Herodotus

“ Thereupon the Ionians held a council. Miltiades the Athenian, general and despot of the Chersonesites of the Hellespont, gave counsel that they should do as the Scythians said and set Ionia free. But Histiaeus of Miletus held a contrary opinion. “Now,” said he, “it is by help of Darius that each of us is sovereign of his city; if Darius’ power be overthrown, we shall no longer be able to rule, neither I in Miletus nor any of you elsewhere; for all the cities will choose democracy rather than despotism.” ”

“ You can choose which of two things you will do: if you deem yourself strong enough to withstand my power, wander no further, but stand and fight; but if you know yourself to be the weaker, then make an end of this running to and fro, and come to terms with your master, sending him gifts of earth and water. ”

“ The country of Cyrene, which is the highest part of that Libya which the nomads inhabit, has the marvellous boon of three harvest seasons. First on the sea-coast the fruits of the earth are ripe for reaping and plucking: when these are gathered, the middle region above the coast, that which they call the Hills, is ripe for gathering: and no sooner is this yield of the middle country gathered than the highest-lying crops are mellow and ripe, so that the latest fruits of the earth are coming in when the earliest are already spent by way of food and drink. ”

“ Many fights there were, and the Scythians could gain no advantage thereby; at last one of them said, “Men of Scythia, see what we are about! We are fighting our own slaves; they slay us, and we grow fewer; we slay them, and thereafter shall have fewer slaves. Now therefore my counsel is that we drop our spears and bows, and go to meet them each with his horsewhip in hand. As long as they saw us armed, they thought themselves to be our peers and the sons of our peers; let them see us with whips and no weapons of war, and they will perceive that they are our slaves ”

“ Such then is the Scythians’ account of their origin; they reckon that neither more nor less than a thousand years in all passed from the time of their first king Targitäus and the crossing over of Darius into their country. The kings guard this sacred gold most jealously, and every year offer to it solemn sacrifices of propitiation. Whoever at this festival falls asleep in the open air, having with him the sacred gold, is said by the Scythians not to live out the year; for which reason (they say) there is given him as much land as he can himself ride round in one day. ”

“ As for the Barcaeans whom they had taken for slaves, they carried them from Egypt into banishment and brought them to the king, and Darius gave them a town of Bactria to dwell in. They gave this town the name Barce, and it remained an inhabited place in Bactria till my own lifetime.
205. But Pheretime fared ill too, and made no good ending of her life. For immediately after she had revenged herself on the Barcaeans and returned to Egypt, she died a foul death; her living body festered and bred worms: so wroth, it would seem, are the gods with over-violent human vengeance. ”

“ These are the only men known to us who have no names; for the whole people are called Atarantes, but no man has a name of his own. These when the sun is exceeding high curse and most foully revile him, for that his burning heat afflicts their people and their land. After another ten days’ journey there is again a hillock of salt, and water, and men dwelling there. Near to this salt is a mountain called Atlas, the shape whereof is slender and a complete circle; and it is said to be so high that its summits cannot be seen, for cloud is ever upon them winter and summer. ”

“ After the taking of Babylon, Darius himself marched against the Scythians. For seeing that Asia abounded in men and that he gathered from it a great revenue, he became desirous of punishing the Scythians for the unprovoked wrong they had done when they invaded Media and defeated those who encountered them. For the Scythians, as I have before shown, ruled the upper country of Asia for twenty-eight years; they invaded Asia in their pursuit of the Cimmerians, and made an end of the power of the Medes, who were the rulers of Asia before the coming of the Scythians. ”

“ It may be that they are wizards; for the Scythians, and the Greeks settled in Scythia, say that once a year every one of the Neuri is turned into a wolf, and after remaining so for a few days returns again to his former shape. For myself, I cannot believe this tale; but they tell it nevertheless, yea, and swear to its truth.
106. The Man-eaters are of all men the most savage in their manner of life; they know no justice and obey no law. They are nomads, wearing a dress like the Scythian, but speaking a language of their own; they are the only people of all these that eat men. ”

“ On this sacred pile there is set for each people an ancient scimitar of iron, which is their image of Ares; to this scimitar they bring yearly sacrifice of sheep and goats and horses, offering to these symbols even more than they do to the other gods. Of all their enemies that they take alive, they sacrifice one man in every hundred, not according to their fashion of sacrificing sheep and goats, but differently. They pour wine on the men’s heads and cut their throats over a vessel ”

