1. 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. But when the Scythians had been away from their homes for eight and twenty years and returned to their country after so long a time, there awaited them another task as hard as their Median war. They found themselves encountered by a great host; for their husbands being now long away, the Scythian women consorted with their slaves.
2. Now the Scythians blind all their slaves, by reason of the milk whereof they drink; and this is the way of their getting it: taking pipes of bone very like flutes, they thrust these into the secret parts of the mares and blow into them, some blowing and others milking. By what they say, their reason for so doing is that the blowing makes the mare’s veins to swell and her udder to be let down. When milking is done, they pour the milk into deep wooden buckets, and make their slaves to stand about the buckets and shake the milk; the surface part of it they draw off, and this they most value; what lies at the bottom is less esteemed. It is for this cause that the Scythians blind all prisoners whom they take; for they are not tillers of the soil, but wandering graziers.
3. So it came about that a younger race grew up, born of these slaves and the women; and when the youths learnt of their lineage, they came out to do battle with the Scythians in their return from Media. First they barred the way to their country by digging a wide trench from the Tauric mountains to the broadest part of the Maeetian lake; and presently when the Scythians tried to force a passage they encamped over against them and met them in battle. 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; and taking this to heart they will not abide our attack.”
4. This the Scythians heard, and acted thereon; and their enemies, amazed by what they saw, had no more thought of fighting, but fled. Thus the Scythians ruled Asia and were driven out again by the Medes, and by such means they won their return to their own land. Desiring to punish them for what they did, Darius mustered an army against them.
5. The Scythians say that their nation is the youngest in all the world, and that it came into being on this wise. There appeared in this country, being then desert, a man whose name was Targitaus. His parents, they say—for my part I do not believe the tale, but it is told—were Zeus and a daughter of the river Borysthenes. Such (it is said) was Targitaus’ lineage; and he had three sons, Lipoxaïs, Arpoxaïs, and Colaxaïs, youngest of the three. In the time of their rule (so the story goes) there fell down from the sky into Scythia certain implements, all of gold, namely, a plough, a yoke, a sword, and a flask. The eldest of them, seeing this, came near with intent to take them; but the gold began to burn as he came, and he ceased from his essay; then the second approached, and the gold did again as before; when these two had been driven away by the burning of the gold, last came the youngest brother, and the burning was quenched at his approach; so he took the gold to his own house. At this his older brothers saw how matters stood, and made over the whole royal power to the youngest.
6. Lipoxaïs, it is said, was the father of the Scythian clan called Auchatae; Arpoxaïs, the second brother, of those called Katiari and Traspians; the youngest, who was king, of those called Paralatae. All these together bear the name of Skoloti, after their king; “Scythians” is a name given them by Greeks.
7. 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. Because of the great size of the country, the lordships established by Colaxaïs for his sons were three, one of which, where they keep the gold, was the greatest. Above and northward of the neighbours of their country none (they say) can see or travel further, by reason of showers of feathers; for earth and sky are overspread by these, and it is this which hinders sight.
8. Such is the Scythians’ account of themselves and the country north of them. But the story told by the Greeks who dwell in Pontus is as follows. Heracles, driving the kine of Geryones, came to this land, which was then desert, but is now inhabited by the Scythians. Geryones dwelt westward of the Pontus, being settled in the island called by the Greeks Erythea, on the shore of the Ocean near Gadira, outside the pillars of Heracles. As for the Ocean, the Greeks say that it flows from the sun’s rising round the whole world, but they cannot prove that this is so. Heracles came thence to the country now called Scythia, where, meeting with wintry and frosty weather, he drew his lion’s skin over him and fell asleep, and while he slept his mares, that were grazing yoked to the chariot, were marvellously spirited away.
9. When Heracles awoke he searched for them, visiting every part of the country, till at last he came to the land called the Woodland, and there he found in a cave a creature of double form that was half damsel and half serpent; above the buttocks she was a woman, below them a snake. When he saw her he was astonished, and asked her if she had anywhere seen his mares straying; she said that she had them, and would not restore them to him before he had intercourse with her; which Heracles did, in hope of this reward. But though he was fain to take the horses and depart, she delayed to restore them, that she might have Heracles with her for as long as might be; at last she gave them back, saying to him, “These mares came, and I kept them safe here for you, and you have paid me for keeping them, for I have three sons by you. Do you now tell me what I must do when they are grown big: shall I make them to dwell here (for I am the queen of this country), or shall I send them away to you?” Thus she inquired, and then (it is said) Heracles answered her: “When you see the boys grown to man’s estate, act as I bid you and you will do rightly; whichever of them you see bending this bow thus and girding himself in this fashion with this girdle, make him a dweller in this land; but whoever fails to achieve these tasks which I command, send him away out of the country. Thus do and you will yourself have comfort, and my bidding will be done.”
10. So he drew one of his bows (for till then Heracles ever bore two), and showed her the girdle, and delivered to her the bow and the girdle, that had a golden vessel on the end of its clasp; and, having given them, so departed. But she, when the sons born to her were grown men, gave them names, calling one of them Agathyrsus and the next Gelonus and the youngest Scythes; moreover, remembering the charge, she did as she was commanded. Two of her sons, Agathyrsus and Gelonus, not being able to achieve the appointed task, were cast out by their mother and left the country, but Scythes, the youngest, accomplished it and so abode in the land. From Scythes son of Heracles comes the whole line of the kings of Scythia; and it is because of the vessel that the Scythians carry vessels on their girdles to this day. This alone his mother contrived for Scythes. Such is the tale told by the Greek dwellers in Pontus.
11. There is yet another tale, to the tradition whereof I myself do especially incline. It is to this purport: the nomad Scythians inhabiting Asia, being hard pressed in war by the Massagetae, fled away across the river Araxes to the Cimmerian country (for the country which the Scythians now inhabit is said to have belonged of old to the Cimmerians), and the Cimmerians, at the advance of the Scythians, took such counsel as behoved men threatened by a great host. Their opinions were divided; both were strongly held, but that of the princes was the more honourable; for the commonalty deemed that their business was to withdraw themselves and that there was no need to risk their lives for the dust of the earth; but the princes were for fighting to defend their country against the attackers. Neither side would be persuaded by the other, neither the people by the princes nor the princes by the people; the one part planned to depart without fighting and deliver the country to their enemies, but the princes were resolved to lie slain in their own country and not to flee with the people, for they considered how happy their state had been and what ills were like to come upon them if they fled from their native land. Being thus resolved they parted asunder into two equal bands and fought with each other till they were all slain by their own hands; then the commonalty of the Cimmerians buried them by the river Tyras, where their tombs are still to be seen, and having buried them departed out of the land; and the country being empty, the Scythians came and took possession of it.
12. And to this day there are in Scythia Cimmerian walls, and a Cimmerian ferry, and there is a country Cimmeria and a strait named Cimmerian. Moreover, it is clearly seen that the Cimmerians in their flight from the Scythians into Asia did also make a colony on the peninsula where now the Greek city of Sinope has been founded; and it is manifest that the Scythians pursued after them and invaded Media, missing their way; for the Cimmerians ever fled by the way of the coast, and the Scythians pursued with the Caucasus on their right till where they came into the Median land, turning inland on their way. I have now related this other tale, which is told alike by Greeks and foreigners.
13. There is also a story related in a poem by Aristeas son of Caÿstrobius, a man of Proconnesus. This Aristeas, being then possessed by Phoebus, visited the Issedones; beyond these (he said) dwell the one-eyed Arimaspians, beyond whom are the griffins that guard gold, and beyond these again the Hyperboreans, whose territory reaches to the sea. Except the Hyperboreans, all these nations (and first the Arimaspians) ever make war upon their neighbours; the Issedones were pushed from their lands by the Arimaspians, and the Scythians by the Issedones, and the Cimmerians, dwelling by the southern sea, were hard pressed by the Scythians and left their country. Thus neither does Aristeas’ story agree concerning this country with the Scythian account.
14. Whence Aristeas came who wrote this I have already said; I will now tell the story which I heard concerning him at Proconnesus and Cyzicus. It is said that this Aristeas, who was as nobly born as any of his townsmen, went into a fuller’s shop at Proconnesus and there died; the fuller shut his workshop and went away to tell the dead man’s kinsfolk, and the report of Aristeas’ death being now spread about in the city, it was disputed by a man of Cyzicus, who had come from the town of Artace, and said that he had met Aristeas going towards Cyzicus and spoken with him. While he vehemently disputed, the kinsfolk of the dead man had come to the fuller’s shop with all that was needful for burial; but when the house was opened there was no Aristeas there, dead or alive. But in the seventh year after that Aristeas appeared at Proconnesus and made that poem which the Greeks now call the Arimaspeia, after which he vanished once again.
15. Such is the tale told in these two towns. But this, I know, befell the Metapontines in Italy, two hundred and forty years after the second disappearance of Aristeas, as reckoning made at Proconnesus and Metapontium shows me: Aristeas, so the Metapontines say, appeared in their country and bade them set up an altar to Apollo, and set beside it a statue bearing the name of Aristeas the Proconnesian; for, he said, Apollo had come to their country alone of all Italiot lands, and he himself—who was now Aristeas, but then when he followed the god had been a crow—had come with him. Having said this, he vanished away. The Metapontines, so they say, sent to Delphi and inquired of the god what the vision of the man might be; and the Pythian priestess bade them obey the vision, saying that their fortune would be the better; having received which answer they did as commanded. And now there stands beside the very image of Apollo a statue bearing the name of Aristeas; a grove of bay-trees surrounds it; the image is set in the market-place. Suffice it then that I have said thus much of Aristeas.
16. As for the land of which my history has begun to speak, no one exactly knows what lies northward of it; for I can learn from none who claims to know as an eyewitness. For even Aristeas, of whom I lately made mention—even he did not claim to have gone beyond the Issedones, no, not even in his poems; but he spoke of what lay northward by hearsay; saying that the Issedones had so told him. But as far as we have been able to hear an exact report of the farthest lands, all shall be set forth.
17. Northward of the port of the Borysthenites, which lies midway in the coastline of all Scythia, the first inhabitants are the Callippidae, who are Scythian Greeks; and beyond them another tribe called Alazones; these and the Callippidae, though in other matters they live like the Scythians, sow and eat com, and onions, garlic, lentils, and millet. Above the Alazones dwell Scythian tillers of the land, who sow corn not for eating but for selling; north of these, the Neuri; to the north of the Neuri the land is uninhabited so far as we know.
18. These are the tribes by the river Hypanis, westwards of the Borysthenes. 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; and beyond them is true desert, wherein no nation of men dwells, as far as we know.
19. But to the east of these farming Scythians, cross the river Panticapes, and you are in the land of nomad Scythians, who sow nothing, nor plough; and all these lands except the Woodlands are bare of trees. These nomads inhabit to the eastward a country that stretches fourteen days’ journey to the river Gerrus.
20. 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.
21. Across the Tanais it is no longer Scythia; the first of the divisions belongs to the Sauromatae, whose country begins at the inner end of the Maeetian lake and stretches fifteen days’ journey to the north, and is all bare of both forest and garden trees. Above these in the second division dwell the Budini, inhabiting a country thickly overgrown with trees of all kinds.
22. Northward of the Budini the land is uninhabited for seven days’ journey; after this desert, and somewhat more towards the east wind, dwell the Thyssagetae, a numerous and a separate nation, living by the chase. Adjoining these and in the same country dwell the people called Iyrkae; these also live by the chase, in such manner as I will show. The hunter climbs a tree, and there sits ambushed; for trees grow thick all over the land; and each man has his horse at hand, trained to couch upon its belly for lowliness’ sake, and his dog; and when he marks the quarry from the tree, he shoots with the bow and mounts his horse and pursues after it, and the dog follows closely after. Beyond these and somewhat towards the east dwell Scythians again, who revolted from the Royal Scythians and so came to this country.
23. As far as the country of these Scythians all the aforesaid land is level and its soil is deep; but thereafter it is stony and rough. After a long passage through this rough country, there are men inhabiting the foothills of high mountains, who are said to be all bald from their birth (male and female alike) and snub-nosed and with long beards; they speak a tongue of their own, and wear Scythian raiment, and their fare comes from trees. The tree wherefrom they live is called “Pontic”; it is about the size of a fig-tree, and bears a fruit as big as a bean, with a stone in it. When this fruit is ripe, they strain it through cloth, and a thick black liquid flows from it, which they call “aschu”; they lick this up or mix it with milk for drinking, and of the thickest of the lees of it they make cakes, and eat them. For they have but few of smaller cattle, the pasture in their land not being good. They dwell each man under a tree, covering it in winter with a white felt cloth, but using no felt in summer. These people are wronged by no man, for they are said to be sacred; nor have they any weapon of war. These are they who judge in the quarrels between their neighbours; moreover, whatever banished man has taken refuge with them is wronged by none. They are called Argippeans.
24. Now as far as the land of these bald men we have full knowledge of the country and the nations on the hither side of them; for some of the Scythians make their way to them, from whom it is easy to get knowledge, and from some too of the Greeks from the Borysthenes port and the other ports of Pontus; such Scythians as visit them do their business with seven interpreters and in seven languages.
25. 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. These bald men say (but for my part I believe them not) that the mountains are inhabited by men with goats’ feet; and that beyond these again are men who sleep for six months of the twelve. This I cannot at all accept for true. But the country east of the bald-heads is known for certain to be inhabited by the Issedones; howbeit, of what lies northward either of the bald-heads or the Issedones we have no knowledge, save what comes from the report of these latter.
26. It is said to be the custom of the Issedones, that whenever a man’s father dies, all the nearest of kin bring beasts of the flock, and having killed these and cut up the flesh they cut up also the dead father of their host, and set out all the flesh mingled together for a feast. As for his head, they strip it bare and cleanse and gild it, and keep it for a sacred relic, whereto they offer yearly solemn sacrifice. Every son does so by his father, even as the Greeks in their festivals in honour of the dead. For the rest, these also are said to be a law-abiding people; and the women have equal power with the men.
27. Of these then also we have knowledge; but for what is northward of them, it is from the Issedones that the tale comes of the one-eyed men and the griffins that guard gold; this is told by the Scythians, who have heard it from them; and we again have taken it for true from the Scythians, and call these people by the Scythian name, Arimaspians; for in the Scythian tongue arima is one, and spou is the eye.
