Histories — Book 4 (Melpomene)

Herodotus · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

After the capture of Babylon, Darius himself led a campaign against the Scythians. Since Asia was flourishing with men and great wealth was being amassed, Darius desired to punish the Scythians, because they had been the first to invade Median territory and, defeating those who opposed them in battle, had begun the wrongdoing. For the Scythians had ruled upper Asia for twenty-eight years, as I have said before.

They had invaded Asia in pursuit of the Cimmerians, and had put an end to the rule of the Medes; for the Medes had ruled Asia before the Scythians arrived. But the Scythians, after being away twenty-eight years and returning to their own land after so long a time, found awaiting them a task no less than the one against the Medes: they discovered an army opposing them that was not small. For the wives of the Scythians,

since their men had been away for so long, had been consorting with the slaves. The Scythians blind all their slaves, on account of the milk which they drink, doing it in this way: taking bone pipes very much like flutes, they insert these into the genitals of the mares and blow with their mouths, while others milk as the others blow. They say they do this for the following reason: the veins of the mare

become filled by the blowing and her udder is drawn down. When they have milked the milk, they pour it into hollow wooden vessels, and stationing the blind men around the vessels they stir the milk, and the part of it that rises to the top they skim off and consider more valuable, while what settles below is thought inferior to the other. For these reasons the Scythians blind every slave they take; for they are not

farmers but nomads. From these slaves, then, and the women, a generation of young men was raised; and when these learned of their own origin, they took up arms against the returning Scythians as they came back from the Medes. First they cut off the land, digging a wide trench running from the Tauric mountains to Lake Maeotis, which is very large; and afterward, when the Scythians tried to force their way in,

they camped opposite them and fought. Battle occurred many times, and since the Scythians could gain no advantage in the fighting, one man among them spoke up: "What are we doing, men of Scythia? By fighting our own slaves, we ourselves become fewer as we are killed, and by killing them we will rule over fewer in the future. Now it seems best to me that we set aside spears and bows, and each man take the

whip of his horse and go closer to them. For as long as they saw us bearing weapons, they thought themselves equal to us and born of equals; but when they see us carrying whips instead of weapons, they will realize that they are our slaves, and acknowledging this, they will not stand their ground." Hearing this, the Scythians did as he said; and the slaves, astonished at what was happening, forgot the fighting and fled.

Thus the Scythians ruled Asia, and, driven out again by the Medes, returned to their own land in this manner. It was for these reasons that Darius, wishing to punish them, gathered an army against them. Now as the Scythians tell it, theirs is the youngest of all nations, and it came about in this way. The first man to exist in this land, which was then a wasteland, was named Targitaus;

and the parents of this Targitaus, they say — though I do not find this credible, yet they say it — were Zeus and a daughter of the river Borysthenes. From such a lineage Targitaus was born, and to him were born three sons, Lipoxaïs, Arpoxaïs, and the youngest, Colaxaïs. While these were ruling, golden objects fell from the sky into Scythian territory: a plow, a yoke,

an axe, and a cup. The eldest, seeing them first, wished to approach and take them, but as he came near the gold began to burn. When he withdrew, the second approached, and the same thing happened to him again. So the burning gold repelled these two, but when the third, the youngest, approached, the fire went out, and he carried the gold objects to his own home; and

the elder brothers, acknowledging this, handed over the entire kingship to the youngest. From Lipoxaïs, they say, are descended those Scythians called the Auchatae; from the middle brother, Arpoxaïs, come the Catiari together with the Traspians; and the youngest of the three, the king, fathered those called the Paralatae. All together they are called Scoloti, after the name of the king; the Greeks

called them Scythians. This, then, is how the Scythians say they came to be; and as for the years since they came into being, they say the total from the first king, Targitaus, to Darius's crossing against them is no more than a thousand years, but exactly that many. This sacred gold the kings guard most carefully, and with great sacrifices they propitiate it and visit it every

year. Whoever, having charge of the sacred gold in the festival, falls asleep in the open air, that man, the Scythians say, does not live out the year; and for this reason he is given as much land as he can ride around on horseback in a single day. Since the land was vast, Colaxaïs established three kingdoms for his own sons, and made one of these the greatest, in which the

gold is kept safe. As for the regions further up toward the north wind, they say it is not possible for the neighboring peoples of that land to see or pass through any farther, on account of feathers that have been scattered about; for both the earth and the air there are full of feathers, and these are what block the view. This is what the Scythians say about themselves and the land to the north

of them. But the Greeks who dwell on the Black Sea tell it this way. Heracles, driving the cattle of Geryon, came to this land, which was then a wasteland, the very land the Scythians now inhabit. Geryon lived outside the Black Sea, dwelling on what the Greeks call the island of Erytheia, near Gadeira, beyond the Pillars of Heracles on the Ocean. As for the Ocean, they say in tradition that it begins from the rising of the sun

and flows around the whole earth, but they do not prove this by any deed. From there it was that Heracles reached the land now known as Scythia, and being overtaken by winter and frost, he wrapped himself in his lion skin and fell asleep, and in that time his horses, which were grazing free from the chariot, vanished by some divine chance. When Heracles awoke, he searched for them, and going over the whole

land, at last came to the land called Hylaea; there he found in a cave a creature that was half woman, a two-formed viper, whose upper parts from the buttocks were those of a woman, and whose lower parts were those of a snake. Seeing her and marveling, he asked her if she had anywhere seen wandering mares; her reply was that she had them in her own keeping and would return them to him only after

he lay with her; and Heracles agreed to the union for this payment. She, however, kept postponing the return of the horses, wishing to remain as long as possible with Heracles, while he wished to recover them and depart; at last, giving them back, she said: "These mares that came here I have kept safe for you, and you have paid the price of their safekeeping; for I have from you three sons. Tell me

what I should do with these when they grow to manhood — whether I should settle them here myself (since I hold power over this land) or send them to you." So she asked him this, and he, they say, replied to this: "When you see the boys grown to manhood, you would not go wrong doing as follows: whichever of them you see drawing this bow in this manner and

girding himself with this belt in this way, make him the inhabitant of this land; but whichever fails to accomplish these tasks that I command, send him out of the land. Doing this, you yourself will be pleased, and you will carry out what I have instructed." So saying, he loosed one of his bows (up to that time Heracles had carried two) and displayed the belt to her, then handed over

the bow and the belt — a small golden cup hung at the tip of its clasp — and once he gave them to her, he went on his way. She, when the sons born to her had grown to manhood, first gave them names — to one of them Agathyrsus, to the one following Gelonus, and to the youngest Scythes — and then, remembering the instructions, she did as she had been told. And indeed two of

her sons, Agathyrsus and Gelonus, proved unable to accomplish the appointed task and were driven out of the land by their mother, and departed; but the youngest of them, Scythes, accomplished it and remained in the land. And from Scythes, son of Heracles, are descended all the kings who have ever been of the Scythians, and from the cup, even to this

day the Scythians wear cups hanging from their belts; this alone the mother contrived for Scythes. This is what the Greeks who dwell on the Black Sea say. But there is also another story, to which I myself am most inclined: that the nomadic Scythians who dwelt in Asia, pressed hard in war by the Massagetae, departed, crossing the river Araxes for the land of the Cimmerians (for the land the Scythians

now inhabit is said in old times to have belonged to the Cimmerians), and that the Cimmerians, as the Scythians advanced, took counsel, since a great army was coming against them; and their opinions were divided, both sides being firm, but that of the kings was the better. For the opinion of the common people was that it was best to withdraw and not risk danger for the sake of dust, while that of the kings was to fight to the death for

the land against those advancing. Neither the common people were willing to be persuaded by the kings, nor the kings by the common people: the people resolved to withdraw and hand over the land to the invaders without a fight, while the kings decided to lie dead in their own land rather than flee together with the people, considering how many good things they had enjoyed and how many evils they might expect from fleeing their fatherland.

to overtake them. When this seemed best to them, they split into two equal groups and fought each other. All those who died at their own hands were buried by the people of the Cimmerians beside the river Tyras (and their tomb is still visible there), and having buried them, they made their way out of the country; and the Scythians, coming upon it, took the land, now empty of people. And to this day there are

in Scythia Cimmerian walls, and Cimmerian ferries, and there is also a place named Cimmeria, and there is a Cimmerian Bosporus, so called. It is clear that the Cimmerians, fleeing the Scythians into Asia, also founded the peninsula on which the Greek city of Sinope now stands. It is also clear that the Scythians, pursuing them, invaded the land

of Media, having missed the way; for the Cimmerians always fled along the coast, while the Scythians pursued keeping the Caucasus on their right, until they invaded the land of Media, having turned inland from their route. This is another account, told in common by Greeks and non-Greeks alike. Aristeas son of Caystrobius, a man of Proconnesus, said in the verses he composed that he came

to the Issedones, having been seized by Apollo's inspiration, and that above the Issedones dwell the one-eyed Arimaspians, and beyond them the gold-guarding griffins, and beyond these the Hyperboreans, who reach down to the sea. All these peoples, except the Hyperboreans, starting with the Arimaspians, are constantly attacking their neighbors, and it was the Arimaspians who drove the Issedones from their homeland, while the Issedones in turn drove out the Scythians, and the Cimmerians, who dwelt by the southern sea, were pressed by the

Scythians and abandoned their land. So even this man does not agree with the Scythians about this land. As for where Aristeas, the man who said these things, was from, I have told; but the account I heard about him in Proconnesus and Cyzicus, I will now tell. They say that Aristeas, a citizen of standing equal to any other, went into a fuller's shop in Proconnesus and died there, and that the fuller, locking up his workshop,

went off to inform those close to the dead man. And when the report had already spread through the city that Aristeas had died, a man from Cyzicus arrived from the town of Artace and disputed with those who said this, claiming that he had met him going toward Cyzicus and had spoken with him. And while this man argued the point vehemently, those related to the deceased showed up at the fuller's premises

bringing what was needed to carry away the body; but when the room was opened, Aristeas appeared neither dead nor alive. Then, seven years later, he appeared in Proconnesus and composed the verses which the Greeks now call the Arimaspea, and having composed them, he vanished a second time. This is what these cities say; but I know what happened among the people of Metapontum in Italy after this

second disappearance of Aristeas, two hundred and forty years later, as I reckoned by comparing accounts in Proconnesus and Metapontum. The Metapontines say that Aristeas himself appeared to them in their land and commanded them to set up an altar to Apollo, and beside it to place a statue inscribed with the name Aristeas of Proconnesus; for he said that Apollo had come to their land alone among the Italiotes, and that he himself had accompanied him

as the Aristeas who is now here; but at that time, when he accompanied the god, he was a crow. And having said this, he vanished; and according to the Metapontines, they dispatched envoys to Delphi to ask the god what this apparition of a man signified. The Pythia told them to obey the apparition, and that if they obeyed, it would go better for them. They accepted this and carried it out. And now

there stands a statue bearing the name of Aristeas beside the very image of Apollo, and around it laurel trees stand; the image is set up in the marketplace. Let this much be said about Aristeas. As for the land about which this account has set out to speak, no one knows accurately what lies beyond it; for I am unable to learn anything from anyone who claims to have seen it with his own eyes,

for not even Aristeas, whom I mentioned a little before this, not even he claimed in his own verses to have gone beyond the Issedones, but spoke of what lay beyond by hearsay, saying that the Issedones were the ones who told him these things. But as far as we ourselves have been able to reach accurately by hearsay, to the furthest extent, all of it shall be told. From the trading post of the Borysthenites (for this is the

most central of all the coastal places of Scythia), from this point the first to dwell are the Callippidae, who are Greek Scythians, and above them another people who are called the Alazones. These, and the Callippidae, follow the same way of life as the Scythians in other respects, yet they also sow and eat grain, and onions and garlic and lentils and millet. Above the Alazones dwell the Scythian farmers, who do not

sow grain for their own food but for sale. Above these dwell the Neuri. North of the Neuri the land is empty of people, as far as we know. These are the peoples situated by the Hypanis river, west of the Borysthenes; but once one crosses the Borysthenes, starting from the sea the first region is Hylaea, and going up from there dwell the Scythian farmers, whom

the Greeks who live on the river Hypanis call Borysthenites, though they call themselves Olbiopolitans. These farming Scythians occupy the land toward the east for a three days' journey, reaching to the river called the Panticapes, and toward the north a voyage of eleven days up the Borysthenes. Beyond these there is already a great expanse of empty land.

After the empty land dwell the Man-eaters, a people distinct in themselves and in no way Scythian. Beyond these the land is already truly empty, and there is no people at all, as far as we know. To the east of these farming Scythians, on crossing the river Panticapes, dwell the nomad Scythians, who neither sow anything at all nor plow; treeless, this entire territory has

except for Hylaea. These nomads occupy, toward the east, a fourteen days' journey of land stretching to the river Gerrhus. Beyond the Gerrhus lie the so-called royal lands, and the Scythians there are the best and most numerous, and they consider the other Scythians their slaves; they extend southward to

the Tauric land, and eastward to the trench which those born from the blind men dug, and to the trading post on the Maeotic lake called Cremni; some of them extend as far as the river Tanais. North of the royal Scythians dwell the Black-cloaks, another people, not Scythian. Beyond the Black-cloaks

there are lakes and it is empty of people, as far as we know. Crossing the river Tanais, it is no longer Scythia, but the first district belongs to the Sauromatae, who, starting from the recess of the Maeotic lake, occupy toward the north a journey of fifteen days, the whole land being bare of both wild and cultivated trees. Above them, holding the second district, dwell the Budini, a land

occupying all of it thickly wooded with every kind of tree. North of the Budini there is first an empty stretch of a seven days' journey, and after the empty land, turning more toward the east, dwell the Thyssagetae, a numerous and distinct people; they live by hunting. Adjoining them, settled in the same region, are those called the Iyrcae, and these too live by hunting,

in the following manner: each man lies in wait, climbing a tree — and trees are dense throughout the whole country — and each man has a horse trained to lie down on its belly for the sake of being low, and a dog ready as well; when he spots the animal from the tree, he shoots it, then mounts up and gives chase on horseback while his dog keeps hold of the quarry. Beyond these, toward the east, turning aside, dwell other Scythians,

who broke away from the royal Scythians and so came to this region. As far as the land of these Scythians, all that has been described is flat land and deep-soiled; but from that point on it is stony and rough. Having gone through much of this rough land too, there dwell, at the foot of high mountains, men said to be all bald

from birth, both males and females alike, and snub-nosed, and having large chins, speaking their own language, wearing Scythian dress, and living off trees. The name of the tree they live from is 'pontic,' about the size of a fig tree in size. It bears fruit the size of a bean, which has a stone. When this ripens, they pass it through cloth filters, and liquid runs out,

from it a thick black substance; the name of what flows out is 'aschy.' This they both lick and drink mixed with milk, and from the thick sediment of it they make cakes and eat these. For they do not have many sheep, since the pastures there are not good. Each of them lives under a tree; in winter, when they

cover the tree with a thick white felt, and in summer without the felt. No one harms these people, for they are said to be sacred; nor do they possess any weapon of war. It is these people who settle disputes for those living around them, and moreover, whoever flees for refuge to them is harmed by no one; their name is the Argippaeans. As far as the land of these bald men,

there is ample clear knowledge of the land and of the peoples before them; for some of the Scythians reach them, and learning of this is not hard from those Scythians, and also some of the Greeks from the trading post of Borysthenes and from the other trading posts on the Pontus; the Scythians who go to them conduct their business through seven interpreters and seven languages. Up to this point, then, it is known, but beyond