“ The victim itself stands with its forefeet shackled together; the sacrificer stands behind the beast, and throws it down by plucking the end of the rope; as the victim falls, he invokes whatever god it is to whom he sacrifices. ”

“ These are all the Libyans whom we can name, and of their kings the most part cared nothing for the king of the Medes at the time of which I write, nor do they care for him now. I have thus much further to say of this country: four nations and no more, as far as our knowledge serves, inhabit it, whereof two are aboriginal and two are not; the Libyans in the north and the Ethiopians in the south of Libya are aboriginal, the Phoenicians and Greeks are later settlers. ”

“ Across the Gerrus are those lands called Royal, where are the best and most in number of the Scythians, who deem all other Scythians their slaves; their territory stretches southward to the Tauric land, and eastward to the fosse that was dug by the sons of the blind men, and on the Maeetian lake to the port called The Cliffs; and part of it stretches to the river Tanais. Above the Royal Scythians to the north dwell the Blackcloaks, who are of another and not a Scythian stock; and beyond the Blackcloaks the land is all marshes and uninhabited by men, so far as we know. ”

“ Here is a winter of a different sort from the winters that come in other lands; for in the season for rain there falls scarce any, but for all the summer there is rain unceasing; and when there are thunderstorms in other lands, here there are none, but in summer there is great plenty of them; if there come a thunderstorm in winter they are wont to marvel at it for a portent. And so too if there come an earthquake, be it in summer or winter, it is esteemed a portent in Scythia, Horses have endurance to bear the Scythian winter, mules and asses cannot at all bear it ”

“ Next westward of these Auschisae is the populous country of the Nasamones, who in summer leave their flocks by the sea and go up to the land called Augila to gather dates from the palm-trees which grow there in great abundance, and all bear fruit. They hunt locusts, which when taken they dry in the sun, and after grinding sprinkle them into milk and so drink it. It is their custom for every man to have many wives; their intercourse with women is promiscuous, in like manner as among the Massagetae; a staff is planted before the dwelling and then they have intercourse. ”

“ For what is to become of us if you will not aid us? And thereafter it will be no light matter for you yourselves; for the Persian is come to attack you no whit less than us, nor when he has subdued us will he be content to leave you alone. ”

“ But in the time of the third ruler, that Battus who was called the Fortunate, the Pythian priestess admonished all Greeks by an oracle to cross the sea and dwell in Libya with the Cyrenaeans; for the Cyrenaeans invited them, promising a distribution of land; and this was the oracle:
“Whoso delayeth to go till the fields be fully divided To the fair Libyan land, that man shall surely repent it.” So a great multitude gathered together at Cyrene, and cut off great tracts of land from the territory of the neighbouring Libyans. ”

“ The Budini are native to the soil; they are nomads, and the only people in these parts that eat fir-cones; the Geloni are tillers of the soil, eating grain and possessing gardens; they are wholly unlike the Budini in form and in complexion. Yet the Greeks call the Budini too Geloni; but this is wrong. All their country is thickly wooded with every kind of tree; in the depth of the forests there is a great and wide lake and marsh surrounded by reeds ”

“ So far then as these men this country is known; but, for what lies north of the bald men, no one can speak with exact knowledge; for mountains high and impassable bar the way, and no man crosses them. ”

“ The nomads’ manner of sacrificing is to cut a piece from the victim’s ear for first-fruits and throw it over the house; which done they turn back the victim’s neck. They sacrifice to no gods save the sun and moon; that is, this is the practice of the whole nation; but the dwellers by the Tritonian lake sacrifice to Athene chiefly, and next to Triton and Poseidon. ”

“ But on the other side of the Borysthenes the tribe nearest to the sea is the tribe of the Woodlands; and north of these dwell Scythian farmers, whom the Greek dwellers on the Hypanis river (who call themselves Olbiopolitae) call Borystheneitae. These farming Scythians inhabit a land stretching eastward a three days’ journey to a river called Panticapes, and northward as far as an eleven days’ voyage up the Borysthenes; and north of these the land is uninhabited for a long way; after which desert is the country of the Man-eaters, who are a nation by themselves and by no means Scythian ”

