Herodotus probably knew no more than he may have heard at the Greek factory at Olbia (near the site of the modern Kinburn), he is carried away by the interest of his subject, and launches out into a geographical digression, chiefly entertaining as a record of ancient notions, and as showing how facts become altered in passing from mouth to mouth. The "Scythia" of Herodotus seems to embrace "the basins of the Don, Dnieper, Dniester, and Boug, and the northern half of that of the Lower Danube"[1]—i.e., a great portion of Russia, Bessarabia, Wallachia, and Moldavia. He tells strange stories of the tribes who dwelt around Scythia, as far as the uttermost parts of Europe. The Issedonians and the Androphagi were given to cannibalism; the former, like the Callatian Indians, feasting on their fathers, and keeping their skulls set in gold as heirlooms. This custom was, however, balanced with another, which would place them, as some might think now, in the van of progress—they gave women equal rights with men. The Neuri were said to change into wolves periodically; a tradition which still survives in the "wehr-wolf" of the Germans, and the "loup-garon" of the French. Livingstone relates that there were men in the country above the Zambesi who were supposed to become lions for a term, and that the souls of great captains were thought to pass into the king of beasts. But perhaps the story rose out of the fact that the Neuri wore wolf-skins in winter. There were people in the extreme north who slept six months in the year (Herodotus's informant may have said that there was night for six months), and who had goat's feet—that is, they may
- ↑ Heeren.
