should march up from Ephesus. The chief result of the embassy was that Cleomenes took to the Scythian habit of drinking his wine neat and went mad therefrom (Herodotus vi. 84). Henceforward the Scyths appear as a declining power: by the middle of the 4th century their eastern neighbours the Sarmatae have crossed the Tanais (Don) and the pressure of the Scyths is felt on the Danube. Here Philip II. of Macedon defeated and slew their king Ateas in 339 B.C., and from this time on the representatives of the old Scythic power are petty chieftains in the western part of the country about Olbia, where they could still be dangerous, and about Tomi. Towards the second half of the 2nd century B.C. this kingdom seems to have become the nucleus of a great state under Scilurus, whose name appears on coins of Olbia, and who at the same time threatened Chersonese in the Crimea. Here, however, he was opposed by the might of Mithradates VI. of Pontus and his power was broken. Henceforward the name “Scythian” is purely geographical. Meanwhile Scythia had become the land of the Sarmatae (q.v.). These, as has been seen, spoke a cognate dialect, and the tombs which belong to their period show exactly the same culture with Greek and Siberian elements. It is probable that the Iranian element was stronger among the Sarmatae, whose power extended as the ruling clan of the Scyths became extinct; but it is quite likely that they in their turn were officered by some new horde from upper Asia. Like the Scyths they were pressed towards the west by yet newer swarms, and with the coming of the Huns Scythia enters upon a new cycle, though still keeping its old name in the Byzantine historians.
Authorities.—(1) Ancient: Herodotus iv. 1-142 (editions of Blakesley, Rawlinson, Macan); Hippocrates, De Aere, &c., c. 24 sqq.; for geography alone: Strabo vii. cc. 3, 4; xi. cc. 1, 2, 6; Pliny iv. 75 sqq.; Ptolemy, Sarmatia; Diodorus Sic. ii. 2, 43-47; and Justin i. cc. 1, 8; ii. 1, 4, do not seem to add anything of which we can be certain. (2) Modern: E. H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks (Cambridge, 1909), gives a summary of various opinions and a survey of the subject from all points of view. See also for ethnological questions, Mongolian hypothesis: K. Neumann, Die Hellenen im Skythenlande (Berlin, 1855). Iranian hypothesis: K. Müllenhoff, “Über Herkunft und Sprache der Pontischen Skythen und Sarmaten,” in Monatsber. d. Berl. Ak. (1866), reprinted in Deutsche Altertumskunde, vol. iii. For the archaeology: Kondakoff, Tolstoi and Reinach, Antiquités de la Russie Méridionale (Paris, 1892); more fully in Antiquités de la Russie d'Hérodote and Compte rendu de la commission archéologique de St Pétersbourg, passim. (E. H. M.)
SEA (in O. Eng. sae, a common Teutonic word; cf. Ger. See,
Dutch Zee, &c.; the ultimate source is uncertain), in its widest
sense that part of the surface of the globe which consists of salt
water, in distinction from dry land. The greater divisions
of “the sea,” in this sense, are called oceans, and are dealt
with under the heading Ocean and Oceanography, the latter
being the term now generally applied to the scientific study of
the sea. The word “sea,” however, is also used, in a restricted
sense, in application to specific parts of the great oceans, more
or less clearly defined by a partial land-boundary. Such are the
Mediterranean Sea and the Caribbean Sea, connected with the
Atlantic Ocean; the Arabian Sea, a division of the Indian Ocean,
and the China and Japan Seas of the western Pacific Ocean.
Subdivisions of great seas are similarly defined (e.g. the Adriatic
Sea), and a few large bodies of salt water entirely land-locked
are also called seas—e.g. the Caspian Sea, the Sea of Aral, the
Dead Sea. Sea-level is the assumed mean level of the sea, serving
as a datum from which to calculate the elevation of land in
surveying (q.v.).