“ There is a mine of salt on it every ten days’ journey, and men dwell there. Their houses are all built of the blocks of salt; for even these are parts of Libya where no rain falls; for the walls, being of salt, could not stand firm if there were rain. The salt there is both white and purple. Beyond this ridge the southern and inland parts of Libya are desert and waterless; no wild beasts are there, nor rain, nor forests; this region is wholly without moisture.
186. Thus from Egypt to the Tritonian lake, the Libyans are nomads that eat meat and drink milk ”

“ Whoever has seen snow falling thickly near him knows of himself my meaning; for the snow is like feathers; and by reason of the winter, which is such as I have said, the parts to the north of this continent are uninhabited. I think therefore that in this tale of feathers the Scythians and their neighbours do but speak of snow in a figure. Thus then I have spoken of those parts that are said to be most distant.
32. Concerning the Hyperborean people neither the Scythians nor any other dwellers in these lands tell us anything, except perchance the Issedones. ”

“ Nay, if you desire to keep us for wives and to have the name of just men, go to your parents and let them give you the allotted share of their possessions, and after that let us go and dwell by ourselves. ”

“ But the Black-cloaks and Man-eaters and Neuri, when the Persians and the Scythians broke into their lands, made no resistance, but forgot their threats and fled panic-stricken ever northward into the desert. The Scythians, being warned off by the Agathyrsi, made no second attempt on that country, but led the Persians from the lands of the Neuri into Scythia.
126. All this continuing long, and there being no end to it, Darius sent a horseman to Idanthyrsus the Scythian king, with this message: “Sir, these are strange doings. Why will you ever flee? ”

“ Thus it is with this region. But westward of the Tritonian lake the Libyans are not nomads; they follow not the same usages, nor treat their children as the nomads are wont to do. For the practice of many Libyan nomads (I cannot with exactness say whether it be the practice of all) is to take their children when four years old, and with grease of sheep’s wool to burn the veins of their scalps or sometimes of their temples, that so the children may be never afterwards afflicted by phlegm running down from the head. They say that this makes their children most healthy. ”

“ Then those that receive the dead man at his coming do the same as do the Royal Scythians; that is, they cut off a part of their ears, shave their heads, make cuts round their arms, tear their foreheads and noses, and pierce their left hands with arrows. Thence the bearers carry the king’s body on the waggon to another of the tribes which they rule, and those to whom they have already come follow them; and having carried the dead man to all in turn, they are in the country of the Gerrhi, the farthest distant of all tribes under their rule, and at the place of burial. ”

“ Now the men could not learn the women’s language, but the women mastered the speech of the men; and when they understood each other, the men said to the Amazons, “We have parents and possessions; now therefore let us no longer live as we do, but return to our people and consort with them; and we will still have you, and no others, for our wives.” To this the women replied: “Nay, we could not dwell with your women; for we and they have not the same customs. We shoot with the bow and throw the javelin and ride, but the crafts of women we have never learned ”

“ But if they have no cauldron, then they cast all the flesh into the victim’s stomachs, adding water thereto, and make a fire beneath of the bones, which burn finely; the stomachs easily hold the flesh when it is stripped from the bones; thus an ox serves to cook itself, and every other victim does likewise. When the flesh is cooked, the sacrificer takes the firstfruits of the flesh and the entrails and casts it before him. They use all beasts of the flock for sacrifice, but chiefly horses. ”

“ In that country are the huge snakes and the lions, and the elephants and bears and asps, the horned asses, the dog-headed men and the headless that have their eyes in their breasts, as the Libyans say, and the wild men and women, besides many other creatures not fabulous. ”

“ Further, to my thinking the ceremonial chant first took its rise in Libya: for the women of that country chant very tunefully. And it is from the Libyans that the Greeks have learnt to drive four-horse chariots.
190. The dead are buried by the nomads in Greek fashion, save by the Nasamones. These bury their dead sitting, being careful to make the dying man sit when he gives up the ghost, and not die lying supine. Their dwellings are compact of asphodel-stalks twined about reeds; they can be carried hither and thither. Such are the Libyan usages. ”

“ Then he scrapes out the flesh with the rib of an ox, and kneads the skin with his hands, and having made it supple he keeps it for a napkin, fastening it to the bridle of the horse which he himself rides, and taking pride in it; for he is judged the best man who has most scalps for napkins. Many Scythians even make garments for wear out of these scalps, sewing them together like coats of skin. Many too take off the skin, nails and all, from their dead enemies’ right hands, and make thereof coverings for their quivers ”