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Metadata
- Author: Herodotus
- Full Title: The Fourth Book, Entitled Melpomene
- Category: articles
- Summary: The Scythians used fast raids and scorched-earth tactics to evade and defeat enemies, including Persians under Darius. Darius chased them far into the steppe, built forts, but could not bring them to a decisive battle. The Scythians allied with neighboring tribes and relied on mobility and empty land to survive.
- URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/377401628
Highlights
- So long as they see us with arms in our hands, they imagine themselves our equals in birth and bravery; but let them be- hold us with no other weapon but the whip, and they will feel that they are our slaves, and flee before us. (View Highlight)
- Now some say that the Ocean begins in the east, and runs the whole way round the world; (View Highlight)
- Unless, Persians, ye can turn into birds and fly up into the sky. or become mice and bur- row under the ground, or make yourselves frogs, and take refuge in the fens, ye will never make escape from this land, but die pierced by our arrows. (View Highlight)
- Such is the rea- son why the Scythians blind all those whom they take in war; it arises from their not being tillers of the ground, but a pastoral race. (View Highlight)
- They add that from the time of Targitaiis, their first king, to the inva- sion of their country by Darius, is a period of one thousand years, neither less nor more. (View Highlight)
- According to them, Hercules, when he was carrying off the cows of Geryon, arrived in the region which is now inhabited by the Scyths, but which was then a desert. (View Highlight)
- There is also another different story, now to be related, in which I am more inclined to put faith than in any other. It is that the wandering Scythians once dwelt in Asia, and there warred with the Massagetae, but with ill success; (View Highlight)
- Aristeas, they said, who belonged to one of the noblest families in the island, had entered one day into a fuller’s shop, when he suddenly dropt down dead. (View Highlight)
- The bald men say, but it does not seem to me credible, that the people who live in these mountains have feet like goats; andthatafterpassingthem you find another race of men, who sleep dur- ing one half of the year. This latter statement appears to me quite unworthy of credit. (View Highlight)
- both men and women —bald from their birth, to have flat noses, and very long chins. (View Highlight)
- The Carys- tians took them over to Tenos, without stop- ping at Andros; and the Tenians brought them finally to Delos. Such, according to their own account, was the road by which the offerings reached the Delians. (View Highlight)
- The Persians inhabit a country upon the southern or Erythraean sea; above them, to the north, are the Medes; beyond the Medes, the Saspirians; beyond them, the Colchians, reach- ing to the northern sea, into which the Phasis empties itself. These four nations fill the whole space from one sea to the other. (View Highlight)
- For my part I am astonished that men should ever have divided Libya, Asia, and Eu (View Highlight)
- rope as they have, for they are exceedingly un- equal. Europe extends the entire length of the other two, and for breadth will not even (as I think) bear to be compared to them. As for Libya, we know it to be washed on all sides by the sea, except where it is attached to Asia. (View Highlight)
- According to the Greeks in general, Libya was so called after a certain Libya, a native woman, and Asia after the wife of Prometheus. (View Highlight)
- from Asies, the son of Cotys, and grandson of Manes, who also gave name to the tribe Asias at Sardis. (View Highlight)
- Ister (View Highlight)
- next to it is the Tyras, (View Highlight)
- third river is the Hypanis. (View Highlight)
- fifth river, called the Panticapes, (View Highlight)
- sixth stream is the Hypacyris (View Highlight)
- seventh river is the Gerrhus, (View Highlight)
- fourth of the Scythian rivers is the Borysthenes. (View Highlight)
- eighth river is the Tanais (View Highlight)
- Scythia has an abundance of soothsayers, who foretell the future by means of a number of willow wands. (View Highlight)
- The fifty strangled youths are then mounted severally on the fifty horses. (View Highlight)
- The Scythians have an extreme hatred of all foreign customs, particularly of those in use among the Greeks, (View Highlight)
- Thus rigidly do the Scythians maintain their own customs, and thus severely do they punish such as adopt foreign usages. (View Highlight)
- The belief of the Getae in respect of im- mortality is the following. They think that they do not really die, but that when they de- part this life they go to Zalmoxis, who is called also Gebeleizis by some among them. To this god every five years they send a messenger, who is chosen by lot out of the whole nation, and charged to bear him their several requests. (View Highlight)
- The Thracians at that time lived in a wretched way, and were a poor ignorant race; Zalmoxis, therefore, who by his commerce with the Greeks, and especially with one who was by no means their most contemptible philosopher, Pythagoras to wit, was acquainted with the Ionic mode of life and with manners more re- fined than those current among his country- men, (View Highlight)
- every Neurian once a year becomes a wolf for a few days, at the end of which time he is restored to his proper shape. (View Highlight)
- The Tauri have the following customs. They offer in sacrifice to the Virgin all ship- wrecked persons, and all Greeks compelled to put into their ports by stress of weather. (View Highlight)
- All this they did on account of their strong desire to obtain children from so notable a race. (View Highlight)
- For, as I observed before, the land of the Scythians produces neither ass nor mule, and contains no single specimen of either animal, by reason of the cold. (View Highlight)
- This they did several times, until at last Darius was at his wits’ end; hereon the Scythian princes, understanding how matters stood, despatched a herald to the Persian camp with presents for the king: these were, a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows. (View Highlight)
- for it. Had they not ravaged all the pasturages of that region, and filled in all the wells, they would have easily found the Persians when- ever they chose. (View Highlight)
- Artabanus asked him “what he would like to have in as great plenty as the seeds of the pomegranate?” Darius answered —“Had I as many men like Megabazus as there are seeds here, it would please me better than to be lord of Greece.” (View Highlight)
- Now the Lacedaemonians never put criminals to death in the daytime, but always at night. (View Highlight)
- The Theraeans upon this sent to Delphi, and were reminded reproachfully that they had never colonised Libya. (View Highlight)
- This spring is called “the Fountain of the Sun.” (View Highlight)
- Likewise the Greeks learnt from the Libyans to yoke four horses to a chariot. (View Highlight)
- All the wandering tribes bury their dead according to the fashion of the Greeks, ex- cept the Nasamonians. They bury them sitting, and are right careful when the sick man is at the point of giving up the ghost, to make him sit and not let him die lying down. (View Highlight)
- They let the hair grow long on the right side of their heads, and shave it close on the left; they besmear their bodies with red paint; and they say that they are descended from the men of Troy. (View Highlight)
- For this is the tract in which the huge serpents are found, and the lions, the elephants, the bears, the aspicks, and the horned asses. (View Highlight)
- creatures without heads, whom the Libyans declare to have their eyes in their breasts; (View Highlight)
- They sacrifice to the Sun and Moon, but not to any other god. This worship is common to all the Libyans. (View Highlight)
- for they had promised the Barcae- ans that the oath should continue “so long as the ground whereon they stood was firm.” When, therefore, the bridge was once broken down, the oath ceased to hold. (View Highlight)