, even if precise renderings of the name might vary, then perhaps it was, whilst still on the fringe, an entity that was not quite such a strain on Mediterranean perception, plus a possible classicising reference that would appeal to Procopius and his audience.  Though it does also mean that maybe Procopius was just possibly confused in seemingly distinguishing the Tzani from the Souanitai, since he locates the Tzani at the headwaters of the Phasis, which is awfully close to where Svaneti is, at least in modern times...  And his description of the Tzani as, even by the standards of the region, pretty damned wild, certainly accords with Strabo's view that the Soanes were the utterly filthy, disorganised but formidable barbarians in the most difficult bit of the Caucasus.

Thank you, thought it was worth asking here!