Battles involving the Scythians

The Battle of Nineveh, also called the fall of Nineveh is conventionally dated between 613 and 611 BC, with 612 BC being the most supported date. After Assyrian defeat at the battle of Assur, an allied army which combined the forces of Medes and the Babylonians besieged Nineveh and sacked 750 hectares of what was, at that time, one of the greatest cities in the world. The fall of Nineveh led to the destruction of the Neo-Assyrian Empire as the dominant state in the Ancient Near East over the following three years. Archeological records show that the capital of the once mighty Assyrian Empire was extensively de-urbanized and depopulated in the decades and centuries following the battle. A garbled account of the fall of the city later led to the story of the legendary king Sardanapalus.

The Battle of the River Thatis was part of a succession dispute in the Bosporan Kingdom that was fought out during 310/309 BC. After the death of Paerisades I, his eldest son Satyros II became king. His brother Eumelus disputed Satyros II's right to the throne and gathered an army with his allies, the Siraces tribe. With his Scythian allies Satyrus met Eumelus in battle at the River Thatis, where Eumelus and the Siraces were defeated. Satyrus led his cavalry in a charge towards the centre of the line where Aripharnes, the king of the Siraces, was with his own cavalry and put them to flight. When he heard his mercenaries had fled from the fight with the right wing which was led by Eumelus, he attacked the enemy's right wing and broke their army.

The Siege of Siracena was a Bosporan siege led by Satyrus II and Meniscus on the fortified capital city of the Siraces, Siracena, that occurred in 309 BC during the First Bosporan Civil War. The Siraces were a hellenized Sarmatian tribe that had sided with Eumelos, a claimant to the Bosporan throne and a brother of Satyrus.

The Battle of Histria, c. 62–61 BC, was fought between the Bastarnae peoples of Scythia Minor and the Roman Consul (63 BC) Gaius Antonius Hybrida. The Bastarnae emerged victorious from the battle after successfully launching a surprise attack on the Roman troops; Hybrida escaped alongside his cavalry forces leaving behind the infantry to be massacred by the Bastarnian-Scythian attackers.

The Battle of Jaxartes was fought in 329 BC by Alexander the Great and his Hellenic (Greek) army against the Saka at the River Jaxartes, now known as the Syr Darya River. The site of the battle straddles the modern borders of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, just south-west of the ancient city of Tashkent (the modern capital of Uzbekistan) and north-east of Khujand (a city in Tajikistan).

The Battle of Abritus also known as the Battle of Forum Terebronii occurred near Abritus (modern Razgrad) in the Roman province of Moesia Inferior in the summer of 251. It was fought between the Romans and a federation of Gothic and Scythian tribesmen under the Gothic king Cniva. The Roman army was soundly defeated, and Roman emperors Decius and Herennius Etruscus, his son, were both killed in battle. It was one of the worst defeats suffered by the Roman Empire against the Germanic tribes, rated by the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus as on par with the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9, the Marcomannic invasion of Roman Italy in 170, and the Battle of Adrianople in 378.