Scythians

“ Scythians (sĭth′ĭ-ans) , an ancient race of Asia. The name is given either to the Scythians proper, the Scolots, or to all the wandering tribes who lived on the steppes from Hungary to Turkestan. The Scythians proper were a wandering people, living in the treeless plains between the Danube and the Volga. They lived in tent-covered wagons, kept herds of horses, cattle and sheep, fought with bows and arrows on horseback, made drinking-cups of the skulls of their enemies, and worshipped (without images) gods like those of the Aryan Greeks. ”

“ These two stories, representing the belief of Herodotus and Aristeas, involve the assumption that the Scythians were comparatively recent emigrants into the territory between the Ister and the Palus Mæotis. But the legends of the Scythians themselves, as well as those of the Pontic Greeks, imply the contrary of this assumption; and describe the Scythians as primitive and indigenous inhabitants of the country. ”

“ The picture of the Scythians even with its tendency to idealization represents the people fairly. They are nomadic, poor, with a free democratic political organization without kings, and they are warriors. Their gods are the sword and the wind. Their customs are primitive. They make war on their neighbors and have special relations with the Greek states 185 on the Bosporus and Olbia and visit those on the south side of the Black Sea.
Lucian in composing his Toxaris probably had in hand a Greek romance with a Scythian background, containing certain historical and ethnographical material. ”

“ As he was expecting the Scythians to attack he did not sleep at all nor even doze a little, but the whole night long he kept calling for soldiers, especially those who were proficient archers, and told them a great deal about the Scythians, thus stirring them up to battle, as it were, and giving them useful hints for the battle which he expected on the morrow, for instance, how to stretch the bow and direct their darts, also when to hold their horses back and when to let them go, and when to dismount even if necessary. ”

“ These nomads were the genuine Scythians, possessing the marked attributes of the race, and including among their number the regal Scythians, [456] —hordes so much more populous and more effective in war than the rest, as to maintain undisputed ascendency, and to account all other Scythians no better than their slaves. It was to these that the Scythian kings belonged, by whom the religious and political unity of the name was maintained,—each horde having its separate chief, and to a certain extent separate worship and customs. ”

“ For so Herodotus tells us expressly in another place how a vast army of Scythians was put to flight in a panic terror by the braying of an ass. From hence it is conjectured by certain profound philologers, that the great awe and reverence paid to a true critic by the writers of Britain have been derived to us from those our Scythian ancestors. ”

“ The peaks of the Todas are venerated by the Todas, as they were by the Celto-Scythians. The single stone in the sacred lactarium of the former, was the most conspicuous instrument of superstition in the Druidical or Scythic religion. Captain Congreve asserts that the Toda faith is Scythicism, because they sacrifice female children, bulls, calves, and buffaloes, as the Scythians did horses; that they adore the sun (what old barbarians did not?) ”

“ Of the nations, the Celts and Scythians wear their hair long, but do not deck themselves. The bushy hair of the barbarian has something fearful in it; and its auburn (ξανθόν) colour threatens war, the hue being somewhat akin to blood. Both these barbarian races hate luxury. As clear witnesses will be produced by the German, the Rhine; [655] and by the Scythian, the waggon. Sometimes the Scythian despises even the waggon: its size seems sumptuousness to the barbarian; and leaving its luxurious ease, the Scythian man leads a frugal life. ”

“ The Scythians for the space of twenty-eight years were masters of the Upper Asia, namely, the two Armenias, Cappadocia, Pontus, Colchis, and Iberia; during which time they spread desolation wherever they came. The Medes had no way of getting rid of them, but by a dangerous stratagem. Under pretence of cultivating and strengthening the alliance they had made together, they invited the greatest part of them to a general feast, which was made in every family. Each master of the feast made his guests drunk, and in that condition were the Scythians massacred. ”

“ And, first of all, they cut off a tract of country from the rest of Scythia by digging a broad dyke from the Tauric mountains to the vast lake of the Maeotis. Afterwards, when the Scythians tried to force an entrance, they marched out and engaged them. Many battles were fought, and the Scythians gained no advantage, until at last one of them thus addressed the remainder: "What are we doing, Scythians? We are fighting our slaves, diminishing our own number when we fall, and the number of those that belong to us when they fall by our hands. ”

“ When they had reached Palestine, Psammetichus, the king of Egypt, came to meet them, and by presents and entreaties induced them to come no further. They returned and came to Ascalon. The greater part of the Scythians passed without doing any harm, but the camp-followers plundered the shrine of Aphrodite Urania. These the goddess punished with a loss of their manhood, and not them only but their descendants after them. For 28 years the Scythians were masters in Asia, and overturned everything in their arrogance and contempt. ”

“ On learning this, the Scythians were far too gentlemanly to continue the strife, and, little by little, they established the most friendly relations with the Amazons. These ladies, however, objected to go to the Scythians’ homes, for, as they pertinently put it, “We never could live with the women of your county, because we have not the same customs with them. We shoot with the bow, throw the javelin, and ride on horseback, and have never learnt the employments of women. ”

“ Scythia was a land totally unknown to the Persians, and strange tales were told in after years of the adventures of the King and his army. The Scythians were a nomad people, and they believed themselves to be invincible. When they heard that Darius was in their land with the intention of conquering it, they "planned not to fight a pitched battle openly, but to retire before the Persians and to drive away their cattle from before them, choking up with earth the wells and the springs of water by which they passed and destroying the grass from off the ground." ”