No one can say for certain what lies beyond the bald men. For high mountains cut off the land, impassable, and no one crosses them. These bald men say—though I do not find them credible—that goat-footed men inhabit the mountains, and that beyond them are other men who sleep half the year through. That claim I reject outright. But the region east of the bald men is known

with certainty to be inhabited by the Issedones. What lies further above it, toward the north wind, is not known either to the bald men or to the Issedones, except for what these people themselves report. The Issedones are said to observe the following customs. When a man's father dies, all his relatives bring sheep, and then, having sacrificed them and cut up the meat, they also cut up the dead father of the man receiving them, and mixing

all the meat together they set out a feast. His head, though, they strip of flesh and clean out, then gild it, and thereafter treat it as a sacred image, performing great sacrifices to it every year. A son does this for his father just as the Greeks hold their Genesia. In other respects too they are said to be a just people, and the women hold equal standing with the men. These people, then, are known; but what lies beyond

them, further up, belongs to the Issedones, who say that there are one-eyed men there and gold-guarding griffins. This the Scythians report, having taken it from the Issedones, and from the Scythians the rest of us have adopted it and call them, in the Scythian tongue, Arimaspians; for the Scythians call "one" arima, and "eye" spou. This whole region I have described is so extremely harsh in winter that

for eight of the months an unbearable frost sets in, during which pouring out water produces no mud, but lighting a fire does produce mud. The sea freezes, and the whole Cimmerian Bosporus with it, and the Scythians settled within the trench march out onto the ice and drive their wagons across to the Sindians on the other side. So winter continues in this way for eight months, and for the

remaining four months it is cold there as well. This winter is unlike, in its character, all the winters that occur in other places: in it, during the season proper for rain, there is scarcely any rain worth mentioning, while in summer it rains without stopping. And whereas elsewhere thunder occurs at that season, there it does not occur then, but is abundant in summer. If thunder happens to occur in winter, it is considered

a marvel to be wondered at. So too if an earthquake occurs, whether in summer or in winter, in Scythia, it is considered a marvel. Horses endure this winter and bear up under it, but mules and donkeys cannot endure it at all; whereas elsewhere horses standing in frost suffer frostbite, while donkeys and mules endure it. It seems to me that the breed of hornless cattle too

does not grow horns there for this same reason. My judgment is supported by a line of Homer in the Odyssey, which runs thus: "and Libya, where lambs are horned from birth" — rightly said, since in hot places horns grow quickly, while in places of severe cold cattle either do not grow horns at all, or grow them

only with difficulty. There, then, this happens because of the cold. But I marvel — since my account from the start has been seeking out such digressions — over a strange fact: mules cannot be born anywhere in Elis, even though the climate there isn't cold and no other obvious reason presents itself. The Eleans themselves say that mules are not born among them because of some curse, but that whenever the

season arrives when the mares are ready for breeding, the people take them across into the neighboring territories, and there, in the land of their neighbors, they put donkeys to the mares, until the mares are in foal; then they lead them back home again. As for the feathers which the Scythians say fill the air, and because of which they claim they can neither see nor travel

further into the mainland, this is the opinion I hold about them. The region above this land always has snow falling, less in summer than in winter, as is natural. Now whoever has seen thick snow falling close at hand knows what I mean, for snow resembles feathers. And it is because of this winter, being such as it is, that the northern parts of this continent are uninhabited.

It is the feathers, then, that I believe the Scythians and their neighbors mean when they liken the snow to them. These, then, are the furthest reaches of which anything is reported. Concerning a people called Hyperboreans, neither the Scythians say anything at all, nor do any of the others settled in that region, except perhaps the Issedones. And as I think, not even they say anything, for otherwise the Scythians too would have spoken of them, as they do about the

one-eyed men. But Hesiod has spoken of the Hyperboreans, and so has Homer, in the Epigoni, if indeed it was really Homer who composed those verses. By far the most is said about them by the Delians, who claim that offerings wrapped in stalks of wheat are carried out of Hyperborean lands and reach the Scythians, and that from the Scythians, each neighboring people in turn receiving them, carries them onward,

toward the west, as far as possible, to the Adriatic, and from there, sent southward, the Dodonaean Greeks are the first of the Greeks to receive them; from there they go down to the Malian Gulf and cross over to Euboea, and city passes them to city as far as Carystus; from there Andros is skipped, for it is the Carystians who carry them onward to Tenos, and it is the Tenians who bring them to Delos. In this way, then,

these sacred offerings are said to arrive at Delos. First, according to the account, two maidens carried the offerings from the Hyperboreans, whom the Delians name Hyperoche and Laodice; and along with them, for their safety, the Hyperboreans sent five men of their own citizens as escorts, those who are now called the Perpherees and hold great honors at Delos. But when those sent out by the Hyperboreans

failed to return home, the Hyperboreans took this hard, thinking it would always be their fate, whenever they sent people out, never to get them back. And so they took to carrying the sacred offerings, bound up in wheat straw, to their borders, and charged their neighbors to send them onward, out of their own land, to another people. And thus passed on from people to people, these offerings, they say, arrive at Delos. I myself know of a practice similar to this performed with these very offerings: the Thracian

and Paeonian women, whenever they sacrifice to Artemis the Queen, never do so without having wheat straw accompanying their offerings. This I know these women do. As for the maidens from the Hyperboreans who died at Delos, the Delian children — girls and boys alike — cut their hair in mourning for them: the girls, before marriage, cut off a lock and wind it around a spindle, and place it upon the

tomb — this tomb lies within the sanctuary of Artemis, as one enters on the left, and an olive tree grows upon it — while as many of the Delian boys as there are wind some of their hair around a green shoot and likewise place it upon the tomb. Such is the honor these maidens receive from the inhabitants of Delos. The same people also say that Arge and

Opis, being maidens from the Hyperboreans, traveled by way of these same peoples and arrived at Delos even before Hyperoche and Laodice. These latter came bringing to Eileithyia the tribute they had pledged in exchange for easy childbirth, but Arge and Opis, they say, arrived together with the gods themselves, and other honors were given to them by the Delians: for the women collect

contributions for them, naming their names in the hymn composed for them by Olen, a Lycian man, and it is from these people that the islanders and the Ionians learned to sing hymns naming Opis and Arge, invoking them by name and collecting contributions — this same Olen, having come from Lycia, also composed the other ancient hymns that are sung at Delos — and when the thigh-bones are burned upon

the altar, this ash is used, being cast upon the tomb of Opis and Arge. Their tomb lies behind the sanctuary of Artemis, facing east, very close to the banqueting hall of the Ceans. Let this much be said concerning the Hyperboreans, for the story about Abaris, who is said to have been a Hyperborean, I will not tell — how he carried his arrow around the whole earth eating nothing

at all. But if there are indeed some people beyond the north, there are also others beyond the south. I laugh when I see that many have already drawn maps of the world, and yet none has explained it sensibly: they draw Ocean flowing around the earth, which they make circular as though shaped on a lathe, while treating Asia as equal in size to Europe. I will show in brief compass the size of each of them and what

each is like for the purposes of a map. The Persians dwell reaching down to the southern sea, called the Red Sea; above them, toward the north wind, dwell the Medes, above the Medes the Saspires, above the Saspires the Colchians, who reach up to the sea in the north, the one into which the Phasis river empties. These four peoples occupy the land from sea to sea. From there, westward, two peninsulas stretch out from it

to the sea, which I will now describe. On one side, the first peninsula, on the north, beginning from the Phasis, extends to the sea running alongside the Pontus and on to the Hellespont, reaching as far as Sigeum in the Troad; on the south side this same peninsula extends from the Myriandic Gulf, which lies near Phoenicia, to the sea as far as the Triopian headland. There dwell

in this peninsula thirty nations of men. This, then, is the one of the two peninsulas; the other, beginning from the Persians, extends to the Red Sea — first the Persian territory, then, taking over from it, the Assyrian, and after Assyria, Arabia; this peninsula ends, though it does not truly end except by convention, at the Arabian Gulf, into

the one that Darius brought in from the Nile as a canal. Now as far as Phoenicia, the region running from the Persians is broad and extensive; from Phoenicia onward this coastline runs along this sea past Syria Palestine and Egypt, where it ends. In it there are only three nations. This, then, is what lies to the west of Asia as reckoned from the Persians.

Above the Persians and Medes and Saspires and Colchians, toward the east and the rising sun, lies the region where the Red Sea extends; and to the north lie the Caspian Sea and the Araxes river, its current running toward the sunrise. Asia is inhabited as far as India; but beyond that, toward the

east, it is already desert, and no one can say what sort of place it is. Such, then, and so great is Asia. Libya lies on the other coastline; for after Egypt, Libya immediately follows. Now at Egypt this coastline is narrow: from this sea to the Red Sea it is a hundred thousand fathoms, which

would be a thousand stadia; but beyond this narrow neck, the coastline called Libya turns out to be very broad indeed. I am amazed, then, at those who have marked out and divided Libya, Asia, and Europe, for the differences between them are not small: in length Europe extends alongside both of the others, but in breadth it does not seem to me worthy even of comparison.

For Libya shows itself to be surrounded by sea, except for the part where it borders Asia — a fact first demonstrated, as far as we know, by Necho, king of the Egyptians. He, after he ceased digging the canal linking the Nile to the Arabian Gulf, dispatched Phoenician crews by ship, instructing them to sail back through the Pillars of Heracles until they reached the northern sea,

and so return to Egypt. So the Phoenicians set out from the Red Sea and sailed the southern sea; whenever autumn came, they would put in to whatever part of Libya they were passing and plant crops there, and wait for the harvest. Then, having reaped the grain, they continued their voyage, with the result that two full years passed before, in the third year, they rounded the Pillars of Heracles and arrived in Egypt. And

they reported something I do not believe, though someone else might: that as they rounded Libya the sun stood to their right hand. In this way this land was first discovered. After that the Carthaginians are the ones who report on it. As for Sataspes son of Teaspis, a man of the Achaemenid clan, he did not sail around Libya, though he was sent for that very purpose, but turned back out of fear of the length of the voyage and the desolation,

and went back home, and did not accomplish the task his mother had laid upon him. For he had raped Zopyrus son of Megabyzus's daughter, still unmarried; then, facing impalement by King Xerxes on account of this crime, his mother, who was Darius's sister, interceded for him, saying that she herself would impose a greater penalty on him than that: for he would be compelled to sail around Libya, until he arrived

at the Arabian Gulf by sailing around it. Xerxes having agreed to these terms, Sataspes went to Egypt, and taking a ship and crew from the Egyptians, sailed to the Pillars of Heracles. Having sailed through them and rounded the headland of Libya called Soloeis, he sailed toward the south; and after crossing much sea over many months, since he always needed still more,

he turned around and sailed back to Egypt. From there he went to King Xerxes and reported that at the farthest point he had sailed past small men who wore garments of palm fiber, who, whenever he put in with his ship, fled to the mountains, abandoning their towns; but his men did no harm entering the towns, only taking food from them. And he said the reason he did not sail all the way around Libya was this:

that the ship could no longer go forward but was stuck fast. Xerxes did not believe he was telling the truth, and since he had not completed the task set for him, he impaled him, carrying out the original sentence. As for this Sataspes' eunuch, he fled to Samos as soon as he learned that his master had died, taking great wealth with him, which a man of Samos seized — a man whose name I know well but

intentionally forget. Most of Asia was explored by Darius, who, wishing to know where the Indus river — which is the second of all rivers to produce crocodiles — empties into the sea, sent by ship, among others whom he trusted to report the truth, a man named Scylax of Caryanda. They set out from the city of Caspatyrus and the land of Pactyica, and sailed

down the river toward the east and the rising sun to the sea, and then sailing through the sea toward the west, in the thirtieth month they arrived at that place from which the king of Egypt, as I said before, had sent out the Phoenicians to sail around Libya. After these men had made this circuit, Darius subdued the Indians and made use of that sea. Thus for Asia too, except for the parts toward

the rising sun, everything else has been found to be similar in nature to Libya. But Europe is not clearly known by anyone, neither to the east nor to the north, whether it is surrounded by sea; in length it is known to extend alongside both of the others. Nor can I understand for what reason, though it is one land, it bears three names, all named after women, and its boundaries were set as the Nile,

the river of Egypt, and the Phasis, the river of Colchis (though some say instead the river Tanais, the Maeetian, and the Cimmerian ferries) — nor can I learn the names of those who marked out these divisions, or where they got the names. For Libya is said by most Greeks to take its name from Libya, a native woman, while Asia takes its name from the wife of Prometheus. And

of this name the Lydians also lay claim, saying that Asia was named after Asies son of Cotys son of Manes, and not after Prometheus's Asia; and from this the tribe at Sardis is also called Asias. But Europe — whether it is surrounded by sea is not known by anyone, nor where it got this name, nor who it was that gave it,

unless we say that the land took its name from Tyrian Europa; before that it was, it seems, nameless like the other two. But she at least clearly came from Asia and never came to this land which the Greeks now call Europe, but only as far as from Phoenicia to Crete, and from Crete to Lycia. This

much, then, let this suffice to say; for we shall use the names as they are conventionally applied. Now the Black Sea, against which Darius made his campaign, contains, apart from the Scythian nation, the most ignorant peoples of all lands. For we cannot point to any nation within the Black Sea region as distinguished for wisdom, nor do we know of any learned man having arisen there, except for the Scythian nation and Anacharsis. But for the Scythian race,

one thing, the greatest of all human affairs, has been discovered more cleverly than by any people we know, though I do not admire the rest of their ways: this greatest thing has been contrived by them so that no one who invades them can escape, and if they choose not to be discovered, catching them becomes impossible. For they have neither founded cities nor walls, but all of them, carrying their homes with them, are mounted archers, living

not by plowing but by herding cattle, and their dwellings are on wagons — how then could these people not be unbeatable and impossible to engage in battle? This has been contrived by them because the land is suited to it and the rivers are their allies. For this land, being flat, is grassy and well-watered, and rivers flow through it not

much fewer in number than the canals in Egypt. Of these, those that are notable and navigable from the sea I shall name: the Ister with five mouths, then the Tyras, the Hypanis, the Borysthenes, the Panticapes, the Hypacyris, the Gerrhus, and the Tanais. These flow as follows. The Ister, being the greatest of all rivers we know, flows equal

in volume both summer and winter; and being the first of the rivers in Scythia as one comes from the west, it has become the greatest for the following reason: there are other rivers flowing into it that make it great — through the Scythian land itself there flow five: the one the Scythians call Porata and the Greeks call Pyretus, and another, the Tiarantus,

and the Araros and the Naparis and the Ordessus. The first-named of these rivers is large and, flowing eastward, joins its waters with the Ister; the second-named, the Tiarantus, flows more toward the west and is smaller; while the Araros and the Naparis and the Ordessus, flowing between these, empty into the Ister. These are

native Scythian rivers that swell it; and from the Agathyrsi the river Maris flows and joins the Ister, while from the peaks of Haemus three other great rivers, flowing toward the north wind, empty into it: the Atlas, the Auras, and the Tibisis. Flowing through Thrace and through the land of the Thracian Crobyzi, the Athrys, the Noes, and the Artanes empty into the Ister; and from the Paeonians

and Mount Rhodope, the river Cius, splitting Mount Haemus down the middle, empties into it. From the Illyrians, flowing toward the north wind, the river Angrus flows into the Triballic plain, joining the river Brongus, which in turn joins the Ister; so the Ister takes in both of these mighty streams. And from the country above, home to the Ombrici, come the river Carpis and a second river, the Alpis

flowing toward the north wind, and these too empty into it; for the Ister flows through the whole of Europe, beginning among the Celts, who, apart from the Cynetes, are the westernmost people living in Europe; and flowing through the whole of Europe it discharges into the flanks of Scythia. It is from these rivers named, and from many others contributing their own water,

that the Ister ranks as the largest of all rivers by volume — though measured strictly water against water, the Nile actually holds more, since no river or spring adds a comparable amount to the Nile's flow. Yet the Ister keeps a constant level year-round, in both summer and winter, for a reason that seems to me as follows: in winter it holds exactly as much as

it naturally is, or only a little larger than its natural size; for this land is rained on very little in winter and instead gets snow throughout. But in summer the abundant snow that fell in winter, melting from every side, flows down into the Ister. So this snow, discharging into it, swells its volume, together with many violent rainstorms that accompany it,

for it does rain in summer. And in proportion as the sun draws up more water to itself in summer than in winter, by that much the tributaries that mix with the Ister are many times more abundant in summer than in winter; these two effects, set against each other, balance out, so that the river always appears the same size. So the Ister is one of the rivers belonging to the Scythians,

and after it the Tyras, which rises from the north wind and begins to flow from a great lake that forms the border between the Scythian land and that of the Neuri. At its mouth dwell Greeks called Tyritae. Third is the river Hypanis, which rises in Scythia and flows from a great lake around which graze wild white horses;

and this lake is rightly called the Mother of the Hypanis. Rising from it, the river Hypanis flows for a five days' sail short and sweet, but from there to the sea, for a four days' sail, it is dreadfully bitter; for a bitter spring flows into it, so very bitter that although small in size it corrupts the Hypanis, otherwise a great river,

into one of the few bitter ones. This spring lies on the borders of the land of the Scythian farmers and the Alizones; in Scythian this spring and the place it rises from are called Exampaeus, while the Greek name for it is the Sacred Ways. The Tyras and the Hypanis draw close together at their upper courses near the Alizones, then after that each turns away and flows apart,

widening the space between them. Fourth is the river Borysthenes, which is the greatest after the Ister among these, and in my judgment the most productive not only of the Scythian rivers but of all others, except the Egyptian Nile; for with the Nile no other river can be compared; but among the rest the Borysthenes is the most productive, providing the finest and richest pastures

for cattle, and excellent fish in abundance beyond all others; its water is the sweetest to drink, and it flows clear beside other rivers that are turbid; the finest crops grow beside it, and where the land is not sown the grass grows the deepest; at its mouth salt forms of its own accord in vast quantities; and it yields great boneless fish, which they call antacaei, fit for salting, along with many other things worth wondering at.