28. All this aforementioned country is exceeding cold; for eight months of every year there is frost unbearable, and in these you shall not make mud by pouring out water but by lighting a fire; the sea freezes, and all the Cimmerian Bosporus; and the Scythians dwelling this side of the fosse lead armies over the ice, and drive their wains across to the land of the Sindi. So it is ever winter for eight months, and it is cold in that country for the four that remain. 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; yet in other lands, whereas asses and mules can endure frost, horses that stand in it are frostbitten.
29. And to my thinking it is for this cause that the hornless kind of oxen grows no horns in Scythia. There is a verse of Homer in the Odyssey that witnesses to my judgment; it is this:
“Libya, the land where lambs are born with horns on their foreheads,”
wherein it is rightly signified, that in hot countries the horns grow quickly, whereas in very cold countries beasts grow horns hardly, or not at all.
30. In Scythia, then, this happens because of the cold. But I hold it strange (for it was ever the way of my history to seek after subsidiary matters) that in the whole of Elis no mules can be begotten, albeit neither is the country cold nor is there any manifest cause. The Eleans themselves say that it is by reason of a curse that mules cannot be begotten among them; but whenever the season is at hand for the mares to conceive, they drive them away into the countries of their neighbours, and then send the asses to them in the neighbouring land, till the mares be pregnant; and then they drive them home again.
31. But as touching the feathers whereof the Scythians say that the air is full, insomuch that none can see or traverse the land beyond, I hold this opinion. Northward of that country snow falls continually, though less in summer than in winter, as is to be expected. 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. And, as I think, even they tell nothing; for were it not so, then the Scythians too would have told, even as they tell of the one-eyed men. But Hesiod speaks of Hyperboreans, and Homer too in his poem The Heroes’ Sons, if that be truly the work of Homer.
33. But the Delians tell much more concerning them than do any others. They say that offerings wrapt in wheat-straw are brought from the Hyperboreans to Scythia; when they have passed Scythia, each nation in turn receives them from its neighbours till they are carried to the Adriatic sea, which is the most westerly limit of their journey; thence they are brought on to the south, the people of Dodona being the first Greeks to receive them. From Dodona they come down to the Melian gulf, and are carried across to Euboea, and city sends them on to city till they come to Carystus; after this, Andros is left out of their journey, for it is Carystians who carry them to Tenos, and Tenians to Delos. Thus (they say) these offerings come to Delos. But on the first journey the Hyperboreans sent two maidens bearing the offerings, to whom the Delians give the names Hyperoche and Laodice, sending with them for safe conduct five men of their people as escort, those who are now called Perpherees and greatly honoured at Delos. But when the Hyperboreans found that those whom they sent never returned, they were very ill content that it should ever be their fate not to receive their messengers back; wherefore they carry the offerings, wrapt in wheat-straw, to their borders, and charge their neighbours to send them on from their own country to the next; and the offerings, it is said, come by this conveyance to Delos. I can say of my own knowledge that there is a custom like these offerings, namely, that when the Thracian and Paeonian women sacrifice to the Royal Artemis, they have wheat-straw with them while they sacrifice.
34. This I know that they do. The Delian girls and boys cut their hair in honour of these Hyperborean maidens, who died at Delos; the girls before their marriage cut off a tress and lay it on the tomb, wound about a spindle; this tomb is at the foot of an olive-tree, on the left hand of the entrance of the temple of Artemis; the Delian boys twine some of their hair round a green stalk, and they likewise lay it on the tomb.
35. Thus then are these maidens honoured by the inhabitants of Delos, These same Delians relate that two virgins, Arge and Opis, came from the Hyperboreans by way of the peoples aforesaid to Delos, yet earlier than the coming of Hyperoche and Laodice; these latter came to bring to Ilithyia the tribute whereto they had bound themselves for ease of child-bearing; but Arge and Opis, they say, came with the gods themselves, and received honours of their own from the Delians. For the women collected gifts for them, calling upon their names in the hymn made for them by Olen a man of Lycia; it was from Delos that the islanders and Ionians learnt to sing hymns to Opis and Arge, calling upon their names and collecting gifts (this Olen after his coming from Lycia made also the other and ancient hymns that are sung at Delos). Further they say that when the thighbones are burnt in sacrifice on the altar, the ashes of them are all used for casting on the burial-place of Opis and Arge; which burial-place is behind the temple of Artemis, looking eastwards, nearest to the refectory of the people of Ceos.
36. Thus far have I spoken of the Hyperboreans, and let it suffice; for I do not tell the story of that Abaris, alleged to be a Hyperborean, who carried the arrow over the whole world, fasting the while. But if there be men beyond the north wind, then there are others beyond the south. And I laugh to see how many have ere now drawn maps of the world, not one of them showing the matter reasonably; for they draw the world as round as if fashioned by compasses, encircled by the river of Ocean, and Asia and Europe of a like bigness. For myself, I will in a few words show the extent of the two, and how each should be drawn.
37. The land where the Persians dwell reaches to the southern sea, that sea which is called Red; beyond these to the north are the Medes, and beyond the Medes the Saspires, and beyond the Saspires the Colchians, whose country reaches to the northern sea into which issues the river Phasis; so these four nations dwell between the one sea and the other.
38. But westwards of this region two peninsulas stretch out from it into the sea, which I will now describe. On the north side one of the peninsulas begins at the Phasis and stretches seaward along the Pontus and the Hellespont, as far as Sigeum in the Troad; on the south side the same peninsula has a seacoast beginning at the Myriandric gulf that is near Phoenice, and stretching seaward as far as the Triopian headland. On this peninsula dwell thirty nations.
39. This is the first peninsula. But the second, beginning with Persia, stretches to the Red Sea, being the Persian land, and next the neighbouring country of Assyria, and after Assyria, Arabia; this peninsula ends (yet not truly but only by common consent) at the Arabian Gulf, whereunto Darius brought a canal from the Nile. Now from the Persian country to Phoenice there is a wide and great tract of land; and from Phoenice this peninsula runs beside our sea by the way of the Syrian Palestine and Egypt, which is at the end of it; in this peninsula there are but three nations.
40. So much for the parts of Asia west of the Persians. But what is beyond the Persians, and Medes, and Saspires, and Colchians, eastward and toward the rising sun, this is bounded on the one hand by the Red Sea, and to the north by the Caspian Sea, and the river Araxes, that flows towards the sun’s rising. As far as India, Asia is an inhabited land; but thereafter all to the east is desert, nor can any man say what kind of land is there.
41. Such is Asia and such its extent. But Libya is on this second peninsula; for Libya comes next after Egypt. The Egyptian part of this peninsula is narrow; for from our sea to the Red Sea it is a distance of an hundred thousand fathoms, that is, a thousand furlongs; but after this narrow part the peninsula which is called Libya is very broad.
42. I wonder, then, at those who have mapped out and divided the world into Libya, Asia, and Europe; for the difference between them is great, seeing that in length Europe stretches along both the others together, and it appears to me to be beyond all comparison broader. For Libya shows clearly that it is encompassed by the sea, save only where it borders on Asia; and this was proved first (as far as we know) by Necos king of Egypt. He, when he had made an end of digging the canal which leads from the Nile to the Arabian Gulf, sent Phoenicians in ships, charging them to sail on their return voyage past the Pillars of Heracles till they should come into the northern sea and so to Egypt. So the Phoenicians set out from the Red Sea and sailed the southern sea; whenever autumn came they would put in and sow the land, to whatever part of Libya they might come, and there await the harvest; then, having gathered in the crop, they sailed on, so that after two years had passed, it was in the third that they rounded the Pillars of Heracles and came to Egypt. There they said (what some may believe, though I do not) that in sailing round Libya they had the sun on their right hand.
43. Thus the first knowledge of Libya was gained. The next story is that of the Carchedonians: for as for Sataspes son of Teaspes, an Achaemenid, he did not sail round Libya, though he was sent for that end; but he feared the length and the loneliness of the voyage and so returned back without accomplishing the task laid upon him by his mother. For he had raped the virgin daughter of Zopyrus son of Megabyzus; and when on this charge he was to be impaled by King Xerxes, Sataspes’ mother, who was Darius’ sister, begged for his life, saying that she would lay a heavier punishment on him than did Xerxes; for he should be compelled to sail round Libya, till he completed his voyage and came to the Arabian Gulf. Xerxes agreeing to this, Sataspes went to Egypt, where he received a ship and a crew from the Egyptians, and sailed past the Pillars of Heracles. Having sailed out beyond them, and rounded the Libyan promontory called Solois, he sailed southward; but when he had been many months sailing far over the sea, and ever there was more before him, he turned back and made sail for Egypt. Thence coming to Xerxes, he told in his story how when he was farthest distant he sailed by a country of little men, who wore palm-leaf raiment; these, whenever he and his men put in to land with their ship, would ever leave their towns and flee to the hills; he and his men did no wrong when they landed, and took naught from the people but what they needed for eating. As to his not sailing wholly round Libya, the reason (he said) was that the ship could move no farther, but was stayed. But Xerxes did not believe that Sataspes spoke truth, and as the task appointed was unfulfilled he impaled him, punishing him on the charge first brought against him. This Sataspes had an eunuch, who as soon as he heard of his master’s death escaped to Samos, with a great store of wealth, of which a man of Samos possessed himself. I know the man’s name but of set purpose forget it.
44. But as to Asia, most of it was discovered by Darius. There is a river Indus, which of all rivers comes second in producing crocodiles. Darius, desiring to know where this Indus issues into the sea, sent ships manned by Scylax, a man of Caryanda, and others in whose word he trusted; these set out from the city Caspatyrus and the Pactyic country, and sailed down the river towards the east and the sunrise till they came to the sea; and voyaging over the sea westwards, they came in the thirtieth month to that place whence the Egyptian king sent the Phoenicians afore-mentioned to sail round Libya. After this circumnavigation Darius subdued the Indians and made use of this sea. Thus was it discovered that Asia, saving the parts towards the rising sun, was in other respects like Libya.
45. But of Europe it is plain that none have obtained knowledge of its eastern or its northern parts so as to say if it is encompassed by seas; its length is known to be enough to stretch along both Asia and Libya. Nor can I guess for what reason the earth, which is one, has three names, all of women, and why the boundary lines set for it are the Egyptian river Nile and the Colchian river Phasis (though some say that the Maeetian river Tanaïs and the Cimmerian Ferries are boundaries); nor can I learn the names of those who divided the world, or whence they got the names which they gave. For Libya is said by most Greeks to be called after a native woman of that name, and Asia after the wife of Prometheus; yet the Lydians claim a share in the latter name, saying that Asia was not called after Prometheus’ wife Asia, but after Asies, the son of Cotys, who was the son of Manes, and that from him the Asiad clan at Sardis also takes its name. But as for Europe, no men have any knowledge whether it be surrounded or not by seas, nor whence it took its name, nor is it clear who gave the name, unless we are to say that the land took its name from the Tyrian Europa, having been (as it would seem) till then nameless like the others. But it is plain that this woman was of Asiatic birth, and never came to this land which the Greeks now call Europe, but only from Phoenice to Crete and from Crete to Lycia. Thus far have I spoken of these matters, and let it suffice; we will use the names by custom established.
46. Nowhere are men seen so dull-witted (I say not this of the Scythian nation) as in the lands by the Euxine Pontus, against which Darius led his army. For we cannot show that any nation within the region of the Pontus has aught of cleverness, nor do we know (not reckoning the Scythian nation and Anacharsis) of any notable man born there. But the Scythian race has in that matter which of all human affairs is of greatest import made the cleverest discovery that we know; I praise not the Scythians in all respects, but in this greatest matter they have so devised that none who attacks them can escape, and none can catch them if they desire not to be found. For when men have no stablished cities or fortresses, but all are house-bearers and mounted archers, living not by tilling the soil but by cattle-rearing and carrying their dwellings on waggons, how should these not be invincible and unapproachable?
47. This invention they have made in a land which suits their purpose and has rivers which are their allies; for their country is level and grassy and well watered and rivers run through it not much less in number than the canals of Egypt. As many of them as are famous and can be entered from the sea, these I will name. . . . There is the Ister, that has five mouths, and next, the Tyras, and Hypanis, and Borysthenes, and Panticapes, and Hypacuris, and Gerrhus, and Tanais. Their courses are as I will show.
48. The Ister, the greatest of all rivers known to us, flows with ever the same volume in summer and winter; it is the farthest westward of all the Scythian rivers, and the reason of its greatness is as follows: Many other rivers are its tributaries, but these are those that make it great, five flowing through the Scythian country: the river called by Scythians Porata and by Greeks Pyretus, and besides this the Tiarantus, the Ararus, the Naparis, and the Ordessus. The first-named of these rivers is a great stream flowing eastwards and uniting its waters with the Ister, the second, the Tiarantus, is more to the west and smaller; the Ararus, Naparis, and Ordessus flow between these two and pour their waters into the Ister.
49. These are the native-born Scythian rivers that help to swell it; but the river Maris, which commingles with the Ister, flows from the Agathyrsi; the Atlas, Auras, and Tibisis, three other great rivers that pour into it, flow northward from the heights of Haemus. The Athrys, the Noes, and the Artanes issue into the Ister from the country of the Crobyzi in Thrace; the river Cius, which cuts through the midst of Haemus, from the Paeonians and the mountain range of Rhodope. The river Angrus flows northward from Illyria into the Triballic plain and the river Brongus, and the Brongus into the Ister, which so receives these two great rivers into itself. The Carpis and another river called Alpis also flow northward, from the country north of the Ombrici, to issue into it; for the Ister traverses the whole of Europe, rising among the Celts who, save only the Cynetes, are the most westerly dwellers in Europe, and flowing thus clean across Europe it issues forth along the borders of Scythia.
50. Seeing, then, that these aforesaid rivers, and many others too, are its tributaries, the Ister becomes the greatest of all rivers; stream for stream, indeed, the Nile has a greater volume, for no river or spring joins it to swell its volume of water. But the Ister is ever of the same height in summer and winter, whereof I think this to be the reason. In winter it is of its customary size, or only a little greater than is natural to it, for in that country in winter there is very little rain, but snow everywhere. But in the summer the abundant snow which has fallen in winter melts and pours from all sides into the Ister; so this snow pours into the river and helps to swell it with much violent rain besides, the summer being the season of rain. And in the same degree as the sun draws to itself more water in summer than in winter, the water that commingles with the Ister is many times more abundant in summer than it is in winter; these opposites keep the balance true, so that the volume of the river appears ever the same.