“ The remainder of the Scythians sailed round Thessaly and Greece to pillage all the country, and as they were not strong enough to attack the towns which had fortified themselves, and provided for their own security, they carried off all the men that they found in the open country. ”

“ After their victory over Cyaxares, the Scythians conquered and wasted the whole of western Asia, and ruled twenty-eight years, till at last they were made drunk and slain by Cyaxares at a banquet (cf. another story about Cyaxares and a Scythian host in Herod, i. 73) . As we possess scarcely any contemporary documents it is impossible to find out the real facts. ”

“ An immense horde of Scythians, in the rudest stage of savagery, without pity or regard for class, sex, age, or condition, with intense contempt for and hatred of those arts of refinement which they were incapable of appreciating, broke loose from their primitive home and, sweeping down through Asia, overwhelming cities and empires, threatened to destroy every vestige of literature, order, and religion and to turn the world back to chaos and anarchy. ”

“ For the Scythians, living in solitary and desert places, had but little communication for many ages with the rest of mankind, and did not obtain their system of morality from other quarters. From the Greeks and Romans, who were the most enlightened, they derived no moral benefit. ”

“ It is observed of the Scythians, their ancestors, who, as I have mentioned, came down upon Asia in the Median times, that they were a frightful set of men. "The persons of the Scythians," says a living historian, [7] "naturally unsightly, were rendered hideous by indolent habits, only occasionally interrupted by violent exertions ”

“ Among the scythians, they have a ceremony of drinking a drop of each other's blood out of a cup, as a cement of friendship; after which, those who have partaken of it will hesitate at no hardship in the service of each other, and will meet death itself with alacrity, in mutual defence. ”

“ That the Scythians disappeared from history, when history itself was at its lowest ebb, is no proof that they exist nowhere now. Their language, specimens of which are given by Herodotus, undoubtedly belongs to that of the Indo-Germanic family. ”

“ Now the Amazons at midday used to scatter abroad either one by one or by two together, dispersing to a distance from one another to ease themselves; and the Scythians also having perceived this did the same thing: and one of the Scythians came near to one of those Amazons who were apart by themselves, and she did not repulse him but allowed him to lie with her: ”

“ The war having been supported, for a while, with success pretty nearly equal on both sides, the Scythians were advised to change their manner of carrying it on, remembering that it was not with enemies, but with their own Slaves, that they had to fight; that they were to conquer by dint, not of arms, but of their right as Masters; that instead of weapons, they ought to bring lashes into the field, and, setting iron aside, to supply themselves with rods, scourges, and such like instruments of slavish fear. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Greeks mention these barbarians as the Scythians, and divided them into three classes. The agricultural Scythians dwelt in the black earth belt, near the Dnieper; the nomad Scythians lived at some distance to the east of them, and the royal Scythians occupied the land around the Sea of Azof.
Learned men of Russia have made many excavations on the spots where the Greek settlements once stood, during the past century. They have been rewarded by finding many works of art, illustrating the mode of living (p. 024) of the Scythians. ”

“ Herodotus in the fifth century wrote much about these so-called Scythians, whom he divides into the agricultural Scythians, presumably of the Black Lands, and the nomad Scythians, of the Barren Steppes. His extravagant and fanciful pictures of those barbarians have long been studied by the curious; but light from an unexpected source has been thrown upon the subject, and Greek genius has rescued for us the type of humanity first known in Russia. ”

“ Heroes rarely assembled convivially, without bringing affairs of consequence into discourse, or deliberating upon those that regarded either present events or future contingencies. The Scythians, while at meat, used to make the strings of their bows resound, lest their warlike virtues might be enfeebled or lost in the season of pleasure. ”

“ As he observed that the Scythians with their spoils and captives were rejoining the main Scythian body on the bank of the Eurus (?) , he divided his army in two and bidding both divisions raise the war-cry he attacked the barbarians amidst loud shouts and clamour. As the conflict grew fierce, the majority of the Scythians were slain but many saved their lives by running away. Then Taticius gathered up all the booty and returned victorious to Philippopolis. There he quartered his whole army and then meditated from what direction and in what manner he could best attack the barbarians again. ”

“ Such were the most striking customs of the Scythian people, or at any rate of the Scythians of Herodotus, who were the dominant race over a large portion of the Steppe country. Coarse and repulsive in their appearance, fierce in their tempers, savage in their habits, not individually very brave, but powerful by their numbers, and by a mode of warfare which was difficult to meet, and in which long use had given them great expertness, they were an enemy who might well strike alarm even into a nation so strong and warlike as the Medes. ”

“ If you will not accept peace with him, the vultures will eat your corpses." This is what Tatranes; said to the Scythians. Now the Emperor was planning the capture of the numerous horses of the Scythians which were grazing in the plain, for the Scythians continued ravaging our territory both by day and by night, so he surnmoned Monastras, and Uzas and enjoined them to take some picked horsemen skirt round the rear of the Scythians and at dawn enter & plain and carry off all the horses and other cattle together with their herdsmen, and he exhorted them to be without fear. ”