As far as the region of the Gerrhi, a forty days' sail up, it is known to flow from the north wind; but beyond that, no one can say through what peoples it flows. It appears to flow through desert until it reaches the land of the farming Scythians; these Scythians occupy its banks for a stretch of ten days' sailing. Of this river, together with the Nile,

I cannot state where its sources lie, and I doubt any Greek can either. The Borysthenes, as it flows near the sea, meets the Hypanis, which pours into the same marsh with it. The land between these two rivers, a spit jutting into the country, is called Cape Hippolaus, and on it stands a temple of Demeter; and across the strait from the temple, on the Hypanis, the Borysthenites dwell.

So much for what concerns these rivers. After them comes a fifth river, named the Panticapes, which likewise flows from the north out of a lake, and the land between it and the Borysthenes is occupied by the farming Scythians; it discharges into the Hylaea, and after passing through it joins the Borysthenes. Sixth is the river Hypacyris, which rises

from a lake, and flowing through the middle of the nomadic Scythians discharges near the city of Carcinitis, keeping to its right the Hylaea and the so-called Course of Achilles. Seventh is the river Gerrhus, which branches off from the Borysthenes at the point in the land where the Borysthenes becomes known; it branches off from that point, and bears the same name

as the place itself, Gerrhus; flowing to the sea it forms the boundary between the land of the nomads and that of the royal Scythians, and it discharges into the Hypacyris. Eighth is the river Tanais, which flows down from far above, issuing from a great lake, and discharges into a still greater lake called the Maeetian, which separates the royal Scythians from the Sauromatae. Into this Tanais

another river flows, named the Hyrgis. With such rivers, then, of note, the Scythians are equipped; as for their livestock, the grass that grows up in Scythia is the most bile-producing of all grasses we know; and when the cattle are opened up, one can judge from this that it is so. So they are amply provided with the greatest necessities; the rest

of their customs are arranged as follows. They propitiate only these gods: Hestia above all, and then Zeus and Earth, believing Earth to be the wife of Zeus, and after them Apollo, and heavenly Aphrodite, and Heracles, and Ares. All the Scythians hold these gods, but the so-called royal Scythians also sacrifice to Poseidon. In the Scythian tongue,

Hestia is called Tabiti; Zeus, most rightly in my judgment, is called Papaeus; Earth is Api; Apollo is Goetosyrus; heavenly Aphrodite is Argimpasa; and Poseidon is Thagimasadas. It is not their custom to make images, altars, or temples, except to Ares; to him they do make them. The same manner of sacrifice is established for all their rites alike, performed as follows:

the victim itself stands with its forefeet bound together, and the sacrificer, standing behind the animal, pulls the end of the cord and throws it down; as the victim falls he calls upon whichever god he is sacrificing to, and then, having cast a noose around its neck, he inserts a stick and turns it, strangling the animal, without kindling a fire, without a preliminary offering, and without a libation; having strangled it and

skinned it, he turns to boiling it. Since the Scythian land is remarkably lacking in wood, this is the method they have devised for boiling the meat: once they have skinned the victims, they strip the meat from the bones, then throw it in — if they happen to have them — into local cauldrons very much resembling Lesbian mixing bowls, except much larger; throwing the meat into these they boil it, burning the bones of the

victims beneath as fuel. But if they do not have the cauldron on hand, they throw all the meat into the bellies of the victims, add water, and burn the bones beneath; the bones burn very well, and the bellies easily hold the meat once stripped from the bones; and so the ox boils itself, and each of the other victims boils itself as well. When the meat is boiled,

the sacrificer, taking a first portion of the meat and of the entrails, throws it in front of him. They sacrifice other livestock too, and horses most of all. To the other gods they sacrifice in this manner and with these animals, but the rite for Ares differs. Within every district, at the seat of each ruling territory, they have established a shrine to Ares of this sort: bundles of brushwood are heaped up over an area of about three stadia

in length and breadth, though less in height; on top of this a square platform has been made, and three of its sides are sheer, while on the fourth side it can be climbed. Each year they pile a hundred and fifty wagonloads of brushwood onto it, for it is always settling from the weather. On this mound an ancient iron sword is set up for each community, and this is the image of

Ares. To this sword they bring yearly sacrifices of sheep and horses, and indeed they sacrifice more to it than to the other gods; and from whatever captives they seize among their enemies, one man in a hundred is offered up, done differently from how the livestock are slaughtered. For after pouring wine over their heads, they cut the men's throats over

a vessel, and then, carrying the blood up onto the pile of brushwood, they pour it over the sword. That is what they carry up above; and down below, beside the shrine, they do the following: cutting off the right arms of all the slaughtered men at the shoulder, together with the hands, they toss them upward, and once the remaining offerings are completed, they withdraw. The arm lies wherever it

falls, and the corpse lies apart from it. Such, then, are their established sacrifices. Of pigs they make no use at all, and they are unwilling to raise them in their land in any way. As for matters of war, their customs are arranged as follows: once a Scythian fells his first opponent, he tastes a bit of the man's blood; and for every enemy slain in battle afterward, he brings the severed head to the king.

For if he brings back the head, he shares in the spoils they have taken, but if he does not bring it he gets none. He flays it in this way: cutting round the ears, he takes hold of the head and shakes it out; then, having stripped the flesh with an ox rib, he works the skin soft with his hands, and once he has kneaded it he keeps it as a hand-towel, and hangs it on the bridle of his own mount, taking pride in the trophy,

for whoever has the most skin hand-towels is judged the best man. Many of them also make cloaks to wear out of the skins, stitching them together like herdsmen's cloaks. Many, too, flay the right hands of dead enemies, nails and all, and make covers for their quivers out of them. Human skin, it turns out, is thick and glossy, brighter than almost any other skin,

the most brilliant in whiteness. Many also flay whole men, and stretching the skins on frames of wood, carry them about on horseback. Such are their customs. As for the heads themselves — not of all enemies, but of the most hated — they do the following: each man saws off the whole part below the eyebrows and cleans it out; and if he is poor, he merely stretches raw oxhide around the outside and uses it as it is, but if

he is rich, he stretches the raw hide around it and then gilds the inside as well, and drinks from it as a cup. The same is done even with kin, should they turn into enemies and the man prevails over him before the king; and when guests come whom he holds in regard, he brings out these heads and explains that these were his own kinsmen who started a war against him, and that he himself prevailed over them — counting

this as a mark of manly valor. Once each year every district governor, in his own district, mixes a bowl of wine, from which those Scythians who have killed enemies drink. But those who have not accomplished this do not taste of that wine, but sit apart in dishonor; and this is for them the greatest disgrace. But as many of them as have killed a very

great number of men drink from two cups at once, holding both together. There are many diviners among the Scythians, who divine with a great many willow rods in this manner: when they have brought great bundles of rods, they lay them on the ground and unroll them, and setting them out one rod at a time they utter their prophecy, and as they speak they gather the rods back together again and put them back one by one. This is

their ancestral method of divination. But the Enarees, the man-woman diviners, say that Aphrodite gave them the art of divination, and they divine by the bark of the linden tree: when they split a strip of linden bark into three, they weave it between their own fingers and, unweaving it, give their oracle. Whenever the king of the Scythians falls ill, he sends for the three most reputed of the diviners, who divine in the manner described, and these say,

for the most part, something like this: claiming that a particular citizen — whichever one they name — has broken his oath sworn on the royal hearth. It is the Scythian custom to swear especially by the royal hearth whenever they wish to swear the greatest oath. And at once the man they say has sworn falsely is seized and brought in bound, and when he arrives the diviners charge him, saying that he plainly appears, by their art of divination,

to have sworn falsely by the royal hearth, and that this is the cause of the king's suffering; and he denies it, saying he did not swear falsely, and protests loudly. Once he denies the charge, the king summons a second group of diviners, double the number, and if they likewise, through their divination, find him guilty of perjury, they cut off his head at once, and the first diviners divide his property among themselves;

but if the diviners who come afterward acquit him, other diviners come, and yet others again. If, then, the majority acquit the man, it has been decided that the first diviners themselves must perish. And they put them to death in this way: when they have filled a wagon with brushwood and yoked oxen to it, they tie the diviners' hands behind them, stop up their mouths, wedge them into the center of the brushwood pile, and set it on fire,

they let the oxen loose, terrifying them. Many oxen are burned up together with the diviners, and many escape scorched all over, when the pole of the wagon burns through. For other offenses too they burn diviners this same way, branding them false prophets. And those whom the king puts to death — he does not even leave their sons alive, but kills all the males, while doing no harm to the females. Oaths

are made by the Scythians in this way toward those with whom they make them: pouring wine into a large earthenware cup, they mix in it the blood of those swearing the oath, pricking the body with an awl or making a small cut with a knife, and then a short sword, some arrows, a battle-axe, and a javelin are dipped into the mixture; and when they have done this, they utter many prayers over it, and then those making the oath drink it down themselves,

along with the most worthy of their followers. The burials of the kings are at Gerrhi, as far as the Borysthenes is navigable. There, when the king dies, they dig a great four-sided pit in the ground, and having made it ready they take up the corpse, its body coated in wax, its belly slit open and cleansed, and filled with chopped cypress, incense, celery seed, and

anise seed, then sewn back up, and they carry it in a wagon to another tribe. Those who receive the corpse brought to them do just as the royal Scythians do: they cut off a piece of their ear, shave off their hair, cut their arms, gash their forehead and nose, and drive an arrow through their left hand. From there they carry the king's body onward in the wagon to another tribe of those they rule,

and the people they had previously visited follow along with them. And when they have carried the corpse around to all the tribes, they arrive at Gerrhi, which is the farthest inhabited of the tribes they rule and where the burial grounds are. And then, once they have laid the corpse in the tomb on a bed of reeds, they fix spears upright on either side of the body and lay timbers across them, and then roof it over with wicker mats, and in

the remaining open space of the tomb they strangle and bury one of the king's concubines, and his cupbearer, his cook, his groom, his personal attendant, his messenger, and horses, and firstfruits of everything else, and golden cups — for they use neither silver nor bronze. Having done this, they all heap up a great mound, vying and striving eagerly with one another to make it as large as possible. Then, when a year has come round, they

do the following again: taking the most suitable of the remaining servants (these are native-born Scythians, for they serve whomever the king himself commands, and they have no servants bought with silver), they strangle fifty of these attendants and fifty of the finest horses, and having removed their entrails and cleaned them out, they fill them with chaff and sew them up again. Then, setting half of a wheel's rim upright on two

posts, and the other half of the rim on two other posts, and fixing many such frames in this way, they then drive thick pieces of wood through the horses lengthwise up to their necks and mount them on the frames; and of these, the front frames support the shoulders of the horses, while the rear ones bear up the bellies near the thighs, and both

pairs of legs hang free in the air. And having put bits and bridles on the horses, they stretch them forward and tie them fast to stakes. Then they mount one each of the fifty strangled young men on the horses, mounting them in this way: when they have driven a straight piece of wood through each corpse alongside the spine up to the neck, the lower part of this

wood, which projects below, they fix into a socket in the other piece of wood that runs through the horse. Having set up such horsemen in a circle around the tomb, they ride away. Thus, then, they bury the kings. As for the other Scythians, whenever they die, their nearest relatives carry them around lying in wagons among their friends, and each of these, receiving them, feasts those who accompany the corpse, and sets before the dead man a share of everything just as

he sets before the others. In this way commoners are paraded about across forty days before finally being laid to rest. After burying, the Scythians purify themselves in this manner: having washed and rinsed their heads, they do the following to their bodies: they set up three poles leaning together toward one another, and stretch felt mats around them, and packing them together as tightly as possible, they throw red-hot stones into a basin set in the middle of

the poles and the felts. There grows in their country a hemp very like flax except in thickness and height, and in this the hemp far surpasses it. It grows both wild and cultivated, and from it the Thracians make garments very like linen ones — indeed no one who was not very practiced at it could tell whether it was linen or

hemp; someone who has not yet laid eyes on hemp would take the garment for linen. Now once the Scythians gather the seed of this hemp plant, they crawl in beneath their felt tents, and then cast the seed onto stones heated red-hot in the fire; and once thrown on, it smolders and produces a vapor so thick that no vapor-bath in Greece could match it. The Scythians,

thrilled by the vapor, cry out. This takes the place of bathing for them, since they never wash their bodies in water at all. Their women, meanwhile, pour out water and rub it into a rough stone along with cypress, cedar, and frankincense wood, and afterward they smear this thick paste over their whole body and face; a fragrance then settles over them

from this, and when on the next day they remove the plaster, they become clean and radiant. As for foreign customs, they too shun adopting them very strongly — none at all, but especially Greek ones, as Anacharsis showed, and after him Scyles again. For Anacharsis, after he had observed much of the world and, in the course of it, displayed great wisdom, was on his way home

Anacharsis was sailing through the Hellespont toward Scythia when he put in at Cyzicus. There he found the people of Cyzicus holding a magnificent festival in honor of the Mother of the Gods, and Anacharsis made a vow to her: if he came home safely to his own country, he would offer sacrifice to her exactly as he had watched the Cyzicenes do, and would hold an all-night vigil in her honor. Once he reached Scythia, he went down into the district called

the Hylaea (which lies along the Racecourse of Achilles and happens to be entirely covered with woods of every kind), and there, having gone down into it, Anacharsis performed the whole rite for the goddess, holding a hand-drum and hanging images on himself. One of the Scythians observed him doing this and reported it to King Saulius. The king himself came and, when he saw Anacharsis

while doing this, an arrow struck him down. Even now, if anyone brings up Anacharsis, the Scythians claim they do not know him, on the grounds that he had gone off to Greece and taken up foreign ways. Yet according to what I heard from Tymnes, steward to Ariapithes, Anacharsis was uncle to Idanthyrsus, king of the Scythians, and his father was Gnurus, son of Lycus, son of Spargapithes. If, then, Anacharsis

truly came from this house, one should know he died at his own brother's hand: for Idanthyrsus was Saulius's son, and Saulius was the one who killed Anacharsis. Still, I have heard a different version circulated among the Peloponnesians, that Anacharsis was dispatched by the Scythian king to learn in Greece, and upon his return told the man who sent him that the Greeks were all preoccupied with every branch of knowledge

except the Lacedaemonians, and that they alone knew how to give and receive speech with restraint. But this story has been invented out of nothing by the Greeks themselves, and the man, as was said before, was actually killed. This, then, is how that man fared, because of his foreign customs and his associations with Greeks. Many years later, Scyles, son of Ariapithes, suffered something very similar. For Ariapithes,

the Scythian king, had a son named Scyles among his other children, born of a mother from Istria rather than a native woman; and it was this mother who taught him Greek speech and writing. Later on, Ariapithes met his end through treachery at the hands of Spargapithes, ruler of the Agathyrsi, and Scyles inherited both the throne and his father's wife, whose name was

Opoea. This Opoea was a native woman, and by her Ariapithes had a son, Oricus. Now Scyles, while ruling as king of the Scythians, was in no way pleased with the Scythian way of life, but was far more inclined toward Greek ways, owing to the upbringing he had received. He used to do the following: whenever he brought the Scythian army to the city of the Borysthenites (these Borysthenites claim to be

Milesians), whenever Scyles came among them, he would leave the army in the suburb, and he himself, once inside the walls with the gates shut, would take off his Scythian dress and put on Greek clothing, and wearing it he would walk about the marketplace with neither bodyguards nor anyone else accompanying him. And the gatekeepers guarded the gates so that no Scythian might see him wearing

this dress. In every other respect too he followed the Greek way of life and offered sacrifices to the gods according to Greek customs. Whenever he had spent a month or more there, he would depart, putting his Scythian dress back on. He did this often, and he even built a house in Borysthenes and married a native woman there. But when it was fated that things would go badly for him, it happened for the following reason.