51. One of the rivers of the Scythians, then, is the Ister. The next is the Tyras; this comes from the north, flowing at first out of a great lake, which is the boundary between the Scythian and the Neurian countries; at the mouth of the river there is a settlement of Greeks, who are called Tyritae.
52. The third river is the Hypanis; this comes from Scythia, flowing out of a great lake, round which wild white horses graze. This lake is truly called the mother of the Hypanis. Here, then, the Hypanis rises; for five days’ journey its waters are shallow and still sweet; after that for four days’ journey seaward it is wondrous bitter, for a spring issues into it which is so bitter that although its volume is small its admixture taints the Hypanis, one of the few great rivers of the world. This spring is on the borderland between the farming Scythians and the Ala-zones; the name of it and of the place whence it flows is in Scythian Exampaeus, in the Greek tongue Sacred Ways. The Tyras and the Hypanis draw their courses near together in the Alazones’ country; after that they flow divergent, making the intervening space wider.
53. The fourth is the river Borysthenes. This is the next greatest of them after the Ister, and the most serviceable, according to our judgment, not only of the Scythian rivers but of all, except the Egyptian Nile, with which no other river can be compared. But of the rest the Borysthenes is the most serviceable; it provides for beasts the fairest pasture lands and best nurturing, and the fish in it are beyond all in their excellence and their abundance. Its water is most sweet to drink, flowing with a clear current, whereas the other rivers are turbid. There is excellent tilth on its banks, and very rich grass where the land is not sown; and self-formed crusts of salt abound at its mouth; it provides great spineless fish, called sturgeons, for the salting, and many other wondrous things besides. Its course is from the north, and there is knowledge of it as far as the Gerrhan land, that is, for forty days’ voyage; beyond that, no man can say through what nations it flows; but it is plain that it flows through desert country to the land of the farming Scythians, who dwell beside it for a ten days’ voyage. This is the only river, besides the Nile, whereof I cannot say what is the source; nor, I think, can any Greek. When the stream of the Borysthenes comes near the sea, the Hypanis mingles with it, issuing into the same marsh; the land between these rivers, where the land projects like a ship’s beak, is called Hippolaus’ promontory; a temple of Demeter stands there. The settlement of the Borystheneitae is beyond the temple, on the Hypanis.
54. This is the knowledge that comes to us from these rivers. After these there is a fifth river called Panticapas; this also flows from the north out of a lake, and the land between it and the Borysthenes is inhabited by the farming Scythians; it issues into the Woodland country; which having passed it mingles with the Borysthenes.
55. The sixth is the river Hypacuris, which rises from a lake, and flowing through the midst of the nomad Scythians issues out near the city of Carcine, bordering on its right the Woodland and the region called the Racecourse of Achilles.
56. The seventh river, the Gerrhus, parts from the Borysthenes at about the place which is the end of our knowledge of that river; at this place it parts, and has the same name as the place itself, Gerrhus; then in its course to the sea it divides the country of the Nomads and the country of the Royal Scythians, and issues into the Hypacuris.
57. The eighth is the river Tanaïs; this in its upper course begins by flowing out of a great lake, and enters a yet greater lake called the Maeetian, which divides the Royal Scythians from the Sauromatae; another river, called Hyrgis, is a tributary of this Tanaïs.
58. These are the rivers of name with which the Scythians are provided. For the rearing of cattle the grass growing in Scythia is the most bile-making of all pastures known to us; it can be judged by the opening of the bodies of the cattle that this is so.
59. The Scythians then have what most concerns them ready to hand. It remains now to show the customs which are established among them. The only gods whom they propitiate by worship are these: Hestia in especial, and secondly Zeus and Earth, whom they deem to be the wife of Zeus; after these, Apollo, and the Heavenly Aphrodite, and Heracles, and Ares. All the Scythians worship these as gods; the Scythians called Royal sacrifice also to Poseidon. In the Scythian tongue Hestia is called Tahiti: Zeus (in my judgment most rightly so called) Papaeus; Earth is Api, Apollo Goetosyrus, the Heavenly Aphrodite Argimpasa, and Poseidon Thagimasadas. It is their practice to make images and altars and shrines for Ares, but for no other god.
60. In all their sacred services alike they follow the same method of sacrifice; this is how it is offered. 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. Then, throwing a noose round the beast’s neck, he thrusts in a stick and twists it and so strangles the victim, lighting no fire nor offering the firstfruits, nor pouring any libation; and having strangled and flayed the beast, he sets about cooking it.
61. Now the Scythian land is wondrous bare of wood: so this is their device for cooking the flesh. When they have flayed the victims, they strip the flesh from the bones and throw it into the cauldrons of the country, if they have such: these are most like to Lesbian bowls, save that they are much bigger; into these then they throw the flesh, and cook it by lighting a fire beneath with the bones of the victims. 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.
62. Such is their way of sacrificing to all other gods and such are the beasts offered; but their sacrifices to Ares are on this wise. Every district in each of the governments has in it a structure sacred to Ares, to wit, a pile of fagots of sticks three furlongs broad and long, but of a less height, on the top of which there is a flattened four-sided surface; three of its sides are sheer, but the fourth can be ascended. In every year an hundred and fifty waggon-loads of sticks are heaped upon this; for the storms of winter ever make it sink down. 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; then they carry the blood up on to the pile of sticks and pour it on the scimitar. So they carry the blood aloft, but below by the sacred pile they cut off all the slain men’s right arms and hands and throw these into the air, and presently depart when they have sacrificed the rest of the victims; the arm lies where it has fallen, and the body apart from it.
63. These then are their established fashions of sacrifice; but of swine these Scythians make no offerings; nor are they willing for the most part to rear them in their country.
64. As to war, these are their customs. A Scythian drinks of the blood of the first man whom he has overthrown. He carries to his king the heads of all whom he has slain in the battle; for he receives a share of the booty taken if he bring a head, but not otherwise. He scalps the head by making a cut round it by the ears, then grasping the scalp and shaking the head off. 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; it would seem that the human skin is thick and shining, of all skins, one may say, the brightest and whitest. There are many too that flay the skin from the whole body and carry it about on horseback stretched on a wooden frame.
65. The heads themselves, not of all but of their bitterest foes, they treat in this wise. Each saws off all the part beneath the eyebrows, and cleanses the rest. If he be a poor man, then he does but cover the outside with a piece of raw hide, and so makes use of it; but if he be rich, he covers the head with the raw hide, and gilds the inside of it and so uses it for a drinking-cup. Such cups a man makes also of the head of his own kinsman with whom he has been at feud, and whom he has vanquished in single combat before the king; and if guests whom he honours visit him he will serve them with these heads, and show how the dead were his kinsfolk who made war upon him and were worsted by him; this they call manly valour.
66. Moreover once in every year each governor of a province brews a bowl of wine in his own province, whereof those Scythians drink who have slain enemies; those who have not achieved this taste not this wine but sit apart dishonoured; and this they count a very great disgrace; but as many as have slain not one but many enemies, they have each two cups and so drink of them both.
67. There are among the Scythians many diviners, who divine by means of many willow wands as I will show. They bring great bundles of wands, which they lay on the ground and unfasten, and utter their divinations laying the rods down one by one; and while they yet speak they gather up the rods once more and again place them together; this manner of divination is hereditary among them. The Enareis, who are epicene, say that Aphrodite gave them the art of divination, which they practise by means of lime-tree bark. They cut this bark into three portions, and prophesy while they plait and unplait these in their fingers.
68. But whenever the king of the Scythians falls sick, he sends for the three diviners most in repute, who prophesy in the aforesaid manner; and they for the most part tell him that such and such a man (naming whoever it is of the people of the country) has forsworn himself by the king’s hearth; for when the Scythians will swear their mightiest oath, it is by the king’s hearth that they are usually accustomed to swear. Forthwith the man whom they allege to be forsworn is seized and brought in, and when he comes the diviners accuse him, saying that their divination shows him to have forsworn himself by the king’s hearth, and that this is the cause of the king’s sickness; and the man vehemently denies that he is forsworn. So when he denies it the king sends for twice as many diviners: and if they too, looking into their art, prove him guilty of perjury, then straightway he is beheaded and his goods are divided among the first diviners; but if the later diviners acquit him, then other diviners come, and yet again others. If then the greater number of them acquit the man, it is decreed that the first diviners shall themselves be put to death.
69. And this is the manner of their death. Men yoke oxen to a waggon laden with sticks and make the diviners fast amid these, fettering their legs and binding their hands behind them and gagging them; then they set fire to the sticks and drive the oxen away, affrighting them. Often the oxen are burnt to death with the diviners, and often the pole of their waggon is burnt through and the oxen escape with a scorching. They burn their diviners for other reasons, too, in the manner aforesaid, calling them false prophets. When the king puts a man to death, neither does he leave the sons alive, but kills all the males of the family; to the females he does no hurt.
70. As for the giving of sworn pledges to such as are to receive them, this is the Scythian fashion: they take blood from the parties to the agreement by making a little hole or cut in the body with an awl or a knife, and pour it mixed with wine into a great earthenware bowl, wherein they then dip a scimitar and arrows and an axe and a javelin; and when this is done the makers of the sworn agreement themselves, and the most honourable of their followers, drink of the blood after solemn imprecations.
71. The burial-places of the kings are in the land of the Gerrhi, which is the end of the navigation of the Borysthenes. There, whenever their king has died, the Scythians dig a great four-cornered pit in the ground; when this is ready they take up the dead man—his body enclosed in wax, his belly cut open and cleansed and filled with cut marsh-plants and frankincense, and parsley and anise seed, and sewn up again—and carry him on a waggon to another tribe. 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. Then, having laid the dead in the tomb on a couch, they plant spears on each side of the body and lay across them wooden planks, which they then roof over with plaited oziers; in the open space which is left in the tomb they bury, after strangling, one of the king’s concubines, his cupbearer, his cook, his groom, his squire, and his messenger, besides horses, and first-fruits of all else, and golden cups; for the Scythians make no use of silver or bronze. Having done this they all build a great barrow of earth, vying zealously with one another to make this as great as may be.
72. With the completion of a year they begin a fresh practice. Taking the trustiest of the rest of the king’s servants (and these are native-born Scythians, for only those serve the king whom he bids so to do, and none of the Scythians have servants bought by money) they strangle fifty of these squires and fifty of their best horses and empty and cleanse the bellies of all, fill them with chaff, and sew them up again. Then they make fast the half of a wheel to two posts, the hollow upwards, and the other half to another pair of posts, till many posts thus furnished are planted in the ground, and, presently, driving thick stakes lengthways through the horses’ bodies to their necks, they lay the horses aloft on the wheels so that the wheel in front supports the horse’s shoulders and the wheel behind takes the weight of the belly by the hindquarters, and the forelegs and hindlegs hang free; and putting bridles and bits in the horses’ mouths they stretch the bridles to the front and make them fast with pegs. Then they take each one of the fifty strangled young men and mount him on the horse; their way of doing it is to drive an upright stake through each body passing up by the spine to the neck, and enough of the stake projects below to be fixed in a hole made in the other stake, that which passes through the horse. So having set horsemen of this fashion round about the tomb they ride away.
73. Such is their way of burying their kings. All other Scythians, when they die, are laid in waggons and carried about among their friends by their nearest of kin; each receives them and entertains the retinue hospitably, setting before the dead man about as much of the fare as he serves to the rest. All but the kings are thus borne about for forty days and then buried. After the burial the Scythians cleanse themselves as I will show: they anoint and wash their heads; as for their bodies, they set up three poles leaning together to a point and cover these over with woollen mats; then, in the place so enclosed to the best of their power, they make a pit in the centre beneath the poles and the mats and throw red-hot stones into it.
74. They have hemp growing in their country, very like flax, save that the hemp is by much the thicker and taller. This grows both of itself and also by their sowing, and of it the Thracians even make garments which are very like linen; nor could any, save he were a past master in hemp, know whether they be hempen or linen; whoever has never yet seen hemp will think the garment to be linen.
75. The Scythians then take the seed of this hemp and, creeping under the mats, they throw it on the red-hot stones; and, being so thrown, it smoulders and sends forth so much steam that no Greek vapour-bath could surpass it. The Scythians howl in their joy at the vapour-bath. This serves them instead of bathing, for they never wash their bodies with water. But their women pound on a rough stone cypress and cedar and frankincense wood, pouring water also thereon, and with the thick stuff so pounded they anoint all their bodies and faces, whereby not only does a fragrant scent abide upon them, but when on the second day they take off the ointment their skin becomes clean and shining.
76. But as regards foreign usages, the Scythians (as others) are wondrous loth to practise those of any other country, and particularly of Hellas, as was proved in the case of Anacharsis and again also of Scyles. For when Anacharsis, having seen much of the world in his travels and given many proofs of his wisdom therein, was coming back to the Scythian country, he sailed through the Hellespont and put in at Cyzicus; where, finding the Cyzicenes celebrating the feast of the Mother of the Gods with great pomp, he vowed to this same Mother that, if he returned to his own country safe and sound, he would sacrifice to her as he saw the Cyzicenes do, and establish a nightly rite of worship. So when he came to Scythia, he hid himself in the country called Woodland (which is beside the Race of Achilles, and is all overgrown with every kind of wood); hiding himself there Anacharsis celebrated the goddess’s ritual with exactness, carrying a small drum and hanging about himself images. Then some Scythian marked him doing this and told it to the king, Saulius; who, coming himself to the place and seeing Anacharsis performing these rites, shot an arrow at him and slew him. And now the Scythians, if they are asked about Anacharsis, say they have no knowledge of him; this is because he left his country for Hellas and followed the customs of strangers. But according to what I heard from Tymnes, the deputy for Ariapithes, Anacharsis was uncle to Idanthyrsus king of Scythia, and he was the son of Gnurus, son of Lycus, son of Spargapithes. Now if Anacharsis was truly of this family, then I would have him know that he was slain by his own brother; for Idanthyrsus was the son of Saulius, and it was Saulius who slew Anacharsis.
77. It is true that I have heard another story told by the Pelponnesians; namely, that Anacharsis had been sent by the king of Scythia and had been a learner of the ways of Hellas, and after his return told the king who sent him that all Greeks were zealous for every kind of learning, save only the Lacedaemonians; but that these were the only Greeks who spoke and listened with discretion. But this is a tale vainly invented by the Greeks themselves; and be this as it may, the man was put to death as I have said.