SEA, COMMAND OF THE, a technical term of naval warfare, which indicates a definite strategical condition. (For its difference from “sea-power,” see the separate article on that subject.) The term has been substituted sometimes for the much older “Dominion of the sea” or “Sovereignty of the sea,” a legal term expressing a claim, Different from sovereignty or dominion, &c. if not a right. It has also been sometimes treated as though it were identical with the rhetorical expression, “Empire of the sea.” Captain A. T. Mahan, instead of it, uses the term “Control of the sea,” which has the merit of precision, and is not likely to be misunderstood or mixed up with a form of words meaning something different. The expression “Command of the sea,” however, in its proper and strategic sense, is so firmly fixed in the language that it would be a hopeless task to try to expel it; and as, no doubt, writers will continue to use it, it must be explained and illustrated. Not only does it differ in meaning from “Dominion or Sovereignty of the Sea,” it is not even truly derived therefrom, as can be briefly shown. “It has become an uncontested principle of modern international law that the sea, as a general rule, cannot be subjected to appropriation” (W. E. Hall, Treatise on International Law, 4th ed., 1895, p. 146). This, however, is quite modern. Great Britain did not admit the principle till 1805; the Russians did not admit it till 1824; and the Americans, and then only tacitly, not till 1894. Most European nations at some time or other have claimed and have exercised rights over some part of the sea, though far outside the now well-recognized “three miles' limit.” Venice claimed the Adriatic, and exacted a heavy toll from vessels navigating its northern waters. Genoa and France each claimed portions of the western Mediterranean. Denmark and Sweden claimed to share the Baltic between them. Spain claimed dominion over the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico, and Portugal over the Indian Ocean and all the Atlantic south of Morocco (Hall, pp. 148–9). The claim which has made the greatest noise in the world is that once maintained by the kings of England to the seas surrounding the British Isles. Like other institutions, the English sovereignty of the sea was, and was admitted to be, beneficent for a long period. Then came the time when it fought to have been abandoned as obsolete; but it was not, and so it led to war. The general conviction of the maritime nations was that the Lord of the Sea would provide for the police of the waters over which he exercised dominion. In rude ages when men, like the ancients, readily “turned themselves to piracy,” this was of immense importance to trade; and, far from the right of dominion being disputed by foreigners, it was insisted upon by them and declared to carry with it certain duties. In 1299, not only English merchants, but also “the maritime people of Genoa, Catalonia, Spain, Germany, Zealand, Holland, Frisia, Denmark, Norway and several other places of the empire” declared that the kings of England had from time immemorial been in “peaceable possession of the sovereign lordship of the seas of England,” and had done what was “needful for the maintenance of peace, right and equity between people of all sorts, whether subjects of another kingdom or not, who pass through those seas” (J. K. Laughton, “Sovereignty of the Sea,” Fortnightly Review, August 1866). The, English sovereignty was not exercised as giving authority to exact toll. All that was demanded in return for keeping the sea safe for peaceful traffic was a salute, enforced no doubt as a formal admission of the right which permitted the (on the whole, at any rate) effective police of the waters to be maintained. The Dutch in the 17th century objected to the demand for this salute. It was insisted upon. War ensued; but in the end the Dutch acknowledged by solemn treaties their obligation to render the salute. The time for exacting it, however, was really past. S. R. Gardiner (“The First Dutch War,” Navy Records, vol. xiii., 1899) maintains that though the “question of the flag” was the occasion, it was not the cause of the war. There was not much, if any, piracy in the English Channel which the king of England was specially called upon to suppress, and if there had been the merchant vessels of the age were generally able to defend themselves, while if they were not their governments possessed force enough to give them the necessary protection. Great Britain gave up her claim to exact the salute in 1805.
The necessity of the foregoing short account of the “Sovereignty or Dominion of the Seas” will be apparent as soon as we come to the consideration of the first struggle, or rather series of struggles, for the command of the sea. Gaining this was the result of England's wars with the Dutch in the 17th century. At the time of the first Dutch War, Attempts to gain command. 1652–54, and probably of the later wars also, many people, and especially seamen, believed that the conflict was due to a determination on her part to retain, and on that of the Dutch to put an end to, the English sovereignty or dominion. The obstinacy of the