He grew eager to be initiated into the rites of Dionysus Bacchius, and just as he was about to undergo the initiation, an enormous sign appeared to him. In the town of the Borysthenites he owned a walled compound belonging to a grand and expensive house, which I noted just before this, ringed by sphinxes and griffins carved from white stone; a bolt from the god struck this building. It burned to the ground completely, yet Scyles

still went ahead and finished the rite anyway. The Scythians taunt the Greeks over this Bacchic practice, insisting it makes no sense to invent a god who drives people into frenzy. Once Scyles had undergone the Bacchic initiation, a certain Borysthenite went and informed the Scythians, saying, "You mock us, Scythians, for holding Bacchic rites and letting the god take hold of us; well now"

this very spirit has seized your own king as well, and he revels in Bacchic frenzy, driven mad by the god. If you doubt my word, come along, and I will point him out to you." The Scythian chiefs went along with him, and the man from Borysthenes brought them up quietly and placed them on a tower. When Scyles passed by in the company of his revelers and the Scythians caught sight of him in his frenzy, they were struck by a great

distressed, and going out they reported to the whole army what they had seen. After this, when Scyles set out to return to his own quarters, the Scythians, putting forward his brother Octamasades, who was the son of the daughter of Teres, rose up against Scyles. He, learning what was happening against him and the reason for it, fled for refuge into Thrace. Octamasades, learning of this,

Octamasades set out to campaign against Thrace with these forces. When he reached the Ister, the Thracians met him there, and just as the two sides were about to clash, Sitalces sent word to Octamasades with this message: "Why should we put each other to the test? You have my sister's son with you, and I hold your uncle. Return him to me, and I will hand your Scyles over to you;"

and let neither of our armies risk battle." Sitalces sent this message to him through a herald, for a brother of Sitalces had fled and was with Octamasades. Octamasades agreed to this, and handing over his own maternal uncle to Sitalces, he received his brother Scyles in exchange. Sitalces took his brother and led him away, but Octamasades cut off the head of Scyles right there. This is how the Scythians

guard their own customs, and such are the penalties they impose on those who adopt foreign customs in addition to their own. As for the population of the Scythians, I was not able to learn it with any accuracy, but I heard differing accounts about their number: some say they are very many, others that there are few real Scythians. This much, however, they showed me for myself to see. Between the river Borysthenes and the Hypanis there is a place called

Exampaeus, which I noted just before this, saying it holds a spring of bitter water, and the water flowing from it renders the Hypanis undrinkable. At this location stands a bronze vessel, its size six times that of the mixing bowl standing at the mouth of the Pontus, dedicated there by Pausanias son of Cleombrotus. For any reader who has not laid eyes on it, here is my description.

The Scythian bronze vessel easily holds six hundred amphorae, and this Scythian vessel is six fingers thick. The locals told me it was made from arrowheads. For their king, whose name was Ariantas, wishing to know the number of the Scythians, ordered every Scythian to bring him one arrowhead from his arrows, on pain of death for anyone who did not

bring one. A great quantity of arrowheads was brought together, and he decided to make from them a memorial and leave it behind. From these, then, he made this bronze vessel and dedicated it at this place, Exampaeus. This is what I heard concerning the number of the Scythians. This land has no marvels except that it has by far the largest rivers, and the most

numerous. But what is worthy of note, besides the rivers and the great size of the plain, I will now tell. They show a footprint of Heracles imprinted in rock, which resembles the tread of a man, but is two cubits in size, beside the river Tyras. This, then, is what it is; I will now go back to the account I set out to tell at the start. While Darius was preparing against the Scythians

and sending messengers to instruct some to provide an infantry army, others ships, and others to bridge the Thracian Bosporus, Artabanus son of Hystaspes, who was Darius's brother, urged him by no means to make this campaign against the Scythians, listing the difficulties of dealing with the Scythians. But since he did not persuade him with his good advice, he gave up, and Darius, once everything had been prepared for him, led out his

army from Susa. There Oeobazus, a Persian, having three sons all of whom were on campaign, begged Darius that one of them be left behind for him. Darius said that since he was a friend and was asking for something reasonable, he would leave behind all his sons. Oeobazus was overjoyed, hoping that his sons had been released from the campaign, but Darius ordered the men in charge of them to kill all the sons of Oeobazus.

and these men had their throats cut and were left lying there. Darius, once his journey from Susa brought him to the Bosporus on the Chalcedonian shore where the bridge stood, boarded a vessel there and sailed toward the rocks called Cyanean, which the Greeks claim used to wander before; taking a seat on a headland, he gazed upon the Pontus, a spectacle worth beholding. Among all seas it stands out as the most astonishing.

Its length is eleven thousand one hundred stadia, and its breadth, at its widest point, is three thousand three hundred stadia. The mouth of this sea is four stadia wide; and the length of the narrow strait at the mouth, which is called the Bosporus, over which the bridge had been built, is one hundred and twenty stadia. The Bosporus extends into the Propontis,

and the Propontis, being five hundred stadia wide and one thousand four hundred long, empties into the Hellespont, which is seven stadia across at its narrowest and four hundred long. The Hellespont opens out into the expanse of sea called the Aegean. These measurements were made as follows: a ship, on average, covers about seventy thousand fathoms in a long day, and sixty thousand by night. Now,

Now the voyage from the mouth of the Pontus to the Phasis (for that is the longest stretch of the Pontus) is nine days and eight nights: this comes to a hundred and eleven myriads of fathoms, and from these fathoms the stadia amount to eleven thousand one hundred. And to Themiscyra on the river Thermodon from Sindice (for that is the widest stretch of the Pontus)

comes to a crossing lasting two nights and three days, equal to thirty-three myriads of fathoms, or three thousand three hundred stadia. So this Pontus, along with the Bosporus and the Hellespont, has now been measured out by me and shown to have the dimensions stated; this Pontus, moreover, feeds a lake that drains into it, one only slightly smaller than itself,

which is called the Maeetis, and is called the mother of the Pontus. Darius, when he had viewed the Pontus, sailed back to the bridge, whose builder was Mandrocles the Samian; and having viewed the Bosporus too, he set up two pillars there of white stone, engraving on them letters — on the one Assyrian, on the other Greek — with all the peoples he was leading, for he led all

the nations he commanded. Apart from the fleet, these were counted at seven hundred thousand men including cavalry, and six hundred ships were gathered together. As for these pillars, the Byzantines later carried them into their city and put them to use at the altar of Artemis Orthosia, all except a single stone; that stone was left standing by the temple of Dionysus at Byzantium, covered in Assyrian writing. Now the district by the Bosporus

where King Darius bridged it is, as I judge by reckoning, midway between Byzantium and the sanctuary at the mouth of the strait. Darius, afterward, being pleased with the floating bridge, rewarded its builder, Mandrocles the Samian, with a gift of everything tenfold; and from this Mandrocles had a picture painted as a first-offering, showing the whole bridging of the Bosporus, and King Darius seated on his throne, and his army

crossing it; he had this scene painted and set up as an offering in the Heraeum, with the following inscription: "Having spanned the fish-rich Bosporus with a bridge, Mandrocles dedicated to Hera this memorial of the floating crossing, winning himself a crown and glory for the Samians, having fulfilled the wishes of King Darius." These, then, were the memorials of the bridge's builder. After rewarding Mandrocles, Darius crossed over into Europe, instructing the Ionians to sail up into the Pontus as far as

the river Ister; once they arrived at the Ister, they were to wait there for him, spanning the river with a bridge. The fleet itself was manned by Ionians, Aeolians, and Hellespontines. This fleet passed through the Cyanean rocks and headed directly for the Ister; then, having rowed upstream for two days' distance from the sea, they bridged the river at its narrow neck, the point where the mouths of the

Ister branch off. Darius, when he had crossed the Bosporus by the floating bridge, marched through Thrace, and coming to the springs of the river Tearus he encamped there for three days. Now the Tearus is said by those who dwell around it to be the best of rivers, both for its other healing properties, and especially for curing scab in men and horses. Its springs are

thirty-eight springs in all, pouring out of the same rock face, some of them cold and some hot. The distance to reach them is equal whether one starts from the city of Heraeum near Perinthus or from Apollonia on the Euxine Sea, a two-day trip either way. This Tearus flows out into the river Contadesdus, and the Contadesdus into the

Agrianes, and the Agrianes into the Hebrus, and the Hebrus flows into the sea near the town of Aenus. Darius, upon reaching this river and setting up camp, was so taken with it that he erected a pillar there too, inscribed with these words: "The headwaters of the river Tearus supply water finer and better than any other river; and to these headwaters came, marching an army against the Scythians,"

a man who is the best and finest of all men, Darius son of Hystaspes, king of the Persians and of the whole mainland." This is what was written there. Darius, setting out from there, came to another river named the Artescus, which flows through the land of the Odrysae. Having come to this river he did the following: marking out a place for the army, he ordered every man, as he passed by,

to set down one stone at this marked-out place. When the army had done this, he left behind great mounds of stones there and marched the army onward. Before reaching the Ister, he first subdued the Getae, who believe themselves immortal. For the Thracians who hold Salmydessus and dwell above the cities of Apollonia and Mesambria, called the Cyrmianae and the Nipsaei, surrendered themselves

to Darius without a fight; but the Getae, turning to folly, were at once enslaved, though they are the bravest and most just of the Thracians. They believe themselves immortal in this way: they do not think that they die, but that the one who perishes goes to the god Salmoxis; and some of them call this same god Gebeleizis. Every four years they send one of their number, chosen by lot, as a messenger to Salmoxis, instructing him in

whatever they need at each occasion; and they send him in this way: some of them, appointed for the task, hold three javelins, while others, taking hold of the hands and feet of the man being sent to Salmoxis, swing him up into the air and throw him onto the spearpoints. If he dies pierced through, they believe the god is gracious to them; but if he does not die, they blame the messenger himself, saying

that the man is bad, and after leveling that charge they send off someone new. They deliver these instructions to him while he still lives. These same Thracians, whenever thunder and lightning strike, shoot arrows upward toward the sky in defiance of the god, since they recognize no god except their own. According to what I gather from the Greeks living along the Hellespont and the Pontus, this Salmoxis, who was once a man,

lived as a slave on Samos, owned by Pythagoras son of Mnesarchus; after gaining his freedom there he built up considerable wealth, and once wealthy he traveled back to his homeland. Given how harsh and rather unsophisticated Thracian life was, this Salmoxis, familiar with Ionian customs and with ways of thinking more profound than the Thracians knew, having mixed with Greeks and with Pythagoras, no minor intellect among the Greeks,

had a men's hall built, in which he received the leading men of the city and entertained them, teaching them that neither he nor his fellow drinkers nor their descendants forever would die, but would come to a place where, living on forever, they would have all good things. While he was doing and saying these things, he was at the same time building an underground chamber. When

the chamber stood entirely complete, he vanished from among the Thracians, descending into the underground room where he dwelt for three years; meanwhile they longed for him and grieved him as though dead. In the fourth year he showed himself again to the Thracians, and in this way his teachings gained credibility with them. That, at least, is the account of what he supposedly did. For my own part, regarding this matter and the

underground chamber, I neither reject it outright nor place too much confidence in it, though my own view is that this Salmoxis lived a good many years before Pythagoras. Whether some man named Salmoxis actually existed, or whether he is simply a local deity of the Getae, let that question rest. These people, following this practice, once conquered by the Persians, joined the rest of the army on its march. Darius, once he and the infantry force with

him reached the Ister, and once everyone had crossed over, Darius directed the Ionians to dismantle the bridge and follow him overland along with the troops from the ships. But just as the Ionians were preparing to dismantle it and carry out these orders, Coes son of Erxander, commander of the Mytilenaeans, addressed Darius as follows, having first inquired whether Darius would welcome an opinion from someone willing

to offer it. "O King, you are about to march against a land in which nothing plowed nor any inhabited city will appear: so now let this bridge stand where it is, leaving as its guards those who built it. And if we find the Scythians and things go as we wish, there is a way back for us; and if we cannot find them, still the way back is safe for us; for

I have never once worried that the Scythians might defeat us in a pitched battle, but rather that, failing to track them down, we might come to harm while roaming the country. Someone might say I argue this out of self-interest, wanting to remain behind; but I offer you, O King, the plan I judge best, openly, while I myself intend to accompany you and have no wish to be left behind." Darius was delighted with this proposal,

and answered him thus: "Lesbian guest, when I am safely home again, be sure to appear before me, so that I may repay you for your good counsel with good deeds." Having said this, and having tied sixty knots in a leather strap, he called the tyrants of the Ionians to a meeting and said the following: "Men of Ionia, let the earlier opinion given about the bridge be set aside by me; instead, keeping

this strap, do the following: as soon as you see me setting out against the Scythians, from that time begin loosening one knot each day; and if within that time I have not returned, but the days of the knots have passed for you, then sail away to your own lands. Until then, since it has been so resolved, guard the bridge, showing every eagerness for its safety

and its guarding. In doing this you will do me a great favor." Having said this, Darius pressed on ahead. Now Thrace projects toward the sea in front of the Scythian land; and as the land curves into a gulf, the Scythian land receives it, and the Ister empties into it, its mouth turned toward the east wind. I shall now go on to describe the coast from the Ister onward.