78. Such-like, then, was the fortune that befell Anacharsis, all for his foreign usages and his companionship with Greeks; and a great many years afterwards, Scyles, son of Ariapithes, suffered a like fate. Scyles was one of the sons born to Ariapithes, king of Scythia; but his mother was of Istria, and not native-born; and she taught him to speak and read Greek. As time passed, Ariapithes was treacherously slain by Spargapithes, king of the Agathyrsi, and Scyles inherited the kingship and his father’s wife, whose name was Opoea, a Scythian woman, and she bore to Scyles a son, Oricus. So Scyles was king of Scythia; but he was in no wise content with the Scythian manner of life, and was much more inclined to Greek ways, from the bringing up which he had received; so this is what he did: having led the Scythian army to the city of the Borysthenites (who say that they are Milesians)—having, I say, come thither, he would ever leave his army in the suburb of the city, but he himself, entering within the walls and shutting the gates would doff his Scythian apparel and don a Greek dress; and in it he went among the townsmen unattended by spearmen or any others (the people guarding the gates, lest any Scythian should see him wearing this apparel), and in every way followed the Greek manner of life, and worshipped the gods according to Greek usage. Then having so spent a month or more, he put on Scythian dress and left the city. This he did often; and he built him a house in Borysthenes, and married and brought thither a wife of the people of the country.
79. But when the time came that evil should befall him, this was the cause of it: he conceived a desire to be initiated into the rites of the Bacchic Dionysus; and when he was about to begin the sacred mysteries, he saw a wondrous vision. He had in the city of the Borysthenites a spacious house, great and costly (that same house whereof I have just made mention), all surrounded by sphinxes and griffins wrought in white marble; this house was smitten by a thunderbolt and wholly destroyed by fire. But none the less for this did Scyles perform the rite to the end. Now the Scythians make this Bacchic revelling a reproach against the Greeks, saying that it is not reasonable to set up a god who leads men on to madness. So when Scyles had been initiated into the Bacchic rite, some one of the Borysthenites scoffed at the Scythians: “Why,” said he, “you Scythians mock us for revelling and being possessed by the god; but now this deity has taken possession of your own king, so that he is revelling and is maddened by the god. If you will not believe me, follow me now and I will show him to you.” The chief men among the Scythians followed him, and the Borysthenite brought them up secretly and set them on a tower; whence presently, when Scyles passed by with his company of worshippers, they saw him among the revellers; whereat being greatly moved, they left the city and told the whole army what they had seen.
80. After this Scyles rode away to his own place; but the Scythians rebelled against him, setting up for their king his brother Octamasades, son of the daughter of Teres. Scyles, learning how they dealt with him and the reason of their so doing, fled into Thrace; and when Octamasades heard this he led his army thither. But when he was beside the Ister, the Thracians barred his way; and when the armies were like to join battle Sitalces sent this message to Octamasades: “Wherefore should we essay each other’s strength? You are my sister’s son, and you have with you my brother; do you give him back to me, and I give up your Scyles to you; and let neither of us endanger our armies.” Such was the offer sent to him by Sitalces; for Sitalces’ brother had fled from him and was with Octamasades. The Scythian agreed to this, and received his brother Scyles, giving up his own uncle to Sitalces. Sitalces then took his brother and carried him away, but Octamasades beheaded Scyles on the spot. So closely do the Scythians guard their usages, and such penalties do they lay on those who add foreign customs to their own.
81. How many the Scythians are I was not able to learn with exactness, but the accounts which I heard concerning the number did not tally, some saying that they are very many, and some that they are but few, so far as they are true Scythians. But thus much they made me to see for myself:—There is a region between the rivers Borysthenes and Hypanis, the name of which is Exampaeus; this is the land whereof I lately made mention when I said that there is a spring of salt water in it, the water from which makes the Hypanis unfit to drink. In this region stands a bronze vessel, as much as six times greater than the cauldron dedicated by Pausanias son of Cleombrotus at the entrance of the Pontus. To any who has not yet seen this latter I will thus make my meaning plain: the Scythian bronze vessel easily contains five thousand and four hundred gallons, and it is of six fingers’ thickness. This vessel (so said the people of the country) was made out of arrowheads. For their king, whose name was Ariantas, desiring to know the numbers of the Scythians, commanded every Scythian to bring him the point from an arrow, threatening all who should not so do with death. So a vast number of arrow-heads was brought, and he resolved to make and leave a memorial out of them; and he made of these this bronze vessel, and set it up in this country Exampaeus. Thus much I heard concerning the number of the Scythians.
82. As for marvels, there are none in the land, save that it has rivers by far the greatest and the most numerous in the world; and over and above the rivers and the great extent of the plains there is one most wondrous thing for me to tell of: they show a footprint of Heracles by the river Tyras stamped on rock, like the mark of a man’s foot, but two cubits in length. Having so described this I will now return to the story which I began to relate.
83. While Darius was making preparations against the Scythians, and sending messengers to charge some to furnish an army and some to furnish ships, and others again to bridge the Thracian Bosporus, Artabanus, son of Hystaspes and Darius’ brother, desired of him by no means to make an expedition against the Scythians, telling him how hard that people were to deal withal. But when he could not move the king for all his good counsel, Artabanus ceased to advise, and Darius, all his preparations being now made, led his army from Susa.
84. Then Oeobazus a Persian, who had three sons, all with the army, entreated Darius that one might be left behind. “Nay,” said the king, “you are my friend, and your desire is but reasonable; I will leave all your sons.” Oeobazus rejoiced greatly, supposing that his sons were released from service; but Darius bade those whose business it was to put all Oeobazus’ sons to death.
85. So their throats were cut, and they were all left there; but Darius, when in his march from Susa he came to that place in the territory of Calchedon where the Bosporus was bridged, took ship and sailed to the Dark Rocks (as they are called) which the Greeks say did formerly move upon the waters; there he sat on a headland and viewed the Pontus, a marvellous sight. For it is of all seas the most wonderful. Its length is eleven thousand one hundred furlongs, and its breadth, at the place where it is widest, three thousand three hundred. The channel at the entrance of this sea is four furlongs broad; and in length, the narrow neck of the channel called Bosporus, across which the bridge was thrown, is as much as an hundred and twenty furlongs. The Bosporus reaches as far as to the Propontis; and the Propontis is five hundred furlongs wide and fourteen hundred long; its outlet is the Hellespont, which is no wider than seven furlongs, and four hundred in length. The Hellespont issues into a gulf of the sea which we call Aegaean.
86. These measurements have been made after this manner: a ship will for the most part accomplish seventy thousand fathoms in a long day’s voyage, and sixty thousand by night. This being granted, seeing that from the Pontus’ mouth to the Phasis (which is the greatest length of the sea) it is a voyage of nine days and eight nights, the length of it will be eleven hundred and ten thousand fathoms, which make eleven thousand one hundred furlongs. From the Sindic region to Themiscura on the river Thermodon (for here is the greatest width of the Pontus) it is a voyage of three days and two nights, that is of three hundred and thirty thousand fathoms, or three thousand three hundred furlongs. Thus have I measured this Pontus and the Bosporus and Hellespont, and they are such as I have said. Moreover, there is seen a lake issuing into the Pontus and not much smaller than the sea itself; it is called the Maeetian lake, and the mother of the Pontus.
87. Having viewed the Pontus, Darius sailed back to the bridge, of which Mandrocles of Samos was the chief builder; and when he had viewed the Bosporus also, he set up by it two pillars of white marble, engraving on the one in Assyrian and on the other in Greek characters the names of all the nations that were in his army; in which were all the nations subject to him. The full tale of these, over and above the fleet, was seven hundred thousand men, reckoning therewith horsemen, and the number of ships that mustered was six hundred. These pillars were afterwards carried by the Byzantines into their city and there used to build the altar of Orthosian Artemis, save for one column covered with Assyrian writing that was left beside the temple of Dionysus at Byzantium. Now if my reckoning be true, the place where king Darius bridged the Bosporus was midway between Byzantium and the temple at the entrance of the sea.
88. After this, Darius, being well content with his bridge of boats, made to Mandrocles the Samian a gift of ten of every kind; wherefrom Mandrocles took the firstfruits and therewith had a picture made showing the whole bridge of the Bosporus, and Darius sitting aloft on his throne and his army crossing; this he set up in the temple of Here, with this inscription:
“This Picture Mandrocles to Here gives, Whereby for ever his Achievement lives; A Bridge of Boats o’er Bosp’ rus’ fishful Flood He built; Darius saw, and judg’d it good; Thus for himself won Mandrocles a Crown, And for his isle of Samos high Renown.”
89. This then was done to preserve the name of the builder of the bridge. Darius, having rewarded Mandrocles, crossed over to Europe; he had bidden the Ionians to sail into the Pontus as far as the river Ister, and when they should come thither to wait for him there, bridging the river meanwhile; for the fleet was led by Ionians and Aeolians and men of the Hellespont. So the fleet passed between the Dark Rocks and made sail straight for the Ister, and, having gone a two days’ voyage up the river from the sea, set about bridging the narrow channel of the river where its divers mouths part asunder. But Darius, having passed over the Bosporus on the bridge of ships, journeyed through Thrace to the sources of the river Tearus, where he encamped for three days.
90. The Tearus is said in the country round to be the best of all rivers for all purposes of healing, but especially for the healing of the scab in men and horses. Its springs are thirty-eight in number, some cold and some hot, all flowing from the same rock. There are two roads to the place, one from the town of Heraeum near to Perinthus, one from Apollonia on the Euxine sea; each is a two days’ journey. This Tearus is a tributary of the river Contadesdus, and that of the Agrianes, and that again of the Hebrus, which issues into the sea near the city of Aenus.
91. Having then come to this river and there encamped, Darius was pleased with the sight of it, and set up yet another pillar there, graven with this inscription,” From the sources of the river Tearus flows the best and fairest of all river waters; hither came, leading his army against the Scythians, the best and fairest of all men, even Darius son of Hystaspes and king of Persia and all the mainland.” Such was the inscription.
92. Thence Darius set forth and came to another river called Artescus, which flows through the country of the Odrysae; whither having come, he marked a place for the army to see, and bade every man as he passed by lay one stone in this place which he had shown. His army having so done, he made and left great hillocks of the stones and led his army away.
93. But before he came to the Ister, he first subdued the Getae, who pretend to be immortal. The Thracians of Salmydessus and of the country above the towns of Apollonia and Mesambria, who are called Cyrmianae and Nipsaei, surrendered themselves unresisting to Darius; but the Getae, who are the bravest and most law-abiding of all Thracians, resisted with obstinacy, and were enslaved forthwith.
94. As to their claim to be immortal, this is how they show it: they believe that they do not die, but that he who perishes goes to the god Salmoxis, or Gebeleïzis, as some of them call him. Once in every five years they choose by lot one of their people and send him as a messenger to Salmoxis, charged to tell of their needs; and this is their manner of sending: Three lances are held by men thereto appointed; others seize the messenger to Salmoxis by his hands and feet, and swing and hurl him aloft on to the spear-points. If he be killed by the cast, they believe that the god regards them with favour; but if he be not killed, they blame the messenger himself, deeming him a bad man, and send another messenger in place of him whom they blame. It is while the man yet lives that they charge him with the message. Moreover when there is thunder and lightning these same Thracians shoot arrows skyward as a threat to the god, believing in no other god but their own.
95. For myself, I have been told by the Greeks who dwell beside the Hellespont and Pontus that this Salmoxis was a man who was once a slave in Samos, his master being Pythagoras son of Mnesarchus; presently, after being freed and gaining great wealth, he returned to his own country. Now the Thracians were a meanly-living and simple-witted folk, but this Salmoxis knew Ionian usages and a fuller way of life than the Thracian; for he had consorted with Greeks, and moreover with one of the greatest Greek teachers, Pythagoras; wherefore he made himself a hall, where he entertained and feasted the chief among his countrymen, and taught them that neither he nor his guests nor any of their descendants should ever die, but that they should go to a place where they would live for ever and have all good things. While he was doing as I have said and teaching this doctrine, he was all the while making him an underground chamber. When this was finished, he vanished from the sight of the Thracians, and descended into the underground chamber, where he lived for three years, the Thracians wishing him back and mourning him for dead; then in the fourth year he appeared to the Thracians, and thus they came to believe what Salmoxis had told them. Such is the Greek story about him.
96. For myself, I neither disbelieve nor fully believe the tale about Salmoxis and his underground chamber; but I think that he lived many years before Pythagoras; and whether there was a man called Salmoxis, or this be a name among the Getae for a god of their country, I have done with him.
97. Such were the ways of the Getae, who were now subdued by the Persians and followed their army. When Darius and the land army with him had come to the Ister, and all had crossed, he bade the Ionians break the bridge and follow him in his march across the mainland, together with the men of the fleet. So the Ionians were preparing to break the bridge and do Darius’ behest; but Cöes son of Erxander, the general of the Mytilenaeans, having first enquired if Darius were willing to receive counsel from any man desiring to give it, said, “Seeing, O king! that you are about to march against a country where you will find neither tilled lands nor inhabited cities, do you now suffer this bridge to stand where it is, leaving those who made it to be its guards. Thus, if we find the Scythians and accomplish our will, we have a way of return; and even if we find them not, yet at least our way back is safe; for my fear has never yet been lest we be overcome by the Scythians in the field, but rather lest we should not be able to find them, and so wander astray to our hurt. Now perchance it may be said that I speak thus for my own sake, because I desire to remain behind; but it is not so; I do but declare before all that counsel which I judge best for you, and as for myself I would not be left here but will follow you.” With this counsel Darius was greatly pleased, and he answered Cöes thus: “My good Lesbian, fail not to show yourself to me when I return safe to my house, that so I may make you a good return for your good advice.”
98. Having thus spoken, he tied sixty knots in a thong, and calling the despots of the Ionians to an audience he said to them: “Ionians, I renounce the opinion which I before declared concerning the bridge; do you now take this thong and do as I command you. Begin to reckon from the day when you shall see me march away against the Scythians, and loose one knot each day: and if the days marked by the knots have all passed and I have not returned ere then, take ship for your own homes. But till then, seeing that my counsel is thus changed, I bid you guard the bridge, using all zeal to save and defend it. This do, and you will render me a most acceptable service.” Having thus spoken, Darius made haste to march further.
