Tanais Tablets

Three male names are mentioned on the tablets: Horoúathos, Horoáthos, and Horóathos (Χορούαθ[ος], Χοροάθος, Χορόαθος).

[7][6] Tanais Tablet B mentions Horoathos as the son of (or from) Sandarz who was (or had been) the archon of the Tanaisians (one of theory Sandakšatru gens), which is a Scytho-Sarmatian name.

Scholars use this to indicate that early Croatians may have, at the time, been Sarmatians or a mixed tribe of Alans and Crimean Goths who became Slavicized in the ensuing centuries.

Croatian scholars Stjepan Krizin Sakač, Dominik Mandić and Radoslav Katičić have written significantly about the tablets.

[9] When Croatia was part of Yugoslavia, Yugoslav scholars avoided discussing them,[10] or in the case of scholars such as Ferdo Šišić, Trpimir Macan, Josip Horvat, Bogo Grafenauer, Jaroslav Šidak, Gordan Ravančić, Ivan Biondić, and Stjepan Pantelić, discussed the tablets in a superficial way and misinterpreted their content.

[16] Theories that early Croats were Slavs who had adopted a name of Iranian origin or were ruled by a Sarmatian elite caste,[7] or theories that early Croats were Slavicized Sarmatians[7] cannot dismiss the remote Irano-Sarmatian elements or influence on the Croatian ethnogenesis.

[17][10] Still, the secure connection of those three personal names with the Croatian ethnonym, or ethnic identity, is rather difficult without more evidence.

In the time of the reign of king Tiberius Julius Sauromates, Friend of Caesar and of the people of Rome, Pious.

[4] This inscription is younger, which is apparent as it mentions Tiberius Julius Rhescuporis III, the son of Sauromates II.

[21] Cited in the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth lines, along with the names of their fathers, are the four leaders of the city of Tanais at the time when this monument was erected (Hofarno, Babos, Niblobor, and Horoathos).