This concerns the measurement of the seaward side of the Scythian land itself. From the Ister onward this is now ancient Scythia, lying toward the midday and the south wind, as far as the city called Carcinitis. From there, along the same coastline, in country that is mountainous and juts out into the Pontus, the Tauric people occupy the land as far as the peninsula called

the Rugged one; this peninsula extends down to the sea that lies toward the east wind. For Scythia has two of its borders reaching to the sea, the one toward the midday and the one toward the dawn, just as Attica does; and the Taurians occupy a portion of Scythia comparable to this, as if in Attica some other people, and not the Athenians,

held the headland of Sunium, which juts out further into the sea, running from Thoricus to the deme of Anaphlystus—I say this granting that it means comparing small things to great: such is Taurica. But for one who has not sailed along that part of Attica, I will make it plain another way: as if in Iapygia some other people, and not the Iapygians, beginning from the harbor of Brentesium, cut off

a portion as far as Tarentum and occupied the headland. In naming these two cases I am naming many similar ones, to which Taurica bears resemblance. Beyond Taurica the Scythians now occupy the country above the Taurians and the land along the eastern sea, both the part west of the Cimmerian Bosporus and the shore of the Maeetian lake as far as the river Tanais, which flows out into

the innermost part of this lake. Now then, from the Ister the parts extending inland are shut off from Scythia first by the Agathyrsi, then by the Neuri, then by the Man-eaters, and last by the Black-cloaks. So then, Scythia, being as it were four-sided, with two of its sides reaching to the sea, is everywhere equal in extent, both the side running inland and the one running along

the sea. From the Ister to the Borysthenes is a ten-day journey, and from the Borysthenes to Lake Maeotis another ten days; while the distance inland from the coast to the Black-Cloaks settled above the Scythians is a twenty-day journey. I count each day's travel as two hundred stadia. By this reckoning, the width of Scythia across would come to four thousand stadia, and

the length reaching inland the same number of stadia again. Such then is the size of this land. Now the Scythians, reasoning among themselves that they were not able alone to drive back Darius' army by open battle, sent messengers to their neighbors; and the kings of these peoples had already met together and were taking counsel, since a great army was advancing against them. Those who had

met were the kings of the Tauri, the Agathyrsi, the Neuri, the Man-Eaters, the Black-Cloaks, the Gelonians, the Budini, and the Sauromatae. Of these, the Tauri follow these customs: they sacrifice to the Maiden both shipwrecked men and any Greeks they take by putting out to sea and capturing, in this manner: after the preliminary rites, they strike the head with a club. Some say that they then push the body down from the cliff

(since the shrine sits atop a cliff), while they fix the head upon a stake. Others agree about the head but say the body is not thrown down from the cliff, but instead buried in the ground. The Tauri themselves claim that this deity to whom they sacrifice is Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon. As for enemies they capture, they proceed as follows: each man cuts off the head and takes it back to

his own house, then mounts it on a tall pole and raises it well above the roofline, most often over the smoke-vent. They claim these heads keep watch as guardians over the entire household. They live off plunder and warfare. The Agathyrsi are the most luxury-loving of all peoples and wear gold more than anyone; they share their women in common, so that they may count each other as brothers, and,

being all kinsmen, may feel neither envy nor hatred toward each other. In their other customs they have come close to the Thracians. The Neuri follow Scythian customs; but one generation before Darius' expedition, it befell them to abandon their whole country because of snakes. For their land brought forth many snakes on its own, and still more fell upon them from the deserts above, until,

under pressure, they abandoned their own territory and settled among the Budini. These people, it seems, may well practice sorcery. For both the Scythians and the Greeks settled in Scythia claim that once every year, each of the Neuri turns into a wolf for a few days before reverting back to his usual form. For my part, this claim does not convince me, yet they insist on it all the same, and

they swear to it as they say it. The Man-Eaters have the most savage customs of all men, observing no justice and following no law whatsoever. They are nomads, wear clothing like the Scythians', but have their own language, and are the only ones among these peoples who eat human flesh. The Black-Cloaks all wear black garments, from which they also take their name, and follow Scythian customs. The Budini are a great nation

and numerous, and are all strongly blue-eyed and ruddy. Among them a city has been built of wood, called Gelonus. The wall of this city, each side of it, measures thirty stadia; it is tall, and entirely of wood, and their houses too are of wood, and so are their temples. For there are indeed sanctuaries of Greek gods there, built in Greek fashion, with statues and

altars and wooden shrines, and they hold triennial festivals for Dionysus and celebrate his rites. For the Gelonians were originally Greeks, who left their trading posts and settled among the Budini; and they use partly the Scythian tongue and partly the Greek. The Budini, however, do not use the same tongue as the Gelonians, nor do they share the same way of life. For the Budini, being natives of the land,

are nomads and are the only people in that region who eat lice, whereas the Gelonians work the soil, eat grain, keep gardens, and are not at all like them in appearance or in coloring. Yet by the Greeks the Budini too are called Gelonians, though this is not correct. Their whole country is thick with forests of every kind; and in the densest of the forest there is a great lake

and marsh, with reeds growing around it; in it otters and beavers are caught, and other square-faced creatures, whose pelts are sewn onto cloaks along the border, and whose testicles are useful for treating diseases of the womb. As for the Sauromatae, this is the account given. When the Greeks fought against the Amazons (the Scythians call the Amazons Oiorpata, a name which means

in the Greek tongue man-killers; for they call a man 'oior' and 'pata' means to kill), the story goes that the Greeks, having won the battle at the Thermodon, sailed away carrying off in three ships as many of the Amazons as they had been able to take alive, and that the women, once at sea, attacked and cut down the men. But they had no knowledge of ships, nor could they use rudders or sails or oars; so once they had cut down the

the men were swept along by wave and wind, washing up at Cremni on Lake Maeotis; Cremni sits within the territory of the free Scythians. There the Amazons climbed down from their ships and set out on foot toward the inhabited land. Coming across the first herd of horses in their path, they seized it, and riding these horses they began plundering the Scythians' property. The Scythians could not figure out

what was happening, for they recognized neither their speech nor their dress nor their nation, and were utterly at a loss as to where they had come from; they supposed them to be men of the same age, and so gave battle against them. From the battle the Scythians took possession of the dead, and thus learned that they were women. Taking counsel, they resolved no longer to kill them in any way, but

to send their own youngest men out to them, matching their numbers to those of the women, and have these men camp close to the women, mirroring whatever actions the women took. Should the women give chase, the men were not to fight but to retreat; and once the pursuit ended, they were to return and camp nearby once more. The Scythians settled on this plan because they wanted children born from these women. So the young men, once dispatched,

did as they had been instructed. When the Amazons realized that they had come with no harmful intent, they let them be; and day by day the two camps drew closer to one another. Now the young men had nothing beyond their weapons and their horses, just as the Amazons had, but lived the same kind of life as they did, hunting and raiding. The Amazons, for their part, would do the following

at midday: they would scatter, going off singly or in twos, spreading apart from one another to relieve themselves in private. Learning of this, the Scythians did the same thing. And one of them, finding himself alone, drew near to one of the women who was alone, and the Amazon did not push him away but allowed him to have his way with her. Words were impossible between them, since neither understood the other's language, but she gestured with her hand for him to

come the next day to the same spot and to bring another man, indicating by signs that there would be two of them, and that she herself would bring another woman. The young man, when he went back, told this to the rest; and on the next day he himself came to the spot, bringing another with him, and found the Amazon waiting there together with a second. The rest of the young men, when they learned of this, likewise won over

the remaining Amazons for themselves. Afterward, joining their camps together, they lived as one, each man keeping as his wife the woman with whom he had first come together. The men were unable to learn the women's language, but the women grasped that of the men. When they understood one another, the men said the following to the Amazons: 'We have parents,' they said, 'and we have

possessions; so now let us no longer live this kind of life, but let us go back and live among our people. We will have you, and no other women, as our wives.' To this the women replied as follows: 'We could not live together with your women, for our customs and theirs are not the same. We shoot the bow and throw the javelin and ride horses, and have never learned women's

work; but your women do none of the things we have just named, and instead do women's work, staying in their wagons, never going out to the hunt or anywhere else. We could not, then, get along with them. But if you wish to have us as wives and to be thought just men, go to your parents and claim your share of the property,

and then come back and let us live on our own.' The young men were persuaded and did as they said. When, having claimed the share of the property that fell to them, they came back again to the Amazons, the women said to them: 'Fear and dread take hold of us at the thought of how we are to live in this land, since we have deprived you of your fathers and have done much harm

to your country besides. But since you think us worthy to have as wives, do this together with us: let us rise up out of this land and go and live across the river Tanais.' The young men agreed to this too, and having crossed the Tanais they journeyed toward the rising sun for a three days' march from the Tanais, and for three days' march from Lake Maeotis toward the north wind. Arriving at

this place, where they now dwell, they settled there. And from that time the women of the Sauromatae have kept to their ancient way of life, riding out on horseback to the hunt together with their men and apart from them as well, joining in war and dressed just like the men. As for speech, the Sauromatae use the Scythian tongue, though they speak it incorrectly, corrupted from the old,

since the Amazons did not learn it well. This is how matters stand with them regarding marriage: no maiden is married until she has killed a man of the enemy, and some of them even die of old age before marrying, unable to fulfill the law. Now the messengers of the Scythians, having come to the assembled kings of the peoples just named, spoke, explaining that

the Persian, since he has subjugated everything on the other continent, has yoked a bridge over the neck of the Bosporus and crossed over into this continent, and having crossed and subdued the Thracians he is bridging the river Ister, wishing to bring all these lands too under his sway. "So do not, sitting apart in the middle, look on while we are destroyed, but let us think as one and face

the invader. Will you not do this? We, being hard pressed, will either abandon our land or, if we stay, come to terms. For what could we suffer if you refuse to help us? For you nothing will be any lighter on that account. The Persian has come no more against us than against you, nor will it be enough for him, once he has subdued us, to hold back from you. We will give you a great

proof of these words. If the Persian were campaigning against us alone, wishing to punish us for our former enslavement of him, he ought to have marched against our land alone, avoiding all the others, and so he would have shown everyone that he was marching against the Scythians and not against the others. But as it is, ever since he crossed into this continent, he has been subduing everyone who stands in his way; he

already holds under him the rest of the Thracians, and in particular the Getae, who are our neighbors." When the Scythians made these declarations, the kings who had come from the several peoples deliberated, and their opinions were divided. The Gelonian, the Budinian, and the Sauromatian, agreeing together, undertook to help the Scythians; but the Agathyrsian, the Neurian, the Man-eater, and

the Melanchlaenians and Taurians answered the Scythians as follows: "If you were not the first to wrong the Persians and begin the war, then the request you now make would seem to us just, and we, giving heed, would act accordingly with you. But as it is, you invaded their land without us and held sway over the Persians for as long as the

god granted it to you, and now they, since that same god rouses them, are giving you the like in return. We did no wrong to these men then, nor will we now be the first to attempt any wrong against them. Yet if he comes against our land too and begins the wrong, we will not submit either; until that happens, though, we will stay put, since in our view the Persians have marched not against us

but against those who were responsible for the wrongdoing." When the Scythians learned that this answer had been brought back, they resolved not to engage in any open pitched battle, since these peoples were not joining them as allies, but instead to withdraw and, as they withdrew, to stop up the wells they passed and fill in the springs, and to strip the grass from the earth, dividing themselves into two groups. To

one of these divisions, of which Scopasis was king, the Sauromatae were to attach themselves; these were to retreat, and if the Persian turned that way, to flee straight toward the river Tanais along the Maeotian lake, and, when the Persian drew off, to pursue him as he advanced. This was one division of their kingdom, assigned to follow this course as has been described; the other two divisions of the kingdom, that

great one which Idanthyrsus ruled and the third which Taxacis ruled, having come together into one, with the Gelonians and Budinians joining them too, were to withdraw a day's march ahead of the Persians, retreating and doing what had been decided: first they were to lead them straight into the lands of those peoples who had refused their alliance, so that these too might be drawn into the war; for if they

had not willingly taken up the war against the Persians, they would be forced into it against their will; after this they were to turn back into their own land and attack, if upon deliberation it should seem good to them. Having decided this, the Scythians went out to meet the army of Darius, sending ahead the best of their horsemen as an advance guard. The wagons in which their children and all their women dwelt, and all their flocks, except for

as many as were needed for provisions, these they kept back, and sent the rest on ahead together with the wagons, instructing them always to drive toward the north. This, then, was sent forward. Now the advance riders of the Scythians, when they found the Persians about three days' journey distant from the Ister, upon finding them, being a day's march ahead, made camp, cropping down the things growing from the earth,

while the Persians, when they saw the Scythian cavalry appear, followed on their trail, the Scythians always withdrawing before them; and then, since they made for one of the divisions, the Persians pursued them toward the east and straight for the Tanais. When these had crossed the river Tanais, the Persians, crossing after them, pursued until, having passed through the land of the Sauromatae, they arrived at that of the Budini.

For as long as the Persians were passing through the land of the Scythians and of the Sauromatae, they had nothing to damage, since the land was barren; yet once they pushed into Budinian territory, they encountered the wooden stronghold there—the Budini having abandoned it and the fortress being emptied of everyone—and they burned it. Having done this, they continued to follow ever onward

along the trail, until, having passed through this land, they arrived at the desert. This desert is inhabited by no men at all, and lies beyond the land of the Budini, being seven days' journey in extent. Beyond the desert dwell the Thyssagetae, and four great rivers flow out from their land, running through the country of the Maeetae and emptying into the lake called Maeotis; these rivers bear the following names,

Lycus, Oarus, Tanais, Syrgis. Now when Darius reached the desert, he halted his march and encamped the army on the river Oarus. Having done this, he built eight great forts, equidistant from one another, about sixty stadia apart; the ruins of these were still standing in my own time. While he was occupied with this, the Scythians who were being pursued

circled around through the upper country and turned back into Scythia. When these had vanished altogether, and no longer appeared before them, then Darius abandoned those forts half-finished, and himself turned back and marched westward, thinking that these were all the Scythians and that they were fleeing westward. Driving his army onward as fast as possible, when he reached Scythia he ran into

both divisions of the Scythians together, and upon encountering them he pursued them as they withdrew a day's march ahead. And since Darius did not let up in his pursuit, the Scythians, according to their plan, kept withdrawing toward the peoples who had refused their alliance, first into the land of the Melanchlaeni. When the Scythians and Persians, invading it, threw these people into confusion, the Scythians led the way into the

territory of the Man-eaters; when these too were thrown into confusion, they led on toward the land of the Neuri; and as these in turn were being disturbed, the Scythians went on, withdrawing, into the land of the Agathyrsi. But the Agathyrsi, seeing their neighbors too fleeing before the Scythians and thrown into confusion, before the Scythians could invade them, sent a herald forbidding the Scythians to set foot on their borders, warning that if they attempted to invade, they would first have to fight them. The Agathyrsi,

having given this warning, went out to defend their borders, intending to keep back those advancing; but the Melanchlaeni, the Man-eaters, and the Neuri, when the Persians invaded together with the Scythians, did not turn to resistance but, forgetting their threat, fled ever northward into the desert, thrown into confusion. The Scythians no longer went on into the land of the Agathyrsi, since these had forbidden them, but

led the Persians instead out of the land of the Neuri back into their own land. Since this kept happening at length without ceasing, Darius sent a horseman to the Scythian king Idanthyrsus, saying this: "Strangest of men, why do you always flee, when it is in your power to do one of two other things? For if you think yourself capable of withstanding my power, you should stand your ground and cease your wandering

and fight; but if you acknowledge that you are weaker, then you too, ceasing your flight, should come and hold parley with your master, bringing gifts of earth and water." To this the Scythian king Idanthyrsus replied as follows: "This is how matters stand with me, Persian. I have never yet fled from any man out of fear, neither before nor now do I flee from you, nor am I doing anything new

now that I did not also do in time of peace. As for why I do not fight you at once, I will explain this too. We have neither cities nor cultivated land, out of fear for which, lest it be captured or ravaged, we would join battle with you the sooner. But if it is altogether necessary to come to this quickly, we do happen to have ancestral tombs; come,