99. Thrace runs farther out into the sea than Scythia; and where a bay is formed in its coast, Scythia begins, and the mouth of the Ister, which faces to the south-east, is in that country. Now I will describe the coast of the true Scythia from the Ister, and give its measurements. At the Ister begins the ancient Scythian land, which lies facing the south and the south wind, as far as the city called Carcinitis. Beyond this place, the country fronting the same sea is hilly and projects into the Pontus; it is inhabited by the Tauric nation as far as what is called the Rough Peninsula; and this ends in the eastern sea. For the sea to the south and the sea to the east are two of the four boundary lines of Scythia, even as the seas are boundaries of Attica; and the Tauri dwelling as they do in a part of Scythia which is like Attica, it is as though some other people, not Attic, were to inhabit the heights of Sunium from Thoricus to the township of Anaphlystus, did Sunium but jut farther out into the sea. I say this in so far as one may compare small things with great. Such a land is the Tauric country. But those who have not coasted along that part of Attica may understand from this other way of showing: it is as though in Iapygia some other people, not Iapygian, were to dwell on the promontory within a line drawn from the harbour of Brentesium to Taras. Of these two countries I speak, but there are many others of a like kind which Tauris resembles.
100. Beyond the Tauric country the Scythians begin, dwelling north of the Tauri and beside the eastern sea, westward of the Cimmerian Bosporus and the Maeetian lake, as far as the river Tanais, which issues into the end of that lake. Now it has been seen that on its northern and inland side, which runs from the Ister, Scythia is bounded first by the Agathyrsi, next by the Neuri, next by the Man-eaters, and last by the Black-cloaks.
101. Scythia, then, being a four-sided country, whereof two sides are sea-board, the frontiers running inland and those that are by the sea make it a perfect square; for it is a ten days’ journey from the Ister to the Borysthenes, and the same from the Borysthenes to the Maeetian lake; and it is a twenty days’ journey from the sea inland to the country of the Black-cloaks who dwell north of Scythia. Now as I reckon a day’s journey at two hundred furlongs, the cross-measurement of Scythia would be a distance of four thousand furlongs, and the line drawn straight up inland the same. Such then is the extent of this land.
102. The Scythians, reckoning that they were not able by themselves to repel Darius’ army in open warfare, sent messengers to their neighbours, whose kings had already met and were taking counsel, as knowing that a great army was marching against them. Those that had so met were the kings of the Tauri, Agathyrsi, Neuri, Maneaters, Black-cloaks, Geloni, Budini, and Sauromatae.
103. Among these, the Tauri have the following customs: all ship-wrecked men, and any Greeks whom they take in their sea-raiding, they sacrifice to the Virgin goddess as I will show: after the first rites of sacrifice, they smite the victim on the head with a club; according to some, they then throw down the body from the cliff whereon their temple stands, and place the head on a pole; others agree with this as to the head, but say that the body is buried, not thrown down from the cliff. This deity to whom they sacrifice is said by the Tauri themselves to be Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia. As for the enemies whom they overcome, each man cuts off his enemy’s head and carries it away to his house, where he places it on a tall pole and sets it standing high above the dwelling, above the smoke-vent for the most part. These heads, they say, are set aloft to guard the whole house. The Tauri live by plundering and war.
104. The Agathyrsi live more delicately than all other men, and are greatly given to wearing gold. Their intercourse with women is promiscuous, that they may be brothers and that as they are all kinsfolk to each other they may neither envy nor hate their fellows. In the rest of their customs they are like to the Thracians.
105. The Neuri follow Scythian usages; but one generation before the coming of Darius’ army it fell out that they were driven from their country by snakes; for their land brought forth great numbers of these, and yet more came down upon them out of the desert on the north, till at last the Neuri were so hard pressed that they left their own country and dwelt among the Budini. 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.
107. The Black-cloaks all wear black raiment, whence they take their name; their usages are Scythian.
108. The Budini are a great and numerous nation; the eyes of all of them are very bright, and they are ruddy. They have a city built of wood, called Gelonus. The wall of it is thirty furlongs in length on each side of the city; this wall is high and all of wood; and their houses are wooden, and their temples; for there are among them temples of Greek gods, furnished in Greek fashion with images and altars and shrines of wood; and they honour Dionysus every two years with festivals and revels. For the Geloni are by their origin Greeks, who left their trading ports to settle among the Budini; and they speak a language half Greek and half Scythian. But the Budini speak not the same language as the Geloni, nor is their manner of life the same.
109. 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; otters are caught in it, and beavers, besides certain square-faced creatures whose skins serve for the trimming of mantles, and their testicles are used by the people to heal sicknesses of the womb.
110. The history of the Sauromatae is as I will now show. When the Greeks warred with the Amazons (whom the Scythians call Oiorpata, a name signifying in our tongue killers of men, for in Scythian a man is oior, and to kill is pata) the story runs that after their victory on the Thermodon they sailed away carrying in three ships as many Amazons as they had been able to take alive; and out at sea the Amazons set upon the crews and slew them. But they knew nothing of ships, nor how to use rudder or sail or oar; and the men having been slain they were borne at the mercy of waves and winds, till they came to the Cliffs by the Maeetian lake; this place is in the country of the free Scythians. There the Amazons landed, and set forth on their journey to the inhabited country, and seized the first troop of horses they met, and mounted on them they raided the Scythian lands.
111. The Scythians could not understand the matter; for they knew not the women’s speech nor their dress nor their nation, but wondered whence they had come, and supposed them to be men all of the same age; and they met the Amazons in battle. The end of the fight was that the Scythians got possession of the dead, and so came to know that their foes were women. Wherefore taking counsel they resolved by no means to slay them as heretofore, but to send to them their youngest men, of a number answering (as they guessed) to the number of the women. They bade these youths encamp near to the Amazons and to imitate all that they did; if the women pursued them, then not to fight, but to flee; and when the pursuit ceased, to come and encamp near to them. This was the plan of the Scythians, for they desired that children should be born of the women. The young men, being sent, did as they were charged.
112. When the Amazons perceived that the youths meant them no harm, they let them be; but every day the two camps drew nearer to each other. Now the young men, like the Amazons, had nothing but their arms and their horses, and lived as did the women, by hunting and plunder.
113. At midday the Amazons would scatter and go singly or in pairs away from each other, roaming thus apart for greater comfort. The Scythians marked this and did likewise; and as the women wandered alone, a young man laid hold of one of them, and the woman made no resistance but suffered him to do his will; and since they understood not each other’s speech and she could not speak to him, she signed with the hand that he should come on the next day to the same place bringing another youth with him (showing by signs that there should be two), and she would bring another woman with her. The youth went away and told his comrades; and the next day he came himself with another to the place, where he found the Amazon and another with her awaiting him. When the rest of the young men learnt of this, they had intercourse with the rest of the Amazons.
114. Presently they joined their camps and dwelt together, each man having for his wife the woman with whom he had had intercourse at first. 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; and your women do none of the things whereof we speak, but abide in their waggons working at women’s crafts, and never go abroad a-hunting or for aught else. We and they therefore could never agree. 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.” The young men agreed and did this.
115. So when they had been given the allotted share of possessions which fell to them, and returned to the Amazons, the women said to them: “We are in fear and dread, to think how we should dwell in this country; seeing that not only have we bereaved you of your parents, but we have done much hurt to your land. Nay, since you think right to have us for wives, let us all together, we and you, remove out of this country and dwell across the river Tanais.”
116. To this too the youths consented; and crossing the Tanais they went a three days’ journey from the river eastwards, and a three days’ journey from the Maeetian lake northwards; and when they came to the region in which they now dwell, they made their abode there. Ever since then the women of the Sauromatae have followed their ancient usage; they ride a-hunting with their men or without them; they go to war, and wear the same dress as the men.
117. The language of the Sauromatae is Scythian, but not spoken in its ancient purity, seeing that the Amazons never rightly learnt it. In regard to marriage, it is the custom that no virgin weds till she has slain a man of the enemy; and some of them grow old and die unmarried, because they cannot fulfil the law.
118. The kings then of these aforesaid nations being assembled, the Scythian messengers came and laid all exactly before them, telling how the Persian, now that the whole of the other continent was subject to him, had crossed over to their continent by a bridge thrown across the gut of the Bosporus, and how having crossed it and subdued the Thracians he was now bridging the Ister, that he might make all that region subject like the others to himself. “Do you, then.” said they, “by no means sit apart and suffer us to be destroyed; rather let us unite and encounter this invader. If you will not do this, then shall we either be driven perforce out of our country, or abide and make terms. 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. We can give you full proof of what we say: were it we alone against whom the Persian is marching, to be avenged on us for our former enslaving of his country, it is certain that he would leave others alone and make straight for us, thus making it plain to all that Scythia and no other country is his goal. But now, from the day of his crossing over to this continent, he has been ever taming all that come in his way, and he holds in subjection, not only the rest of Thrace, but also our neighbours the Getae.”
119. Such being the message of the Scythians, the kings who had come from their nations took counsel, and their opinions were divided. The kings of the Geloni and the Budini and the Sauromatae made common cause and promised to help the Scythians; but the kings of the Agathyrsi and Neuri and Maneaters and Black-cloaks and Tauri made this answer to the messengers: “Had it not been you who did unprovoked wrong to the Persians and so began the war, this request that you proffer would seem to us right, and we would consent and act jointly with you. But now, you and not we invaded their land and held it for such time as the god permitted; and the Persians, urged on by the same god, are but requiting you in like manner. But we did these men no wrong in that former time, nor will we essay to harm them now unprovoked; natheless if the Persian come against our land too and do the first act of wrong, then we two will not consent to it; but till we see that; we will abide where we are by ourselves. For in our judgment the Persians are attacking not us but those at whose door the offence lies.”
120. This answer being brought back and made known to the Scythians, they resolved not to meet their enemy in the open field, seeing that they could not get the allies that they sought, but rather to withdraw and drive off their herds, choking the wells and springs on their way and destroying the grass from the earth; and they divided themselves into two companies. It was their will that to one of their divisions, over which Scopasis was king, the Sauromatae should be added; this host should, if the Persian marched that way, retire before him and draw off towards the river Tanais, by the Maeetian lake, and if the Persian turned to depart then they should attack and pursue him. This was one of the divisions of the royal people, and it was appointed to follow the way aforesaid; their two other divisions, namely, the greater whereof the ruler was Idanthyrsus, and the third whose king was Taxakis, were to unite, and taking to them also the Geloni and Budini, to draw off like the others at the Persian approach, ever keeping one day’s march in front of the enemy, avoiding a meeting and doing what had been resolved. First, then, they must retreat in a straight course towards the countries which refused their alliance, so that these too might be compelled to fight; for if they would not of their own accord enter the lists against the Persians, they must be driven to war willy-nilly; and after that, the host must turn back to its own country, and attack the enemy, if in debate this should seem good.
121. Being resolved on this plan, the Scythians sent an advance guard of the best of their horsemen to meet Darius’ army. As for the waggons in which their children and wives lived, all these they sent forward, charged to drive ever northward; and with the waggons they sent all their flocks, keeping none back save such as were sufficient for their food.
122. This convoy being first sent on its way, the advance guard of the Scythians found the Persians about a three days’ march distant from the Ister; and having found them they encamped a day’s march ahead of the enemy and set about clearing the land of all growing things. When the Persians saw the Scythian cavalry appearing, they marched on in its tracks, the horsemen ever withdrawing before them; and then, making for the one Scythian division, the Persians held on in pursuit towards the east and the river Tanais; which when the horsemen had crossed the Persians crossed also, and pursued till they had marched through the land of the Sauromatae to the land of the Budini.
123. As long as the Persians were traversing the Scythian and Sauromatic territory there was nothing for them to harm, as the land was dry and barren. But when they entered the country of the Budini, they found themselves before the wooden-walled town; the Budini had deserted it and left nothing therein, and the Persians burnt the town. Then going still forward in the horsemen’s tracks they passed through this country into the desert, which is inhabited by no men; it lies to the north of the Budini and its breadth is a seven days’ march. Beyond this desert dwell the Thyssagetae; four great rivers flow from their country through the land of the Maeetians, and issue into the lake called the Maeetian; their names are Lycus, Oarus, Tanais, Syrgis.
124. When Darius came into the desert, he halted in his race and encamped on the river Oarus, where he built eight great forts, all at an equal distance of about sixty furlongs from each other, the ruins of which were standing even in my lifetime. While he was busied with these, the Scythians whom he pursued fetched a compass northwards and turned back into Scythia. When they had altogether vanished and were no longer within the Persians’ sight, Darius then left those forts but half finished, and he too turned about and marched westward, thinking that those Scythians were the whole army, and that they were fleeing towards the west.
125. But when he came by forced marches into Scythia, he met the two divisions of the Scythians, and pursued them, they keeping ever a day’s march away from him; and because he would not cease from pursuing them, the Scythians, according to the plan they had made, fled before him to the countries of those who had refused their alliance, and first to the land of the Black-cloaks. Into their land the Scythians and Persians burst, troubling their peace; and thence the Scythians led the Persians into the country of the Man-eaters, troubling them too; whence they drew off with a like effect into the country of the Neuri, and troubling them also, fled to the Agathyrsi. But these, seeing their very neighbours fleeing panic-stricken at the Scythians’ approach, before the Scythians could break into their land sent a herald to forbid them to set foot on their borders, warning the Scythians that if they essayed to break through they must first fight with the Agathyrsi. With this warning they mustered on their borders, with intent to stay the invaders. 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? 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.”
127. To this Idanthyrsus the Scythian king made answer: “It is thus with me, Persian: I have never fled for fear of any man, nor do I now flee from you; this that I have done is no new thing or other than my practice in peace. But as to the reason why I do not straightway fight with you, this too I will tell you. For we Scythians have no towns or planted lands, that we might meet you the sooner in battle, fearing lest the one be taken or the other be wasted. But if nothing will serve you but fighting straightway, we have the graves of our fathers; come, find these and essay to destroy them; then shall you know whether we will fight you for those graves or no. Till then we will not join battle unless we think good. Thus much I say of fighting; for my masters, I hold them to be Zeus my forefather and Hestia queen of the Scythians, and none other. Gifts I will send you, not earth and water, but such as you should rightly receive; and for your boast that you are my master, take my malison for it.” Such is the proverbial “Scythian speech.”
