[blam]

"Could they have been brown skinned people from North Africa/the Middle East? Possibly."

I've even speculated that they were the Xiongnu or perhaps the Scythians.

[Cronos]

I dunno -- the term Scythians I look upon with extreme distrust -- it seems to be a generic term the Persians, Greeks and Romans used for 'barbarians to their north-east and seems to have included at various times Germanics, Slavs, Turkics and Indo-Irani groups. It seems to have been used as a generic term for 'barbarians'