find these and try to disturb them, and then you will know whether we will fight you for the tombs or whether we will not fight. Until then, unless we think it good, we will not engage you. So much, then, be said concerning battle; as for masters, the only ones I recognize are Zeus, from whom I am descended, and Hestia, queen of the Scythians. As for you, in place of gifts of earth

and water, I will send such gifts as are fitting for you to receive; and in return for your claiming to be my master, I bid you weep." This is the Scythian saying. So the herald departed to report this to Darius, and the Scythian kings, hearing the word "slavery," were filled with anger. As for the division that had been sent with the Sauromatae, which Scopasis led,

they sent word to the Ionians who were guarding the bridge over the Ister, asking them to come to a conference. Those who were left behind decided no longer to wander about but to attack the Persians each time they went out to gather food. So by watching for Darius's men gathering food they did what had been planned. The Scythian cavalry always routed the Persian cavalry, and the Persian horsemen, fleeing, fell back on their

infantry, and the infantry would come to their aid. But the Scythians, having driven back the cavalry, would themselves turn back for fear of the infantry. The Scythians also made similar attacks by night. Now the thing that helped the Persians and worked against the Scythians when they attacked Darius's camp — I will tell a very strange fact — was the braying of the donkeys and the appearance of the mules. For neither

donkey nor mule is found in the land of Scythia, as I have already shown, and there is no donkey or mule anywhere in the whole Scythian country because of the cold. So when the donkeys brayed they threw the Scythian cavalry into confusion. Often, as they were riding against the Persians, as soon as the horses heard the sound of the donkeys, they would panic and wheel about,

and be seized with wonder, pricking up their ears, since they had never before heard such a sound nor seen such a creature. This, then, had only a small effect on the course of the war. Now the Scythians, whenever they saw the Persians thrown into confusion, would act so that the Persians would stay longer in Scythia and, staying, would suffer distress from lacking everything. They did as follows: whenever they

left some of their own flocks behind with the herdsmen, they themselves would ride off to another place. The Persians would come upon the flocks, seize them, and after seizing them would grow proud of what they had done. This happened many times, until finally Darius was at a loss, and the Scythian kings, learning of this, sent a herald bearing gifts to Darius: a bird, a mouse, a frog,

and five arrows. The Persians asked the man bringing the gifts what the meaning of what was given might be. He said he had been instructed to say nothing else except to deliver them and depart as quickly as possible; but he told the Persians themselves, if they were wise, to figure out what the gifts meant to say. Having heard this, the Persians deliberated. Now Darius's opinion was that the Scythians were surrendering to him

themselves, and earth and water, reasoning it out as follows: that a mouse is born in the earth and eats the same crop as a man, a frog lives in water, a bird resembles a horse more than anything, and the arrows meant that they were surrendering their own might. This was the opinion Darius put forward. But opposed to this opinion was that of Gobryas, one of the seven men

who had done away with the Magus, who guessed the gifts meant: "Unless you Persians become birds and fly up into the sky, burrow into the earth as mice, or leap into the marshes as frogs, you will not return home again, but will be struck down by these arrows." So the Persians interpreted the gifts in these two ways. Meanwhile the one division of the Scythians that had earlier been assigned

to guard by Lake Maeotis, and was now to go to the Ionians at the Ister to hold a conference, when it arrived at the bridge, said the following. "Men of Ionia, we have come bringing you freedom, if indeed you are willing to listen. For we understand that Darius ordered you to guard the bridge for only sixty days, and if he did not arrive within that time, to depart for your own country. Now

if you do this you will be blameless both before him and before us: stay the appointed days, and after that depart." These, then, when the Ionians had promised to do this, hurried back as quickly as possible. After the gifts had come to Darius, the Scythians who remained drew up against the Persians in infantry and cavalry, as if to give battle. But as the Scythians stood in formation, a hare

darted through their midst. As each of them saw the hare, they gave chase to it. When the Scythians fell into confusion and raised a shout, Darius asked about the uproar among his opponents; and learning that they were chasing the hare, he said to those he was accustomed to address on other matters as well: "These men hold us in great contempt, and it now seems to me that Gobryas spoke rightly about the Scythian

gifts. Since I too now think as he does, we need good counsel, so that our return may be safe." To this Gobryas said, "O king, I already knew fairly well from report the helplessness of these men, but having come here I have learned it far better still, seeing them mocking us. Now it seems to me that as soon as night falls,

we should light the fires as we are accustomed to do at other times too, deceive the weakest of our soldiers into thinking they will be left to endure hardship, tie up all the donkeys, and depart, before the Scythians either rush straight to the Ister to break the bridge, or the Ionians decide on something that could destroy us." This was Gobryas's advice. And afterward night came, and Darius

followed this plan: the exhausted men, and those whose loss would matter least, along with all the donkeys tied up, he left behind there in the camp. He left the donkeys and the weak of the army for this reason: so that the donkeys would make noise; and the men were left behind because of their weakness, but the pretext given was, of course, that

he himself, with the sound part of the army, intended to attack the Scythians, while these men were to guard the camp for that time. Having given these instructions to those left behind, Darius lit the fires and hurried as fast as possible toward the Ister. The donkeys, left alone without the crowd, brayed all the more loudly; and the Scythians, hearing the donkeys, fully

believed that the Persians were still in place. When day came, those left behind, realizing they had been betrayed by Darius, stretched out their hands to the Scythians and told them what had happened. When the Scythians heard this, they gathered together as quickly as possible — the two divisions of the Scythians and the one, along with the Sauromatae, the Budini, and the Geloni — and pursued the Persians straight toward the Ister. Since

the Persian army was mostly infantry and did not know the roads, since the roads had not been marked out, while the Scythian force was cavalry and knew the shortcuts of the route, they missed each other, and the Scythians arrived at the bridge long before the Persians. Finding that the Persians had not yet come, they spoke to the Ionians, who were stationed in their ships,

"Men of Ionia, the number of days appointed to you has run out, and you are not acting rightly by still remaining. But since before you stayed out of fear, now break the crossing and depart quickly, rejoicing in your freedom, and giving thanks to the gods and to the Scythians. As for the man who was formerly your master, we will deal with him in such a way that he will never again campaign against any people." At this the Ionians took counsel.

Miltiades the Athenian, general and tyrant of the Chersonesites on the Hellespont, was of the opinion that they should obey the Scythians and free Ionia; but Histiaeus of Miletus was opposed to this, saying that at present each of them ruled his city because of Darius, and that if Darius's power were overthrown, neither would he himself be able to rule the Milesians, nor would anyone else be able to rule anywhere else; for each of the cities would want

to be governed as a democracy rather than ruled by a tyrant. When Histiaeus put forward this opinion, all of them immediately turned to this view, though before they had favored that of Miltiades. Those who cast their votes and were men of standing with the king were these: of the Hellespontine tyrants, Daphnis of Abydos, Hippoclus of Lampsacus, Herophantus of Parium, Metrodorus of Proconnesus, Aristagoras of Cyzicus, and Ariston of Byzantium.

These were the men from the Hellespont; from Ionia there were Strattis of Chios, Aeaces of Samos, Laodamas of Phocaea, and Histiaeus of Miletus, whose opinion had been set forth in opposition to that of Miltiades. Of the Aeolians, the only man of note present was Aristagoras of Cyme. When these men adopted Histiaeus's opinion, they resolved to add to it the following actions and words: they would break down

the part of the bridge that faced the Scythians, breaking it down as far as an arrow's shot could reach, so that they would seem to be doing something while doing nothing, and so that the Scythians, even by force and by their own wish, would not attempt crossing the Ister at the bridge; and while breaking that part of the bridge facing Scythia, they would say that they would do everything that pleased the Scythians. This they added to

their plan. After that Histiaeus, speaking on behalf of them all, answered as follows. "Men of Scythia, you have come bringing good news, and at the right time you are urging haste; and both what comes from you is guiding us well and what comes from us serves you fittingly. For as you see, we are breaking the crossing, and we shall show every eagerness, wishing to be free. But while we are breaking this,

it is the time for you to seek out those men, and having found them, to avenge both us and yourselves as befits them." The Scythians, believing a second time that the Ionians spoke the truth, turned back to search for the Persians, and missed the whole of their route. The Scythians themselves were the cause of this, having destroyed the horse-pastures in that region and filled in the water sources. For if

they had left this undone, finding the Persians, if they so wished, would have proved an easy matter for them. But as it was, the very thing they thought was their best plan was what made them fail. Now the Scythians, in the part of their own country where there was fodder for the horses and water, went through that region searching for their enemies, thinking that they too were making their escape through such places. But the Persians, following their earlier

they went on, keeping to the track they themselves had made, and so with difficulty found the crossing. Having arrived at night to find the bridge dismantled, they fell into utter dread that the Ionians had abandoned them. Now there was with Darius an Egyptian man with the loudest voice of anyone: this man Darius ordered to stand on the bank of the Ister and call for Histiaeus the Milesian.

He did this, and Histiaeus, hearing the very first call, brought up all the ships to ferry the army across and rejoined the bridge. So the Persians escaped in this way, while the Scythians, searching, missed the Persians a second time, and for this reason they judge the Ionians, being free men, to be the basest and most unmanly of all people; but on the other hand,

speaking of them as though they were slaves, they say they are slaves fond of their masters and unlikely to run off. This much has been thrown at the Ionians by the Scythians. Darius journeyed through Thrace and reached Sestos, in the Chersonese. From there he himself crossed by ship to Asia, but he left behind as general in Europe Megabazus, a Persian man, to whom Darius had once given an honor, having spoken

this saying among the Persians. When Darius was about to eat pomegranates, as soon as he opened the first of them, his brother Artabanus asked him what he would wish to have in such abundance as there were seeds in the pomegranate. Darius said he would wish to have that many Megabazuses in number rather than have Greece subject to him. By saying this among the Persians he honored him,

and now he left him behind as general in charge of his own army, eighty thousand strong. This Megabazus, by saying the following thing, left behind an immortal memory among the people of the Hellespont. Being in Byzantium, he learned that the Chalcedonians had founded their land seventeen years before the Byzantines, and on learning this he said that the Chalcedonians must have been blind at that time; for they would not have chosen

the uglier site when the finer one was available, unless they were blind. So this Megabazus, left behind then as general in the land of the Hellespont, was subduing those who did not side with the Medes. This is what he was doing. At the same time another great expedition of an army was being mounted against Libya, for a reason which I will relate after first telling the following in advance. Of the sons of the crew of the Argo,

their children, driven out by the Pelasgians from Brauron who had carried off the women of Athens, were driven out by them from Lemnos and sailed off to Lacedaemon, and settling on Mount Taygetus they kindled a fire. The Lacedaemonians, seeing it, sent a messenger to find out who they were and from where; and to the messenger's questioning they said that they were Minyans, children of the heroes

who had sailed on the Argo, who had put in at Lemnos and begotten them there. The Lacedaemonians, having heard the account of the lineage of the Minyans, sent a second time and asked what they wanted, coming into the land and lighting a fire. They said that, having been cast out by the Pelasgians, they had come to their fathers; for it was most just that this should happen so. And they asked to dwell together with them, sharing

in honors and receiving a portion of the land. It seemed good to the Lacedaemonians to receive the Minyans on whatever terms they themselves wished. What most drove them to do this was that the sons of Tyndareus had sailed on the Argo. Once they had received the Minyans, they allotted them a share of land and divided them up among the tribes. They at once contracted marriages, and gave in marriage the women they had brought from Lemnos to others.

Not much time had passed before the Minyans grew arrogant, laying claim to the kingship and doing other things not lawful. So it seemed good to the Lacedaemonians to kill them; and seizing them they threw them into prison. Now the Lacedaemonians kill those whom they kill by night, never by day. When they were about to put them to death, the wives of the Minyans, being citizens and

daughters of the leading Spartiates, begged permission to go into the prison and speak, each with her own husband. The guards let them in, thinking no trick would come of it. But when they had entered, they did as follows: they gave over to the men all the clothing they were wearing and themselves took that of the men, and the Minyans, putting on the women's clothing, went out

as though they were women; escaping by this trick, they settled again on Mount Taygetus. At this same time Theras, son of Autesion, son of Tisamenus, son of Thersander, son of Polyneices, was setting out from Lacedaemon to found a colony. This Theras was by lineage a Cadmean, the brother of the mother of the sons of Aristodemus, Eurysthenes and Procles. While these children were still infants Theras held

the kingship at Sparta as guardian. But when his nephews grew up and took over the rule, then Theras, thinking it terrible to be ruled by others once he had tasted rule, said he would not remain in Lacedaemon but would sail away to his kinsmen. There were, on the island now called Thera, but formerly called Callista, the same island, descendants of Membliarus son of Poeciles,

a Phoenician man. For Cadmus son of Agenor, seeking Europa, had put in at what is now called Thera: and having put in, whether the land pleased him or he wished to do this for some other reason, he left on this island, among other Phoenicians, Membliarus of his own kinsmen. These people inhabited the island called Callista for generations, before Theras

came from Lacedaemon — eight men in all. Against these Theras set out with a body of men drawn from the tribes, to settle together with them, in no way to drive them out but rather to make them fully his own. And when the Minyans, having escaped from the prison, had settled on Mount Taygetus, and the Lacedaemonians were deliberating on destroying them, Theras begged that no killing take place, and he himself undertook

to lead them out of the country. The Lacedaemonians agreeing to this proposal, he sailed with three thirty-oared ships to the descendants of Membliarus, not taking all the Minyans but only a few. Most of them turned instead against the Paroreatae and the Caucones, and driving these out of their country, divided themselves into six groups, and then founded the following cities among them: Lepreum, Macistus,

Phrixae, Pyrgus, Epium, Nudium. Most of these, in my own time, were destroyed by the Eleans. The island was named Thera after its founder. His son — for he said he would not sail with him, so his father said he would leave him behind like a sheep among wolves — because of this saying the young man came to be called Oeolycus, and somehow this name prevailed. From Oeolycus

was born Aegeus, after whom the Aegeidae are called, a great tribe in Sparta. The men of this tribe — for their children did not survive — established, on the advice of an oracle, a shrine of the Furies of Laius and Oedipus; and after this the children born to these men in Thera also survived in the same way. Up to this point in the story the Lacedaemonians and the Theraeans agree,

but from this point on only the Theraeans tell it as follows. Grinnus son of Aesanius, a descendant of this Theras and king of the island of Thera, arrived at Delphi bringing a hecatomb from his city; and there followed him also other citizens, and in particular Battus son of Polymnestus, by lineage a Euphemid of the Minyans. When Grinnus, king of the Theraeans, consulted the oracle

about other matters, the Pythia gave an oracle to found a city in Libya. He replied, saying: "I, lord, am already too old and heavy to be stirred; bid one of these younger men do this." While saying this he gestured toward Battus. That was all that was said then. Afterward, when they had returned home, they paid no heed to the oracle, neither

knowing where in the world Libya was, nor daring to send out a colony to so uncertain a thing. But seven years after this it did not rain on Thera, during which all the trees on the island but one withered away. When the Theraeans consulted the oracle, the Pythia again urged the colony to Libya. Since they had no remedy for their trouble, they sent to Crete

messengers to inquire whether any Cretan or resident alien there had ever been to Libya. Wandering about the island, these men came also to the city of Itanus, and there they met a purple-fisher named Corobius, who said winds had swept him off course to Libya, and from there to the island of Platea. Persuading him with pay, they brought him to Thera, and from Thera scouts sailed out,

few men at first: with Corobius guiding them to this island of Platea, they left Corobius there, leaving behind provisions for a certain number of months, while they themselves sailed as quickly as possible to report to the Theraeans about the island. But when these men were away longer than the agreed time, Corobius ran out of everything, and after this a Samian ship, whose captain was