128. So the herald went to carry this message to Darius; but the Scythian kings were full of anger when they heard the name of slavery. They sent then the division of the Scythians to which the Sauromatae were attached, and which was led by Scopasis, to speak with those Ionians who guarded the bridge over the Ister; as for those of the Scythians who were left behind, it was resolved that they should no longer lead the Persians astray, but attack them whenever they were foraging for provision. So they watched for the time when Darius’ men were foraging, and did according to their plan. The Scythian horse ever routed the Persian horse, and the Persian horsemen falling back in flight on their footmen, the foot would come to their aid; and the Scythians, once they had driven in the horse, turned about for fear of the foot. The Scythians attacked in this fashion by night as well as by day.
129. Most strange it is to relate, but what aided the Persians and thwarted the Scythians in their attacks on Darius’ army was the braying of the asses and the appearance of the mules. For, as I have before shown, Scythia bears no asses or mules; nor is there in the whole of Scythia any ass or mule, by reason of the cold. Therefore the asses, when they brayed loudly, alarmed the Scythian horses; and often, when they were in the act of charging the Persians, if the horses heard the asses bray they would turn back in affright or stand astonished with ears erect, never having heard a like noise or seen a like creature.
130. The Persians gained thus very little in the war, for when the Scythians saw that the Persians were shaken, they formed a plan whereby they might remain longer in Scythia and so remaining might be distressed by lack of all things needful: they would leave some of their flocks behind with the shepherds, themselves moving away to another place; and the Persians would come and take the sheep, and be uplifted by this achievement.
131. This having often happened, Darius was in a quandary, and when they perceived this, the Scythian kings sent a herald bringing Darius the gift of a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows. The Persians asked the bringer of these gifts what they might mean; but he said that no charge had been laid on him save to give the gifts and then depart with all speed; let the Persians (he said), if they were clever enough, discover the signification of the presents.
132. The Persians hearing and taking counsel, Darius’ judgment was that the Scythians were surrendering to him themselves and their earth and their water; for he reasoned that a mouse is a creature found in the earth and eating the same produce as men, and a frog is a creature of the water and a bird most like to a horse; and the arrows (said he) signified that the Scythians surrendered their fighting power. This was the opinion declared by Darius; but the opinion of Gobryas, one of the seven who had slain the Magian, was contrary to it. He reasoned that the meaning of the gifts was, “Unless you become birds Persians, and fly up into the sky, or mice and hide you in the earth, or frogs and leap into the lakes, you will be shot by these arrows and never return home.”
133. Thus the Persians reasoned concerning the gifts. But when the first division of the Scythians came to the bridge—that division which had first been appointed to stand on guard by the Maeetian lake and had now been sent to the Ister to speak with the Ionians—they said, “Ionians, we are come to bring you freedom, if you will but listen to us. We learn that Darius has charged you to guard the bridge for sixty days only, and if he comes not within that time then to go away to your homes. Now therefore do that whereby you will be guiltless in his eyes as in ours: abide here for the days appointed, and after that depart.” So the Ionians promised to do this, and the Scythians made their way back with all speed.
134. But after the sending of the gifts to Darius, the Scythians who had remained there came out with foot and horse and offered battle to the Persians. But when the Scythian ranks were arrayed, a hare ran out between the armies; and every Scythian that saw it gave chase. So there was confusion and shouting among the Scythians; Darius asked what the enemy meant by this clamour; and when he heard that they were chasing the hare, then said he (it would seem) to those wherewith he was ever wont to speak, “These fellows hold us in deep contempt; and I think now that Gobryas’ saying concerning the Scythian gifts was true. Seeing therefore that my own judgment of the matter is like his, we need to take sage counsel, whereby we shall have a safe return out of the country.” To this said Gobryas: “Sire, reason alone wellnigh showed me how hard it would be to deal with these Scythians; but when I came I was made the better aware of it, seeing that they do but make a sport of us. Now therefore my counsel is, that at nightfall we kindle our camp-fires according to our wont at other times, that we deceive those in our army who are least strong to bear hardship, and tether here all our asses, and so ourselves depart, before the Scythians can march straight to the Ister to break the bridge, or the Ionians take some resolve whereby we may well be ruined.”
135. This was Gobryas’ advice, and at nightfall Darfus followed it. He left there in the camp the men who were worn out, and those whose loss imported least to him, and all the asses too tethered. The reason of his leaving the asses, and the infirm among his soldiers, was, as regarding the asses, that they might bray; as to the men, they were left by reason of their infirmity, but his pretext was, forsooth, that they should guard the camp while he attacked the Scythians with the sound part of his army. Giving this charge to those who were left behind, and lighting camp-fires, Darius made all speed to reach the Ister. When the asses found themselves deserted by the multitude, they brayed much the louder for that; and the Scythians by hearing them were fully persuaded that the Persians were still in the same place.
136. But when day dawned the men left behind perceived that Darius had played them false, and they held out their hands to the Scythians and explained their position; who, when they heard, gathered their power with all speed, both the two divisions of their host and the one division that was with the Sauromatae and Budini and Geloni, and made straight for the Ister in pursuit of the Persians. But seeing that the Persian army was for the most part of footmen and knew not the roads (these not being marked), whereas the Scythians were horsemen and knew the short cuts, they kept wide of each other, and the Scythians came to the bridge much before the Persians. There, perceiving that the Persians were not yet come, they said to the Ionians, who were in their ships, “Now, Ionians, the numbered days are past and you do wrongly to remain still here. Nay—for it is fear which has ere now kept you from departing—now break the bridge with all speed and go your ways in freedom and happiness, thanking the gods and the Scythians. As for him that was once your master, we will leave him in such plight that never again will he lead his army against any nation.”
137. 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.” When Histiaeus declared this opinion, all of them straightway inclined to it, albeit they had first sided with Miltiades.
138. Those standing high in Darius’ favour who gave their vote were Daphnis of Abydos, Hippoclus of Lampsacus, Herophantus of Parium, Metrodorus of Proconnesus, Aristagoras of Cyzicus, Ariston of Byzantium, all from the Hellespont and despots of cities there; and from Ionia, Strattis of Chios, Aiaces of Samos, Laodamas of Phocaea, and Histiaeus of Miletus who opposed the plan of Miltiades. As for the Aeolians, their only notable man present was Aristagoras of Cymae.
139. These then chose to follow Histiaeus’ counsel, and resolved to make it good by act and word: to break as much of the bridge as reached a bowshot from the Scythian bank, that so they might seem to do somewhat when in truth they did nothing, and that the Scythians might not essay to force a passage across the Ister by the bridge; and to say while they broke the portion of the bridge on the Scythian side, that they would do all that the Scythians desired. This resolve they added to their decision; and presently Histiaeus answered for them all, and said, “You have brought us good advice, Scythians, and your zeal is well timed; you do your part in guiding us aright and we do ours in serving your ends as need requires; for as you see, we are breaking the passage, and will use all diligence, so much do we desire our freedom. But while we break this bridge, now is the time for you to seek out the Persians, and when you have found them to take such vengeance on our and your behalf as they deserve.”
140. So the Scythians trusted the Ionians’ word once more, and turned back to seek the Persians; but they mistook the whole way whereby their enemies returned. For this the Scythians themselves were to blame, inasmuch as they had destroyed the horses’ grazing-grounds in that region and choked the wells. Had they not so done, they could readily have found the Persians if they would. But as it was, that part of their plan which they had thought the best was the very cause of their ill-success. So the Scythians went searching for their enemies through the parts of their own country where there was provender for horses and water, supposing that they too were aiming at such places in their flight; but the Persians ever kept to their own former tracks, and so with much ado they found the passage of the river. But inasmuch as they came to it at night and found the bridge broken, they were in great terror lest the Ionians had abandoned them.
141. There was with Darius an Egyptian, whose voice was the loudest in the world; Darius bade this man stand on the Ister bank and call to Histiaeus the Milesian. This the Egyptian did; Histiaeus heard and obeyed the first shout, and sent all the ships to ferry the army over, and made the bridge anew.
142. Thus the Persians escaped. The Scythians sought the Persians, but missed them again. Their judgment of the Ionians is that if they are regarded as free men they are the basest cravens in the world; but if they are to be reckoned as slaves, none would love their masters more, or less desire to escape. Thus have the Scythians taunted the Ionians.
143. Darius marched through Thrace to Sestos on the Chersonesus; thence he crossed over with his ships to Asia, leaving as his general in Europe Megabazus, a Persian, to whom he once did honour by saying among Persians what I here set down. Darius was about to eat pomegranates; and no sooner had he opened the first of them than his brother Artabanus asked him of what thing he would wish to have as many as there were seeds in his pomegranate; whereupon Darius said, that he would rather have that number of men like Megabazus than make all Hellas subject to him. By thus speaking among Persians the king did honour to Megabazus; and now he left him behind as his general, at the head of eighty thousand of his army.
144. This Megabazus is for ever remembered by the people of the Hellespont for his saying—when, being at Byzantium, he was told that the people of Calchedon had founded their town seventeen years before the Byzantines had founded theirs—that the Calchedonians must at that time have been blind; for had they not been so, they would never have chosen the meaner site for their city when they might have had the fairer. This Megabazus, being now left as general in the country, subdued all the people of the Hellespont who did not take the side of the Persians.
145. Thus Megabazus did. About this time a great armament was sent against Libya also, for a reason which I will show after this story which I will now relate. The descendants of the crew of the Argo had been driven out by those Pelasgians who carried off the Athenian women from Brauron; being driven out of Lemnos by these, they sailed away to Lacedaemon, and there encamped on Taÿgetum and kindled a fire. Seeing this, the Lacedaemonians sent a messenger to enquire who they were and whence they came. They answered the messenger that they were Minyae, descendants of the heroes who had sailed in the Argo, and had put in at Lemnos and there begotten their race. Hearing the story of the lineage of the Minyae, the Lacedaemonians sent a second time and asked to what end they had come into Laconia and kindled a fire. They replied, that being expelled by the Pelasgians they had come to the land of their fathers, as (they said) was most just; and for their desire, it was that they might dwell with their father’s people, sharing in their rights and receiving allotted parcels of land. It pleased the Lacedaemonians to receive the Minyae on the terms which their guests desired; the chief cause of their so consenting was that the Tyndaridae had been in the ship’s company of the Argo; so they received the Minyae and gave them of their land and divided them among their own tribes. The Minyae forthwith wedded wives, and gave in marriage to others the women they had brought from Lemnos.
146. But in no long time these Minyae waxed over-proud, demanding an equal right to the kingship, and doing other impious things; wherefore the Lacedaemonians resolved to slay them, and they seized and cast them into prison. (When the Lacedaemonians kill, they do it by night, never by day.) Now when they were about to kill the prisoners, the wives of the Minyae, who were native to the country, daughters of the chief among the Spartans, entreated leave to enter the prison and have speech each with her husband; the Lacedaemonians granted this, not suspecting that the women would deal craftily with them. But when the wives came into the prison, they gave to their husbands all their own garments, and themselves put on the men’s dress; so the Minyae donned the female dress and so passed out in the guise of women, and having thus escaped once more encamped on Taÿgetum.
147. Now about this same time Theras (who was a descendant of Polynices, through Thersander, Tisamenus, and Autesion) was preparing to lead out colonists from Lacedaemon. This Theras was of the lineage of Cadmus and an uncle on the mother’s side of Aristodemus’ sons Eurysthenes and Procles; and while these boys were yet children he held the royal power of Sparta as regent; but when his nephews grew up and became kings, then Theras could not brook to be a subject when he had had a taste of supreme power, and said he would abide no longer in Lacedaemon but sail away to his kinsfolk. There were in the island now called Thera, but then Calliste, descendants of Membliarus the son of Poeciles, a Phoenician; for Cadmus son of Agenor, in his search for Europa, had put in at the place now called Thera; and having put in, either because the land pleased him, or because for some other reason he desired so to do, he left in this island, among other Phoenicians, his own kinsman Membliarus. These dwelt in the island Calliste for eight generations before Theras came from Lacedaemon.
148. It was these whom Theras was preparing to join, taking with him a company of people from the tribes; it was his intent to settle among the folk of Calliste, and not to drive them out but to claim them as verily his own people. So when the Minyae escaped out of prison and encamped on Taÿgetum, and the Lacedaemonians were taking counsel to put them to death, Theras entreated for their lives, that there might be no killing, promising himself to lead them out of the country. The Lacedaemonians consenting to this, Theras sailed with three thirty-oared ships to join the descendants of Membliarus, taking with him not all the Minyae but a few only; for the greater part of them made their way to the lands of the Paroreatae and Caucones, whom having driven out of the country they divided themselves into six companies and founded in the land they had won the cities of Lepreum, Macistus, Phrixae, Pyrgus, Epium, Nudium; most of which were in my time taken and sacked by the Eleans. As for the island Calliste, it was called Thera after its colonist.
149. But as Theras’ son would not sail with him, his father therefore said that he would leave him behind as a sheep among wolves; after which saying the stripling got the nickname of Oeolycus, and it so fell out that this became his customary name. He had a son born to him, Aegeus, from whom the Aegidae, a great Spartan clan, take their name. The men of this clan, finding that none of their children lived, set up, by the instruction of an oracle, a temple of the avenging spirits of Laïus and Oedipus, after which the children lived. Thus it fared also with the children of the Aegidae at Thera.
150. Thus far in my story the Lacedaemonian and Theraean records agree; for the rest we have only the word of the Theraeans. Grinnus son of Aesanius, king of Thera, a descendant of this same Theras, came to Delphi bringing an hecatomb from his city; there came with him, among others of his people, Battus son of Polymnestus, a descendant of Euphemus of the Minyan clan. When Grinnus king of Thera inquired of the oracle concerning other matters, the priestess’ answer was that he should found a city in Libya. “Nay, Lord,” answered Grinnus, “I am grown old and heavy to stir; do thou lay this command on some one of these younger men,’’ pointing as he spoke to Battus. No more was then said. But when they had departed, they neglected to obey the oracle, seeing that they knew not where Libya was, and feared to send a colony out to an uncertain goal.
