In the fourth book of Herodotus’ Histories, in one of the two legends on the origin of the Scythians, we read the name of the progenitor of this people and his descendants. In the following paragraphs, Herodotus recalls names of other Scythian kings. These data cannot be useful in the traditional sense that genealogies have: they do not contribute in any way to date events or to put order in their sequence. They do not even help us to understand the problem of the transmission of power in strict sense. Nevertheless, they are important to enlighten the “Scythian question” and the aspects of the conservation of traditions in the Scythian society. In this article I examine these last two aspects in the context of Scythian studies from the mid-19th century up to now with a particular attention to the so-called “Scythian question” in Russia.

在希罗多德历史的第四本书中在关于斯基泰人起源的两个传说之一中，我们读到了这个民族的祖先及其后代的名字。在以下段落中，希罗多德回忆了其他斯基泰国王的名字。这些数据在系谱所具有的传统意义上是没有用的：它们对确定事件的日期或按顺序排列没有任何贡献。它们甚至不能帮助我们理解严格意义上的权力传递问题。然而，它们对于启发“斯基泰问题”和斯基泰社会传统保护方面很重要。在这篇文章中，我在 19 世纪中叶至今的斯基泰研究背景下考察了最后两个方面，特别关注俄罗斯所谓的“斯基泰问题”。