Colaeus, sailing for Egypt, was carried off course to this Platea; and the Samians, learning the whole story from Corobius, provided him a year's worth of food. Setting out from the island, eager to reach Egypt, they sailed on, driven off course by an easterly wind; and since the wind did not let up, they went through the Pillars of Heracles and arrived at Tartessus, guided by divine providence. This trading port

was at that time untouched, so that these men, on returning home, made the greatest profit from their cargo of all the Greeks of whom we have accurate knowledge, except for Sostratus son of Laodamas, an Aeginetan; for with him no other could vie. The Samians, taking out a tenth of their profits, six talents' worth, had a bronze vessel made in the manner of an Argolic mixing-bowl; around it griffins' heads project in a row

...they are. And they dedicated in the Heraeum three colossal bronze statues, seven cubits tall, each resting on its knees as a base. It was from this deed that great friendship first arose between the people of Cyrene and Thera on one side and the Samians on the other. As for the Therans, once they had left Corobius on the island and come back to Thera, they reported that a colony had been established for them on an island off Libya. The Therans then decided

to send men chosen by lot, brother from brother, and from all the districts, which numbered seven, and that their leader and king should be Battus. So they fitted out two fifty-oared ships for Platea. This much the Therans say; the rest of the story the Therans and Cyrenaeans no longer agree on. For the Cyrenaeans do not at all agree with the Therans about Battus; they tell it this way. There is

in Crete a city called Oaxus, where there was a king named Etearchus, who, having a motherless daughter named Phronime, married another woman on her account. This woman, once brought into the household, made sure to act the stepmother toward Phronime both in name and in deed, causing her trouble and contriving everything against her, and finally, charging her with wantonness, she persuaded her husband to deal with her accordingly. And he, persuaded

by his wife, contrived an unholy deed against his daughter. For there was a Theran man, a merchant, named Themison, living in Oaxus. Etearchus took him in as a guest-friend and made him swear that he would do for him whatever he asked. When he had sworn the oath, Etearchus led out his own daughter and handed her over, ordering him to take her away and drown her in the sea. But Themison, indignant at having been tricked by the oath,

broke off the guest-friendship and did the following instead: he took the girl and put out to sea; once he was on the open water, in order to fulfill the letter of his oath to Etearchus, he bound her with cords, lowered her into the sea, then hauled her back up, and so arrived at Thera. From there Polymnestus, a man of repute among the Therans, took Phronime and kept her as a concubine. In time there was born to him a son who was weak-voiced

and had a stammer, and he was named Battus, as the Therans and Cyrenaeans say — though I myself think it was something else. He was renamed Battus after he arrived in Libya, taking the name from the oracle given him at Delphi and from the honor he received there. Since the Libyans use the word "battos" for a king, I think it was for this reason that the Pythia, in prophesying,

addressed him in the Libyan tongue, knowing that he would be king in Libya. Once he had grown to manhood, he went to Delphi about his voice, and when he put his question, the Pythia gave him this response: "Battus, you have come about your voice. But lord Phoebus Apollo sends you to Libya, rich in flocks, to found a colony" — as if she had said in the Greek tongue, "O king, you have come about your voice." And he

answered her thus: "Lord, I came to you to consult about my voice, but you tell me other things impossible to do, bidding me colonize Libya — with what power, with what hand?" Saying this he did not persuade her to give him a different oracle, and when she prophesied the same things to him as before, he went off, leaving her in the middle of it, and returned to Thera. After this, misfortune befell both him and

the other Therans, one calamity after another. Not understanding the cause of these disasters, the Therans sent to Delphi about the troubles that beset them. The Pythia responded that they would fare better if they helped Battus found Cyrene in Libya. After this the Therans sent out Battus with two fifty-oared ships. These men sailed to Libya, but not knowing what else to do, they turned back and sailed for

Thera. But the Therans pelted them as they came in to land and would not let them touch shore, ordering them to sail back. Forced to do so, they sailed back and settled an island lying off Libya, whose name, as was said before, is Platea. This island is said to be equal in size to the present city of Cyrene. They lived there for two years, but since nothing went well for them, they left one

man behind and all the rest sailed to Delphi, and upon reaching the oracle they questioned it, telling it that they were dwelling in Libya but that things were no better for them living there than before. To this the Pythia gave them this response: "If you know rich-in-flocks Libya better than I who have been there, though you have not been there yourself, greatly do I marvel at your wisdom." Hearing this, Battus and his men sailed back —

for the god was not going to release them from the colony until they had actually reached Libya itself. Arriving at the island and taking up the man they had left behind, they founded a place on the Libyan mainland itself, opposite the island, whose name was Aziris; this place is enclosed on both sides by the most beautiful wooded glens, and a river flows along one side of it. They lived in this place for six years,

but by the seventh year the Libyans had talked them into leaving, promising to lead them to a better place. So the Libyans made them get up and led them away from there toward the west, and, timing the journey by hours of the day, they led the Greeks past the most beautiful of all the regions by night, so that they would not see it. This place is called Irasa. Having brought them to a spring said to belong to

Apollo, they said, "Men of Greece, here it is fitting for you to live; for here the sky is pierced." Now during the lifetime of Battus the founder, who ruled for forty years, and of his son Arcesilaus, who ruled for sixteen years, the Cyrenaeans continued to live there in the same numbers as those first sent out to found it. Yet in the reign of the third king, Battus called the Fortunate, the Pythia by her oracle stirred up all the Greeks

to set sail and settle in Libya together with the Cyrenaeans, for the Cyrenaeans themselves were inviting them, offering a share in the land; and this was the oracle she gave: "Whoever comes later to lovely Libya, when the land has already been divided up, will one day, I say, have cause to regret it." A great crowd gathered at Cyrene, and the Libyans round about, along with their king, whose name was Adicran, finding much of their land

cut away and being treated with contempt by the Cyrenaeans, sent to Egypt and surrendered themselves to Apries, king of Egypt. He gathered a large army of Egyptians and sent it against Cyrene. The Cyrenaeans marched out to the place called Irasa, to the spring called Theste, and joined battle with the Egyptians, and won the engagement. For the Egyptians,

never before having had experience of Greeks, and underestimating them, were so utterly destroyed that only a few of them made it back to Egypt. Because of this, and holding other grievances against him, the Egyptians revolted from Apries. This Battus had a son, Arcesilaus, who, when he became king, first fell into strife with his own brothers, until they left him and went off to another part of Libya and, on their own initiative, founded the city

that was then, and still is, called Barca. As they founded it, they also persuaded the Libyans there to revolt from the Cyrenaeans. Afterward Arcesilaus made war on those same Libyans who had both received his brothers and revolted along with them; and the Libyans, in fear of him, fled to the Libyans of the east. Arcesilaus pursued them as they fled, until he came to Leucon in Libya,

and there, as he was pursuing them, the Libyans resolved to attack him. Joining battle, they defeated the Cyrenaeans so decisively that seven thousand Cyrenaean hoplites fell there. After this disaster, Arcesilaus, who was ill and had taken a drug, was strangled by his brother Haliarchus; and Haliarchus was killed by treachery by Arcesilaus's own wife, whose name was Eryxo. Arcesilaus's kingship was inherited by his

son Battus, who was lame and not sound of foot. The Cyrenaeans, in the face of the disaster that had befallen them, sent to Delphi to ask by what arrangement they might best establish their state. The Pythia bade them bring a reformer from Mantinea in Arcadia. The Cyrenaeans then asked, and the Mantineans gave them a man held in highest regard among their citizens, named Demonax. This man, when he arrived

in Cyrene and had learned all the particulars, first divided them into three tribes, arranging them as follows: he made one division of the Therans and the surrounding peoples, a second combining Peloponnesians and Cretans, and a third comprising all the islanders. Then, having set aside sacred estates and priesthoods for king Battus, he put everything else that the kings had previously held into the common possession of the people. So under

this Battus things continued in this state, but under his son Arcesilaus much turmoil arose over the royal privileges. For Arcesilaus, son of the lame Battus and Pheretime, said he would not put up with things as Demonax the Mantinean had arranged them, but demanded back the privileges of his ancestors. Rising up in faction over this, he was defeated and fled to Samos, while his mother fled to Salamis

in Cyprus. At that time Salamis was ruled by Evelthon, who dedicated at Delphi the censer worth seeing, which lies in the treasury of the Corinthians. Coming to him, Pheretime asked for an army that would restore them to Cyrene. But Evelthon offered her anything rather than an army; and she, accepting each gift as it was given, would say it too

was fine, but finer still would be for him to give her, as she asked, an army. This she said after every gift he gave her, until finally Evelthon sent her, as a last gift, a golden spindle and distaff, with wool attached to it as well. When Pheretime again repeated the same request, Evelthon said that such things were fit gifts for women, not an army. Meanwhile Arcesilaus, during this time,

being in Samos, was gathering together every man he could for a redistribution of land; and as a great army was being assembled, he set out for Delphi to consult the oracle about his return. The Pythia gave him this response: "For four Battuses and four Arcesilauses, eight generations of men, Loxias grants your line the kingship of Cyrene, but beyond this he advises you not even to attempt it. You, however, be at peace when you have returned to

"your own. And if you find the kiln full of jars, do not fire the jars, but send them away with a favorable wind; but if you fire the kiln, do not enter the land surrounded by water, or else you will die, both you and the finest bull." This is what the Pythia prophesied to Arcesilaus. And he, taking the men from Samos with him, returned to Cyrene, and having gained control of

affairs he did not remember the oracle, but demanded justice from his political opponents for his own exile. Of these, some left the country altogether, while others Arcesilaus seized and sent off to Cyprus for execution. These men were carried off course to Cnidus, and the Cnidians rescued them and sent them off to Thera; but certain others of the Cyrenaeans who had taken refuge in a great private tower

belonging to Aglomachus, Arcesilaus piled wood around and burned. When he learned, after the deed was done, that this was what the oracle had meant—that the Pythia was warning him not to fire the jars if he found them in the kiln—he willingly kept away from the city of the Cyrenaeans, fearing the death that had been foretold and believing Cyrene to be the "land surrounded by water." Now he had a wife who was his own kinswoman, the daughter of the king of the Barcaeans,

whose name was Alazir. He went to him, and certain men of Barca, along with some of the exiles from Cyrene, learned that he was in the marketplace and killed him, and along with him his father-in-law Alazir as well. So Arcesilaus, whether he erred in understanding the oracle willingly or unwillingly, fulfilled his own destiny. As for his mother Pheretime, while Arcesilaus

was living in Barca, having brought this evil upon himself, she held her son's honors in Cyrene, administering the rest of his affairs and sitting in the council. But when she learned that her son had died in Barca, she fled and went off to Egypt. For favors had been done by Arcesilaus for Cambyses son of Cyrus; for it was this Arcesilaus who had given Cyrene

to Cambyses and imposed a tribute upon it. So when Pheretime arrived in Egypt she sat as a suppliant of Aryandes, calling on him to avenge her, putting forward as her pretext that her son had died because of his medizing. Now this Aryandes was the governor of Egypt appointed by Cambyses, who at a later time, setting himself up as equal to Darius, was destroyed. For learning and seeing that Darius desired to leave behind a memorial of himself

such as no other king had achieved, he set out to copy it, and in the end that copying earned him his reward. For Darius had refined gold to the utmost purity and struck coin of it, the purest possible; but Aryandes, who ruled Egypt, produced silver coinage by that identical method, and the purest silver money is still called Aryandic today. When Darius learned that he was doing this, he brought another charge against him, that he was rising up against him, and put him to death. But at that time

this same Aryandes, taking pity on Pheretime, gave her the entire army from Egypt, both infantry and navy: as commander of the infantry he appointed Amasis, a man of the Maraphian people, and of the navy Badres, a man of Pasargadae by birth. But before sending off the army, Aryandes sent a herald to Barca to inquire who it was that had killed Arcesilaus. And the

Barcaeans themselves all took responsibility, saying that they had suffered many evils at his hands. Learning this, Aryandes then sent off the army together with Pheretime. This, then, was the pretext put forward for the expedition, but the army was sent, as it seems to me, for the subjugation of Libya. For there are many and varied peoples of the Libyans, and some of them

were subject to the King, only a few, while the greater part paid Darius no heed at all. The Libyans dwell as follows. Beginning from Egypt, the first Libyans settled are the Adyrmachidae, who follow for the most part Egyptian customs, but wear the same clothing as the other Libyans do. Their women wear a bronze anklet around each leg; they wear their hair long, and when they catch lice

each woman bites her own in retaliation and thus casts them away. These are the only Libyans who do this, and they alone show to the king the maidens who are about to be married. Whichever one pleases the king is deflowered by him. These Adyrmachidae extend from Egypt as far as the harbor called Plynos. Next to them come the Giligamae, who occupy the land to the west as far as

the island of Aphrodisias. In the region between lies the island of Platea, which the Cyrenaeans colonized, and on the mainland there is the harbor of Menelaus, and Aziris, where the Cyrenaeans once lived, and it is from here that silphium begins to grow: it extends from the island of Platea to the mouth of the Syrtis. These people follow customs similar to the others.

Next to the Giligamae, to the west, come the Asbystae, who dwell above Cyrene. The Asbystae do not reach the sea, for the coastal land is occupied by the Cyrenaeans. They are the most skilled chariot-drivers of all the Libyans, not the least but the very best, and they make it their practice to imitate most of the customs of the Cyrenaeans. Next to the Asbystae, to the west, are the Auschisae: these dwell above Barca, reaching down to the sea near Euesperides.

In the middle of the Auschisae's territory dwell the Bacales, a small people, reaching down to the sea near the city of Tauchira in the Barcaean territory. They follow the same customs as those who dwell above Cyrene. Next to these Auschisae, to the west, come the Nasamones, a numerous people, who in summer leave their flocks by the sea and go up into the region of Augila to harvest the dates.

which grow there abundantly and widely-spread, all of them fruit-bearing. When they catch locusts, they dry them in the sun and grind them up, and then sprinkle them over milk and drink it. Each man is thought to have numerous wives, and the women are shared in common among them, following a custom much like that of the Massagetae: whenever a man plants his staff before a tent, they come together. It is the custom, at the first marriage of a Nasamonian man, for the bride on the first night

to pass through all the guests in turn, having intercourse with each; and each one, as he has intercourse with her, gives her whatever gift he happens to have brought from his house. This is how they take oaths and divine the future: touching the tombs of those among them reputed to have been the most just and finest men, they swear by them; and they practice divination by going to the tombs of their ancestors, and after praying they lie down to sleep upon them; whatever

they see in a dream, that is what they act upon. To seal a pledge of good faith, they use this method: each gives the other something to drink poured from his own hand, and drinks likewise from the other's hand; should no liquid be available, they scoop up dust from the ground instead and lick it. Bordering the Nasamones are the Psylli. These came to a complete end in this manner: a wind out of the south dried up

the reservoirs of water, and their entire land, lying within the Syrtis, became waterless. They, taking counsel together, marched out against the south wind (I tell this as the Libyans tell it), and when they came into the sand, the south wind blew and buried them. With these destroyed, the Nasamones now hold their land. Above these, toward the south wind, in the

land full of wild beasts, dwell the Garamantes, who avoid every man and all human company, and own no weapon meant for war, and have no notion of how to defend themselves. These, then, dwell above the Nasamones; along the sea, to the west, come the Macae, who shave their heads in a peculiar fashion, letting the middle of the hair grow long while shaving it close on either side; and for

war they carry as shields the skins of ostriches. Through their land flows the river Cinyps, running down to the sea from a rise known as the Hill of the Graces. This Hill of the Graces is thickly wooded, whereas the rest of Libya described above is bare; from the sea to it is two hundred stadia. Next to these Macae come the Gindanes, whose women each wear many leather anklets,

as is said, for the following reason: for each man she has had intercourse with, she ties on an anklet; and the woman with the most anklets is judged the finest, since more men than any other have desired her. On a headland projecting into the sea from the territory of these Gindanes dwell the Lotus-eaters, who live on the fruit of the lotus alone. The fruit of the lotus is about the size

of the mastic-tree's fruit, and in sweetness it resembles the fruit of the date palm. The Lotus-eaters also make wine from this fruit. Next to the Lotus-eaters, along the sea, come the Machlyes, who also use the lotus, though less than those mentioned before; they extend down to a great river called the Triton, which flows into a great lake, the Tritonis.