151. Then for seven years after this there was no rain in Thera; all their trees in the island save one were withered. The Theraeans inquired again at Delphi, and the priestess made mention of the colony they should send to Libya. So since there was no remedy for their ills, they sent messengers to Crete to seek out any Cretan or sojourner there who had travelled to Libya. These, in their journeys about the island, came to the town of Itanus, where they met a fisher of murex called Corobius, who told them that he had once been driven out of his course by winds to Libya, to an island there called Platea. This man they hired to come with them to Thera; thence but a few men were first sent on shipboard to spy out the land, who, being guided by Corobius to the aforesaid island Platea, left him there with provision for some months, and themselves sailed back with all speed to Thera to bring news of the island.
152. But when they had been away for longer than the agreed time, and Corobius had no provision left, a Samian ship sailing for Egypt, whereof the captain was Colaeus, was driven out of her course to Platea, where the Samians heard the whole story from Corobius and left him provision for a year; they then put out to sea from the island and would have voyaged to Egypt, but an easterly wind drove them from their course, and ceased not till they had passed through the Pillars of Heracles and came (by heaven’s providence) to Tartessus. Now this was at that time a virgin port; wherefore the Samians brought back from it so great a profit on their wares as no Greeks ever did of whom we have any exact knowledge, save only Sostratus of Aegina, son of Laodamas; with him none could vie. The Samians took six talents, the tenth part of their profit, and made therewith a bronze vessel, like an Argolic cauldron, with griffins’ heads projecting from the rim all round; this they set up in their temple of Here, supporting it with three colossal kneeling figures of bronze, each seven cubits high. This that the Samians had done was the beginning of a close friendship between them and the men of Cyrene and Thera.
153. As for the Theraeans, when they came to Thera after leaving Corobius on the island, they brought word that they had founded a settlement on an island off Libya. The Theraeans resolved to send out men from their seven regions, taking by lot one of every pair of brothers, and making Battus leader and king of all. Then they manned two fifty-oared ships and sent them to Platea.
154. This is what the Theraeans say; and now begins the part in which the Theraean and Cyrenaean stories agree, but not till now, for the Cyrenaeans tell a wholly different tale of Battus, which is this. There is a town in Crete called Oaxus, of which one Etearchus became ruler. He had a motherless daughter called Phronime, but he must needs marry another wife too. When the second wife came into his house, she thought fit to be in very deed a stepmother to Phronime, ill-treating her and devising all evil against her; at last she accused the girl of lewdness, and persuaded her husband that the charge was true. So Etearchus was over-persuaded by his wife and devised a great sin against his daughter. There was at Oaxus a Theraean trader, one Themison; Etearchus made this man his guest and friend, and took an oath of him that he would do him whatever service he desired; which done, he gave the man his own daughter, bidding him take her away and throw her into the sea. But Themison was very angry at being so tricked with the oath and renounced his friendship with Etearchus; presently he took the girl and sailed away, and that he might duly fulfil the oath that he had sworn to Etearchus, when he was on the high seas he bound her about with ropes and let her down into the sea and drew her up again, and presently came to Thera.
155. There Polymnestus, a notable Theraean, took Phronime and made her his concubine. In time there was born to him a son of weak and stammering speech, to whom he gave the name Battus, as the Theraeans and Cyrenaeans say; but to my thinking the boy was given some other name, and changed it to Battus on his coming to Libya, taking this new name by reason of the oracle given to him at Delphi and the honourable office which he received. For the Libyan word for king is “battus,” and this (methinks) is why the Pythian priestess called him so in her prophecy, using a Libyan name because she knew that he was to be king in Libya. For when he came to man’s estate, he went to Delphi to enquire concerning his voice; and the priestess in answer gave him this oracle:
“Battus, thou askest a voice; but the King, ev’n Phoebus Apollo, Sends thee to found thee a home in Libya, the country of sheepfolds,”
even as though she said to him, using our word, “O King, thou askest a voice.” But he made answer: “Lord, I came to thee to enquire concerning my speech; but thy answer is of other matters, things impossible of performance; thou biddest me plant a colony in Libya; where shall I get me the power or might of hand for it?” Thus spoke Battus, but the god not being won to give him another oracle and ever answering as before, he departed while the priestess yet spake, and went away to Thera.
156. But afterwards matters went untowardly with Battus and the rest of the Theraeans; and when, knowing not the cause of their misfortunes, they sent to Delphi to enquire concerning their present ills, the priestess declared that they would fare better if they aided Battus to plant a colony at Cyrene in Libya. Then the Theraeans sent Battus with two fifty-oared ships; these sailed to Libya, but presently not knowing what else to do returned back to Thera. There the Theraeans shot at them as they came to land and would not suffer the ship to put in, bidding them sail back; which under stress of necessity they did, and planted a colony in an island off the Libyan coast called (as I have said already) Platea. This island is said to be as big as the city of Cyrene is now.
157. Here they dwelt for two years; but as all went wrong with them, leaving there one of themselves the rest voyaged to Delphi, and on their coming enquired of the oracle, and said that they were dwelling in Libya, but that they were none the better off for that. Then the priestess gave them this reply:
“I have seen Libya’s pastures: thine eyes have never beheld them. Knowest them better than I? then wondrous indeed is thy wisdom.”
Hearing this, Battus and his men sailed back again; for the god would not suffer them to do aught short of colonising Libya itself; and having come to the island and taken again him whom they had left there, they made a settlement at a place in Libya itself, over against the island which was called Aziris This is a place enclosed on both sides by the fairest of groves, and a river flows by one side of it.
158. Here they dwelt for six years; but in the seventh the Libyans persuaded them by entreaty to leave the place, saying that they would lead them to a better; and they brought the Greeks from Aziris and led them westwards, so reckoning the hours of daylight that they led the Greeks by night past the fairest place in their country, called I rasa, lest the Greeks should see it in their passage. Then they brought the Greeks to what is called the Fountain of Apollo, and said to them: “Here, ye Greeks, it befits you to dwell; for here is a hole in the sky.”
159. Now in the time of Battus the founder of the colony, who ruled for forty years, and of his son Arcesilaus who ruled for sixteen, the dwellers in Cyrene were no more in number than when they had first gone forth to the colony. 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. Then these with their king, whose name was Adicran, being robbed of their lands and violently entreated by the Cyrenaeans, sent to Egypt and put themselves in the hands of Apries, the king of that country. Apries mustered a great host of Egyptians and sent it against Cyrene; the Cyrenaeans marched out to the place Irasa and the spring Thestes, and there battled with the Egyptians and overcame them; for the Egyptians had as yet had no experience of Greeks, and despised their enemy; whereby they were so utterly destroyed that few of them returned to Egypt. For this mishap, and because they blamed Apries for it, the Egyptians revolted from him.
160. This Battus had a son Arcesilaus; he at his first coming to reign quarrelled with his own brothers, till they left him and went away to another place in Libya, where they founded a city for themselves, which was then and is now called Barce; and while they were founding it, they persuaded the Libyans to revolt from the Cyrenaeans. Then Arcesilaus came with an army into the country of the Libyans who had received his brothers and had also revolted; and these fled in fear of him to the eastern Libyans. Arcesilaus followed their flight until he came in his pursuit to Leucon in Libya, where the Libyans resolved to attack him; they joined battle and so wholly overcame the Cyrenaeans that seven thousand Cyrenaean men-at-arms were there slain. After this disaster Arcesilaus, being sick and having drunk medicine, was strangled by his brother Haliarchus; Haliarchus was craftily slain by Arcesilaus’ wife Eryxo.
161. Arcesilaus’ kingship passed to his son Battus, who was lame and infirm on his feet. The Cyrenaeans, in the affliction that had befallen them, sent to Delphi to enquire what ordering of their state should best give them prosperity; the priestess bade them bring a peacemaker from Mantinea in Arcadia. The Cyrenaeans then sending their request, the Mantineans gave them their most esteemed townsman, whose name was Demonax. When this man came to Cyrene and learnt all, he divided the people into three tribes; of which divisions the Theraeans and dispossessed Libyans were one, the Peloponnesians and Cretans the second, and all the islanders the third; moreover he set apart certain domains and priesthoods for their king Battus, but gave all the rest, which had belonged to the kings, to be now held by the people in common.
162. During the life of this Battus aforesaid these ordinances held good, but in the time of his son Arcesilaus there arose much contention concerning the king’s rights. Arcesilaus, son of the lame Battus and Pheretime, would not abide by the ordinances of Demonax, but demanded back the prerogative of his forefathers, and made himself head of a faction; but he was worsted and banished to Samos, and his mother fled to Salamis in Cyprus. Now Salamis at this time was ruled by Evelthon, who dedicated that marvellous censer at Delphi which stands in the treasury of the Corinthians. To him Pheretime came, asking him for an army which should bring her and her son back to Cyrene; but Evelthon being willing to give her all else, only not an army, when she took what he gave her she said that this was well, but it were better to give her an army at her request. This she would still say, whatever was the gift; at the last Evelthon sent her a golden spindle and distaff, and wool therewith; and Pheretime uttering the same words as before, he answered that these, and not armies, were gifts for women.
163. Meanwhile Arcesilaus was in Samos, gathering all men that he could and promising them a new division of land; and while a great army was thus mustering, he made a journey to Delphi, to enquire of the oracle concerning his return. The priestess gave him this answer: “For the lives of four named Battus and four named Arcesilaus, to wit, for eight generations of men, Loxias grants to your house the kingship of Cyrene; more than this he counsels you not so much as to essay. But thou, return to thy country and dwell there in peace. But if thou findest the oven full of earthen pots, bake not the pots, but let them go unscathed. And if thou bakest them in the oven, go not into the sea-girt place; for if thou dost, then shalt thou thyself be slain, and the bull too that is fairest of the herd.” This was the oracle given by the priestess to Arcesilaus.
164. But he with the men from Samos returned to Cyrene, whereof having made himself master he forgot the oracle, and demanded justice upon his enemies for his banishment. Some of these departed altogether, out of the country; others Arcesilaus seized and sent away to Cyprus to be there slain. These were carried out of their course to Cnidus, where the Cnidians saved them and sent them to Thera. Others of the Cyrenaeans fled for refuge into a great tower that belonged to one Aglomachus, a private man, and Arcesilaus piled wood round it and burnt them there. Then, perceiving too late that this was the purport of the Delphic oracle which forbade him to bake the pots if he found them in the oven, he refrained of set purpose from going into the city of the Cyrenaeans, fearing the death prophesied and supposing the sea-girt place to be Cyrene. Now his wife was his own kinswoman, daughter of Alazir king of the Barcaeans, and Arcesilaus betook himself to Alazir; but men of Barce and certain of the exiles from Cyrene were aware of him and slew him as he walked in the town, and Alazir his father-in-law likewise. So Arcesilaus whether with or without intent missed the meaning of the oracle and fulfilled his destiny.
165. As long as Arcesilaus, after working his own destruction, was living at Barce, his mother Pheretime held her son’s prerogative at Cyrene, where she administered all his business and sat with others in council. But when she learnt of her son’s death at Barce, she made her escape away to Egypt, trusting to the good service which Arcesilaus had done Cambyses the son of Cyrus; for this was the Arcesilaus who gave Cyrene to Cambyses and agreed to pay tribute. So on her coming to Egypt Pheretime made supplication to Aryandes, demanding that he should avenge her, on the plea that her son had been killed for allying himself with the Medes.
166. This Aryandes had been appointed by Cambyses viceroy of Egypt; at a later day he was put to death for making himself equal to Darius. For learning and seeing that Darius desired to leave such a memorial of himself as no king had ever wrought, Aryandes imitated him, till he got his reward; for Darius had coined money out of gold refined to an extreme purity, and Aryandes, then ruling Egypt, made a like silver coinage; and now there is no silver money so pure as is the Aryandic. But when Darius heard that Aryandes was so doing, he put him to death, not on this plea but as a rebel.
167. At this time Aryandes, of whom I speak, took pity on Pheretime and gave her all the Egyptian land and sea forces, appointing Amasis, a Maraphian, general of the army, and Badres of the tribe of the Pasargadae admiral of the fleet. But before despatching the host Aryandes sent a herald to Barce to enquire who it was who had killed Arcesilaus. The Barcaeans answered that it was the deed of the whole city, for the many wrongs that Arcesilaus had done them; which when he heard, Aryandes then sent his armament with Pheretime. This was the alleged pretext; but, as I myself think, the armament was sent to subdue Libya. For the Libyan tribes are many and of divers kinds, and though a few of them were the king’s subjects the greater part cared nothing for Darius.
168. Now as concerning the lands inhabited by Libyans, the Adyrmachidae are the people that dwell nearest to Egypt; they follow Egyptian usages for the most part, but wear a dress like that of other Libyans. Their women wear bronze torques on both legs; their hair is long; they catch each her own lice, then bite and throw them away. They are the only Libyans that do this, and that show the king all virgins that are to be wedded; the king takes the virginity of whichever of these pleases him. These Adyrmachidae reach from Egypt to the harbour called Plynus.
169. Next to them are the Giligamae, who inhabit the country to the west as far as the island Aphrodisias; ere this is reached the island Platea, which the Cyrenaeans colonised, lies off the coast, and on the mainland is the haven called Menelaus, and that Aziris which was a settlement of the Cyrenaeans. Here begins the country of silphium, which reaches from the island Platea to the entrance of the Syrtis. This people is like the others in its usages.
170. The next people westward of the Giligamae are the Asbystae, who dwell inland of Cyrene, not coming down to the sea-coast; for that is Cyrenaean territory. These are drivers of four-horse chariots to a greater extent than any other Libyans; it is their practice to imitate most of the Cyrenaean usages.
171. Next westward of the Asbystae are the Auschisae, dwelling inland of Barce, and touching the sea-coast at Euhesperidae. About the middle of the land of the Auschisae dwells the little tribe of the Bacales, whose territory comes down to the sea at Tauchira, a town in the Barcaean country; their usages are the same as those of the dwellers inland of Cyrene.
172. 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. When a man of the Nasamones first weds; on the first night the bride must by custom lie with each of the whole company in turn; and each man after intercourse gives her whatever gift he has brought from his house. As for their manner of swearing and divination, they lay their hands on the graves of the men reputed to have been the most just and good among them, and by these men they swear; their practice of divination is to go to the tombs of their ancestors, where after making prayers they lie down to sleep, and take whatever dreams come to them for oracles. They give and receive pledges by drinking each from the hand of the other party; and if they have nothing liquid they take of the dust of the earth and lick it up.
173. On the borders of the Nasamones is the country of the Psylli, who perished in this wise: the force of the south wind dried up their water-tanks, and all their country, lying within the region of the Syrtis, was waterless. Taking counsel together they marched southward (I tell the story as it is told by the Libyans), and when they came into the sandy desert a strong south wind buried them. So they perished utterly, and the Nasamones have their country.
174. Inland of these to the southward the Garamantes dwell in the wild beasts’ country. They shun the sight and fellowship of men, and have no weapons of war, nor know how to defend themselves.
175. These dwell inland of the Nasamones; the neighbouring seaboard to the west is the country of the Macae, who shave their hair to a crest, leaving that on the top of their heads to grow and shaving clean off what is on either side; they carry in war bucklers made of ostrich skins. The river Cinyps flows into their sea through their country from a hill called the Hill of the Graces. This hill is thickly wooded, while the rest of Libya whereof I have spoken is bare of trees; it is two hundred furlongs distant from the sea.
176. Next to these Macae are the Gindanes, where every woman wears many leathern anklets, because (so it is said) she puts on an anklet for every man with whom she has had intercourse; and she who wears most is reputed the best, because she has been loved by most men.
177. There is a headland jutting out to sea from the land of the Gindanes; on it dwell the Lotus-eaters, whose only fare is the lotus. The lotus fruit is of the bigness of a mastich-berry: it has a sweet taste like the fruit of a date-palm; the lotus-eaters not only eat it but make wine of it.
178. Next to these along the coast are the Machlyes, who also use the lotus, but less than the people aforesaid. Their country reaches to a great river called Triton, which issues into the great Tritonian lake, wherein is an island called Phla. It is said that the Lacedaemonians were bidden by an oracle to plant a settlement on this island.
179. The following story is also told:—Jason (it is said) when the Argo had been built at the foot of Pelion, put therein besides a hecatomb a bronze tripod, and set forth to sail round Peloponnesus, that he might come to Delphi. But when in his course he was off Malea, a north wind caught and carried him away to Libya; and before he could spy land he came into the shallows of the Tritonian lake. There, while yet he could find no way out, Triton (so goes the story) appeared to him and bade Jason give him the tripod, promising so to show the shipmen the channel and send them on their way unharmed. Jason did his bidding, and Triton then showed them the passage out of the shallows and set the tripod in his own temple; but first he prophesied over it, declaring the whole matter to Jason’s comrades: to wit, that when any descendant of the Argo’s crew should take away the tripod, then needs must a hundred Greek cities be founded on the shores of the Tritonian lake. Hearing this (it is said) the Libyan people of the country hid the tripod.
180. Next to these Machlyes are the Auseans; these and the Machlyes, divided by the Triton, dwell on the shores of the Tritonian lake. The Machlyes wear the hair of their heads long behind, the Auseans in front. They make a yearly festival to Athene, whereat their maidens are parted into two bands and fight each other with stones and staves, thus (as they say) honouring after the manner of their ancestors that native goddess whom we call Athene. Maidens that die of their wounds are called false virgins. Before the girls are set fighting, the whole people choose ever the fairest maiden, and equip her with a Corinthian helmet and Greek panoply, to be then mounted on a chariot and drawn all along the lake shore. With what armour they equipped their maidens before Greeks came to dwell near them, I cannot say; but I suppose the armour to have been Egyptian; for I hold that the Greeks got their shield and helmet from Egypt. As for Athene, they say that she was daughter of Poseidon and the Tritonian lake, and that, being for some cause wroth with her father, she gave herself to Zeus, who made her his own daughter. Such is their tale. The intercourse of men and women there is promiscuous; they do not cohabit but have intercourse like cattle. When a woman’s child is well grown, within three months thereafter the men assemble, and the child is adjudged to be that man’s to whom it is most like.
181. I have now told of all the nomad Libyans that dwell on the sea-coast. Farther inland than these is that Libyan country which is haunted by wild beasts, and beyond this wild beasts’ land there runs a ridge of sand that stretches from Thebes of Egypt to the Pillars of Heracles. At intervals of about ten days’ journey along this ridge there are masses of great lumps of salt in hillocks; on the top of every hillock a fountain of cold sweet water shoots up from the midst of the salt; men dwell round it who are farthest away towards the desert and inland from the wild beasts’ country. The first on the journey from Thebes, ten days distant from that place, are the Ammonians, who follow the worship of the Zeus of Thebes; for, as I have before said, the image of Zeus at Thebes has the head of a ram. They have another spring of water besides, which is warm at dawn, and colder at market-time, and very cold at noon; and it is then that they water their gardens; as the day declines the coldness abates, till at sunset the water grows warm. It becomes ever hotter and hotter till midnight, and then it boils and bubbles; after midnight it becomes ever cooler till dawn. This spring is called the spring of the sun.
182. At a distance of ten days’ journey again from the Ammonians along the sandy ridge, there is a hillock of salt like that of the Ammonians, and springs of water, where men dwell; this place is called Augila; it is to this that the Nasamones are wont to come to gather palm-fruit.
183. After ten days’ journey again from Augila there is yet another hillock of salt and springs of water and many fruit-bearing palms, as at the other places; men dwell there called Garamantes, an exceeding great nation, who sow in earth which they have laid on the salt. Hence is the shortest way to the Lotus-eaters’ country, thirty days’ journey distant. Among the Garamantes are the oxen that go backward as they graze; whereof the reason is that their horns curve forward; therefore they walk backward in their grazing, not being able to go forward, seeing that the horns would project into the ground. In all else they are like other oxen, save that their hide is thicker, and harder to the touch. These Garamantes go in their four-horse chariots chasing the cave-dwelling Ethiopians: for the Ethiopian cave-dwellers are swifter of foot than any men of whom tales are brought to us. They live on snakes, and lizards, and such-like creeping things. Their speech is like none other in the world; it is like the squeaking of bats.
184. After another ten days’ journey from the Garamantes there is again a salt hillock and water; men dwell there called Atarantes. 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. The people of the country call it the pillar of heaven. These men have got their name, which is Atlantes, from this mountain. It is said that they eat no living creature, and see no dreams in their sleep.
185. I know and can tell the names of all the peoples that dwell on the ridge as far as the Atlantes, but no farther than that. But this I know, that the ridge reaches as far as the Pillars of Heracles and beyond them. 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; for the same reason as the Egyptians too profess, they will not touch the flesh of cows; and they rear no swine. The women of Cyrene too deem it wrong to eat cows’ flesh, because of the Isis of Egypt; nay, they even honour her with fasts and festivals; and the Barcaean women refuse to eat swine too as well as cows.
187. 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. In truth no men known to us are so healthy as the Libyans; whether it be by reason of this practice, I cannot with exactness say; but most healthy they certainly are. When the children smart from the pain of the burning the Libyans have found a remedy, which is, to heal them by moistening with goats’ urine. This is what the Libyans themselves say.
188. 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.
189. It would seem that the robe and aegis of the images of Athene were copied by the Greeks from the Libyan women; for save that the dress of Libyan women is leathern, and that the tassels of their goatskin corselets are not snakes hut made of thongs of hide, in all else their equipment is the same. Nay, the very name bewrays that the raiment of the statues of Pallas has come from Libya; for Libyan women wear hairless tasselled goatskins over their dress, coloured with madder, and the Greeks have changed the name of these goatskins into their “aegis.” 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.
191. Westward of the river Triton and next to the Aseans begins the country of Libyans who till the soil and possess houses; they are called Maxyes; they wear their hair long on the right side of their heads and shave the left, and they paint their bodies with vermilion. These claim descent from the men who came from Troy. Their country, and the rest of the western part of Libya is much fuller of wild beasts and more wooded than the country of the nomads. For the eastern region of Libya, which the nomads inhabit, is low-lying and sandy as far as the river Triton; but the land westward of this, where dwell the tillers of the soil, is exceeding mountainous and wooded and full of wild beasts. 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.
192. But in the nomads’ country there are none of these; yet there are others, white-rumped antelopes, gazelles, hartebeest, asses, not the horned asses, but those that are called “undrinking” (for indeed they never drink), the oryx, the horns whereof are made into the sides of a lyre, foxes, hyenas, porcupines, wild rams, the dictys, jackals, panthers, the borys, land crocodiles three cubits long, most like to lizards, and ostriches and little one-horned serpents; all these beasts are there besides those that are elsewhere too, save only deer and wild boar; of these two kinds there are none at all in Libya. There are in this country three kinds of mice, the two-footed, the “zegeriës” (this is a Libyan word, signifying in our language hills), and the bristly-haired, as they are called. There are also weasels found in the silphium, very like to the weasels of Tartessus. So many are the wild creatures of the nomads’ country, as far as by our utmost enquiry we have been able to learn.
193. Next to the Maxyes of Libya are the Zauekes, whose women drive their chariots to war.
194. Next to these are the Gyzantes, where much honey is made by bees, and much more yet (so it is said) by craftsmen. It is certain that they all paint themselves with vermilion and eat apes, which do greatly abound in their mountains.
195. Off their coast (say the Carchedonians) there lies an island called Cyrauis, two hundred furlongs long and narrow across; there is a passage to it from the mainland; it is full of olives and vines. It is said that there is a lake in this island wherefrom the maidens of the country draw up gold-dust out of the mud with feathers smeared with pitch. I know not if this be truly so; I write but what is said. Yet all things are possible; for I myself saw pitch drawn from the water of a pool in Zacynthus. The pools there are many; the greatest of them is seventy feet long and broad, and two fathoms deep. Into this they drop a pole with a myrtle branch made fast to its end, and bring up pitch on the myrtle, smelling like asphalt, and for the rest better than the pitch of Pieria. Then they pour it into a pit that they have dug near the pool; and when much is collected there, they fill their vessels from the pit. Whatever thing falls into the pool is carried under ground and appears again in the sea, which is about four furlongs distant from the pool. Thus, then, the story coming from the island off the Libyan coast is like the truth.
196. Another story too is told by the Carchedonians. There is a place in Libya, they say, where men dwell beyond the Pillars of Heracles; to this they come and unload their cargo; then having laid it orderly along the beach they go aboard their ships and light a smoking fire. The people of the country see the smoke, and coming to the sea they lay down gold to pay for the cargo and withdraw away from the wares. Then the Carchedonians disembark and examine the gold; if it seems to them a fair price for their cargo, they take it and go their ways; but if not, they go aboard again and wait, and the people come back and add more gold till the shipmen are satisfied. Herein neither party (it is said) defrauds the other; the Carchedonians do not lay hands on the gold till it matches the value of their cargo, nor do the people touch the cargo till the shipmen have taken the gold.
197. 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.
198. To my thinking, there is in no part of Libya any great excellence whereby it should be compared to Asia or Europe, save only in the region which is called by the same name as its river, Cinyps. But this region is a match for the most fertile cornlands in the world, nor is it at all like to the rest of Libya. For the soil is black and well watered by springs, and has no fear of drought, nor is it harmed by drinking excessíve showers (there is rain in this part of Libya). Its yield of corn is of the same measure as in the land of Babylon. The land inhabited by the Euhesperitae is also good; it yields at the most an hundredfold; but the land of the Cinyps region yields three hundredfold.
199. 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. Thus the Cyrenaeans have a harvest lasting eight months. Of these matters, then, enough.
200. Now when the Persians sent by Aryandes from Egypt to avenge Pheretime came to Barce, they laid siege to the city, demanding the surrender of those who were guilty of the slaying of Arcesilaus: but the Barcaeans, whose whole people were accessory to the deed, would not consent. Then the Persians besieged Barce for nine months, digging under ground passages leading to the walls, and making violent assaults. As for the mines, a smith discovered them by the means of a brazen shield, and this is how he found them: carrying the shield round the inner side of the walls he smote it against the ground of the city; all other places where he smote it returned but a dull sound, but where the mines were the bronze of the shield rang clear. Here the Barcaeans made a countermine and slew those Persians who were digging the earth. Thus the mines were discovered, and the assaults were beaten off by the townsmen.
201. When much time was spent and ever many on both sides (not less of the Persians than of their foes) were slain, Amasis the general of the land army devised a plot, as knowing that Barce could not be taken by force but might be taken by guile: he dug by night a wide trench and laid frail planks across it, which he then covered over with a layer of earth level with the ground about it. Then when day came he invited the Barcaeans to confer with him, and they readily consented; at last all agreed to conditions of peace. This was done thus: standing on the hidden trench, they gave and took a sworn assurance that their treaty should hold good while the ground where they stood was unchanged; the Barcaeans should promise to pay a due sum to the king, and the Persians should do the Barcaeans no hurt. When the sworn agreement was made, the townsmen, trusting in it and opening all their gates, themselves came out of the city, and suffered all their enemies who so desired to enter within the walls: but the Persians broke down the hidden bridge and ran into the city. They broke down the bridge that they had made, that so they might keep the oath which they had sworn to the Barcaeans, namely, that this treaty should hold good for as long as the ground remained as it was; but if they broke the bridge the treaty held good no longer.
202. Pheretime took the most guilty of the Barcaeans, when they were delivered to her by the Persians, and set them impaled round the top of the wall; she cut off the breasts of their women and planted them round the wall in like manner. As for the remnant of the Barcaeans, she bade the Persians take them as their booty, save as many as were of the house of Battus and not accessory to the murder; to these she committed the governance of the city.
203. The Persians thus enslaved the rest of the Barcaeans, and departed homewards. When they appeared before the city of Cyrene, the Cyrenaeans suffered them to pass through their city, that a certain oracle might be fulfilled. As the army was passing through, Badres the admiral of the fleet was for taking the city, but Amasis the general of the land army would not consent, saying that he had been sent against Barce and no other Greek city; at last they passed through Cyrene and encamped on the hill of Lycaean Zeus; there they repented of not having taken the city, and essayed to enter it again, but the Cyrenaeans would not suffer them. Then, though none attacked them, fear fell upon the Persians, and they fled to a place sixty furlongs distant and there en camped; and presently while they were there a messenger from Aryandes came to the camp bidding them return. The Persians asked and obtained of the Cyrenaeans provisions for their march, having received which they departed, to go to Egypt; but after that they fell into the hands of the Libyans, who slew the laggards and stragglers of the host for the sake of their garments and possessions; till at last they came to Egypt.
204. This Persian armament advanced as far as Euhesperidae in Libya and no farther. 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. Such, and so great, was the vengeance which Pheretime daughter of Battus wrought upon the people of Barce.