In this lake there is an island called Phla. It is said that there was an oracle for the Lacedaemonians to colonize this island. There is also this other story told: that Jason, when the Argo had been built for him under Mount Pelion, and he had put aboard it, along with another hecatomb, a bronze tripod, sailed around the Peloponnese, wishing to reach Delphi. And as he was sailing, when he came off

Cape Malea, a north wind caught him and carried him off toward Libya; and before he sighted land, he found himself among the shallows of Lake Tritonis. And while he was at a loss how to find his way out, the story goes that Triton appeared and asked Jason for the tripod in return, promising to reveal the way through and send them off unharmed. Jason agreeing,

Triton then showed them the channel through the shallows and placed the tripod within his own shrine, and having pronounced a prophecy over the tripod, he declared to those with Jason the whole matter: that whenever one of the descendants of those who had sailed together on the Argo should carry off the tripod, then it would be an absolute necessity for a hundred Greek cities to be built around Lake Tritonis. Hearing this, the local people

of the Libyans, to hide the tripod. Among these the Auseans live along with the Machlyes; both these peoples and the Machlyes dwell around Lake Tritonis, with the Triton river as their boundary. The Machlyes grow their hair long behind, while the Auseans wear it long in front. At the yearly festival of Athena their maidens divide into two groups and fight one another with stones and sticks,

saying that in doing so they are performing the rites of their ancestral goddess, whom we call Athena. Any maidens who die of their wounds they call false maidens. Before they let the girls fight, they do the following together: the maiden judged most beautiful on each occasion is dressed in a Corinthian helmet and full Greek armor, set up on a chariot, and led around the lake in a circle. In earlier times, before Greeks came to settle among them, I cannot say how they used to dress

the maidens, but I suppose they were dressed in Egyptian armor, for I hold that both the shield and the helmet reached the Greeks from Egypt. As for Athena, they say she is the daughter of Poseidon and of Lake Tritonis, and that, having some grievance against her father, she gave herself to Zeus, who then

made her his own daughter. This is what they say. As for marriage, they hold women in common, neither living in pairs nor forming settled unions, but coupling like herd animals. When a woman's child has grown sturdy, the men gather together in the third month, and whichever man the child resembles is reckoned as its father. These, then, are the coastal nomadic Libyans I have described; above them, further

inland, lies the wild-beast country of Libya, and beyond that wild region a ridge of sand stretches from Egyptian Thebes to the Pillars of Heracles. Along this ridge, roughly every ten days' journey, one finds lumps of salt in great chunks, heaped in mounds, and at the top of each mound cold, sweet water spurts up from the middle of the salt; and around

it live people at the edge of the desert, beyond the wild-beast region — first, ten days' journey from Thebes, the Ammonians, who have their sanctuary derived from the Zeus of Thebes; for indeed the statue of Zeus at Thebes, as I have said before, has a ram's face. They also happen to have another spring of water, which at dawn is

lukewarm, grows colder as the marketplace fills, and by midday is very cold indeed; at that time they water their gardens with it. As the day declines it loses its coldness, until at sunset the water becomes lukewarm again. As it moves further toward the hot, it approaches boiling around midnight, at which point it bubbles up in surges; then midnight passes

and it cools again until dawn. This spring is called the Spring of the Sun. After the Ammonians, another ten days' journey further along the sandy ridge, there is a salt mound like the one at Ammon, with water as well, and people living around it; the name of this place is Augila. It is to this place that the Nasamones go

to gather dates in season. From Augila, another ten days' journey away, there is yet another salt mound with water and many fruit-bearing date palms, just as at the other places; and people live there whose name is the Garamantes, a very powerful people, who spread earth over the salt and so plant their crops in it. The shortest route to the Lotus-eaters is thirty days' journey from

them. Among these people are also found the backward-grazing cattle; they are called backward-grazing for this reason: their horns curve forward, and because of this they walk backward as they graze, since they cannot move forward while their horns are jabbing into the ground ahead of them. Apart from this trait, and the thick, tough hide they carry, nothing else sets them apart from ordinary cattle.

These Garamantes chase down the cave-dwelling Ethiopians using chariots drawn by four horses; for among all the men we have reports of, none run faster than these cave-dwelling Ethiopians. The cave-dwellers eat snakes and lizards and other such creeping things, and their language resembles no other, but is a kind of squeaking like that of bats. Beyond the

Garamantes, another ten days' journey away, there is yet another salt mound and water, and people living around it whose name is the Atarantes, who alone of all men we know are without individual names. For as a group they are called Atarantes, but no single name is assigned to any one of them. They curse the sun as it rises overhead, and besides this they heap on it every kind of abuse,

because, they say, it scorches and destroys them, both themselves and their land. Then, another ten days' journey further, there is another salt mound and water, with people living around it. Adjoining this salt deposit is a mountain called Atlas, which is narrow and perfectly conical in shape, and so high, it is said, that

its peaks cannot be seen — for clouds never leave them, neither in summer nor in winter. The local people say this is the pillar of heaven. It is after this mountain that these people take their name, for they are called the Atlantes. It is said that they eat nothing that has life in it, and that they see no dreams. As far as these Atlantes, I am able to list the names of the peoples

settled along the ridge, but beyond them I can no longer do so. The ridge stretches all the way to the Pillars of Heracles and beyond. There is a salt mine within it, ten days' journey further on, with people living there. The houses of all these people are built out of blocks of salt, since

this part of Libya gets no rain at all — for the walls, being made of salt, could not stand if it rained. The salt quarried there is of two kinds, white and purple. Beyond this ridge, to the south and toward the interior of Libya, the land is desert, waterless, without animals, without rain, and without trees, and there is no moisture in it at all. So it is, then, that as far as Lake Tritonis,

going from Egypt, the Libyans are nomads who eat meat and drink milk; they do not touch the flesh of cows, just as the Egyptians do not, and they do not keep pigs. Even the women of Cyrene do not think it right to eat the flesh of cows, on account of the Egyptian Isis, and they observe fasts and festivals in her honor. The women of Barca, meanwhile, refrain from eating pork as well as beef.

Such, then, is the state of things there. West of Lake Tritonis, the Libyans are no longer nomads, nor do they follow the same customs, nor do they treat their children as the nomads are accustomed to do. Whether every nomadic Libyan follows this practice is something I am unable to state with certainty, though a good number of them do the following: when a child

of theirs reaches the age of four, they burn the veins at the crown of its head with a tuft of sheep's wool — some of them burn the veins at the temples instead — so that for the rest of its life no phlegm running down from the head may harm it. And because of this, they say, they are the healthiest of people; indeed the Libyans truly are the healthiest of all men we know, whether

it is because of this practice I cannot say for certain, but healthiest they are. And if the children suffer convulsions while being burned, they have found a remedy for this too: they sprinkle them with the urine of a he-goat, and by this cure them. What follows is simply what the Libyans themselves report. The nomads' sacrifices are as follows: when they have cut a piece from the ear of the animal, they throw it over the roof of the house, and once this is done, they wring its neck

back. The sun and the moon alone receive their sacrifices. All Libyans sacrifice to these, but those who live around Lake Tritonis sacrifice chiefly to Athena, and after her to Triton and Poseidon. As for the dress and the aegis of the statues of Athena, the Greeks took these from the Libyan women; except that the Libyan women's dress is of leather and the tassels hanging from their aegis are not snakes but thongs,

in all other respects the dress is fashioned in the same way. And indeed the very name testifies that the costume of the images of Pallas comes from Libya; for the Libyan women wear bare goatskins about their dress, fringed and dyed red with madder, and it is from these goatskins that the Greeks derived the name 'aegis.'

It seems to me, too, that the ritual cry raised in sacred rites first arose there, for the Libyan women use it very skillfully and often. The Greeks also learned from the Libyans how to yoke four horses together. The nomads bury their dead as the Greeks do, except for the Nasamones; these bury their dead sitting up, taking care, as the person is about to breathe their last, to sit them upright so that they do not die lying flat on their back.

Their dwellings are woven together out of asphodel stalks bound around reeds, and these are portable. That is the way of life these people keep to. West of the Triton river, next to the Auseans, are Libyans who are already farmers and who are accustomed to owning houses; their name is the Maxyes. These grow the hair long on the right side of the head and shave it away on the left, and they smear their bodies with red ochre. They say

that they are descended from the men of Troy. This land, and the rest of Libya toward the west, is far more full of wild beasts and more thickly wooded than the land of the nomads. For the eastern part of Libya, which the nomads inhabit, is low-lying and sandy as far as the Triton river, while the land beyond

West of this region, the land of the plowing peoples is very mountainous, thickly wooded, and full of wild animals: for there are the huge snakes, and lions of that region, and elephants and bears and asps and donkeys with horns and the dog-headed creatures and the headless beings that have their eyes in their chests, as

the Libyans say they do — wild-natured men, wild-natured women, and a great number of other creatures too real to be mere invention. Among the nomads, however, none of these exist, but rather these: white-rumped antelopes, gazelles, hartebeest, and donkeys — not the horned kind but others that never drink water (for indeed they do not drink), and oryxes, whose horns the Phoenicians

make into the curved handles of lyres (this animal is the size of an ox), and jackal-foxes and hyenas and porcupines and wild rams and 'nets' and jackals and panthers and 'boryes,' and crocodiles on land about three cubits long, most similar to lizards, and ostriches that burrow in the ground, and small snakes, each having a single horn: these, then, are the animals found there, and those

that exist elsewhere too, except for deer and wild boar — for deer and wild boar do not exist in Libya at all. There are three kinds of mice there: some are called two-footed, others zegeries (this name is Libyan, and in the Greek tongue it means 'hills'), and others hedgehog-mice. There are also weasels living among the silphium plants

most similar to the Tartessian weasels. So many, then, are the animals that the land of the nomadic Libyans has, as far as we, through our inquiry, have been able to reach in our research. Next to the Maxyes of Libya come the Zauekes, among whom the women drive the chariots into war. Next to these come the Gyzantes, among whom bees produce a great deal of honey, and still more, it is said, is made by craftsmen.

All these people daub themselves with red ochre, and monkeys, plentiful in their mountains, form part of their diet. Near these, the Carthaginians say, lies an island called Cyraunis, two hundred stadia in length and narrow in width, reachable on foot from the mainland, full of olive trees and vines. There is a lake in it, from which the local maidens, using feathers

of birds smeared with pitch, bring up gold dust from the mud. Whether this is really true I do not know, but I write what is said. It could all be true, since I myself have seen, in Zacynthus, pitch being brought up from a lake and water. There are indeed several lakes there, and the largest of them is seventy feet across in every direction, and two fathoms deep.

Into this they let down a pole with a myrtle branch tied to its tip, and then they bring up pitch on the myrtle, having a smell like asphalt but otherwise better than Pierian pitch. They pour it into a pit dug near the lake, and when they have gathered a good amount, they then pour it from the pit into jars. Whatever falls into the lake

passes underground and reappears in the sea, which is about four stadia from the lake. So then, what is said about the island lying off Libya is also plausible in light of this truth. The Carthaginians also tell this story: beyond the Pillars of Heracles lies a region of Libya inhabited by people; that when they arrive among them and unload their cargo, having set it out

in a row along the shore, they board their ships and raise smoke. The local inhabitants notice the smoke, make their way down to the shore, and lay out gold as payment for the goods, and withdraw far back from the goods. The Carthaginians then disembark and inspect it, and if the gold seems to them a fair price for the goods, they take it and depart, but if it does not seem enough, they board

their ships again and sit there: the others then come and set down more gold, until they satisfy them. Neither side wrongs the other, for the Carthaginians do not touch the gold until it equals in value the worth of the goods, nor do the others touch the goods until the Carthaginians have taken the gold. These, then, make up the Libyan peoples that we can identify by name, and among these

most of them, neither now nor then, gave any thought at all to the king of the Medes. This much more I can say about this land: that four peoples inhabit it and no more than these, as far as we know, and two of these peoples are native and two are not — the Libyans and the Ethiopians are native, the former living in the northern part and the latter

in the southern part of Libya, while the Phoenicians and Greeks are settlers there. It seems to me that Libya has no fertility worth comparing to either Asia or Europe, except for the region of Cinyps alone: for that land bears the same name as its river. This land is like the best land for bringing forth the crop of Demeter, and it is nothing at all like the rest of

Libya. Its soil is black and fed by springs, suffering neither drought nor harm from excess rain — for rain does indeed fall in that part of Libya. The measures of the yield of its crop are the same as those established for the land of Babylon. Good land too is that which the people of Euesperides occupy: when it bears its very best, it yields a hundredfold, while the land in

Cinyps yields three hundredfold. The land of Cyrene also, being the highest part of this Libya which the nomads occupy, has three seasons within itself worthy of wonder. First, the crops near the coast come into season for reaping and harvesting; once these are gathered in, the crops of the middle region above the coastal lands come into season for harvesting — the region they call the 'hills'; this

middle crop having been gathered in, the crop in the highest part of the land also ripens and comes into season, with the result that the first crop is already consumed and gone before the last one comes in alongside it. Thus the harvest season occupies the Cyrenaeans for eight months. Let this much, then, be said on this subject. The Persian avengers of Pheretime, after they had been sent from Egypt by Aryandes and arrived at Barca,

laid siege to the city, demanding that they hand over those responsible for the murder of Arcesilaus; but since the whole population was implicated, they did not accept the terms. Then they besieged Barca for nine months, digging underground tunnels leading to the wall and making violent assaults. The tunnels were discovered by a bronze-smith by means of a bronze shield, having conceived the idea as follows: carrying

it around inside the wall, he pressed it against the ground of the city. Everywhere else it pressed against the ground it made no sound, but wherever there was digging underneath, the bronze of the shield rang out. Digging counter-tunnels at that point, the people of Barca killed the Persians who were tunneling there. This, then, is how it was discovered, and the assaults the Barcaeans beat back. When much time had been spent

and many had fallen on both sides, no fewer among the Persians, Amasis the commander of the infantry devised the following scheme. Realizing that the Barcaeans could not be taken by force but could be taken by trickery, he did this: by night he dug a wide trench and laid weak timbers across it, and over the timbers he laid down a covering of soil, so that the ground looked even with everything around it. At

daybreak he invited the Barcaeans to a parley, and they gladly agreed, until it was decided to make use of an agreement. The agreement they made was of this sort: cutting the oath over the hidden trench, that as long as this ground remained as it was, the oath would remain in force, and that the Barcaeans would agree to pay a tribute worthy to the king, and the Persians would do nothing else new against the Barcaeans.

After the oath, the Barcaeans, trusting in these terms, themselves came out of the city, and allowed any of the enemy who wished to enter within the wall, opening all the gates. But the Persians broke through the hidden bridge and ran inside the wall. They broke through the bridge they had made for this reason, so that they might keep faith with their oath, since they had sworn to the Barcaeans that the oath would remain

in force for as long as the ground remained as it then was: once they had broken it through, the oath no longer remained in force as it stood. Pheretime then, once the most guilty of the Barcaeans had been handed over to her by the Persians, had them impaled in a circle around the wall; their wives' breasts she cut off and fixed those around the wall as well, in a ring; the rest of the Barcaeans she ordered

the Persians to take as plunder, except for those who were of the house of Battus and were not implicated in the murder; to these Pheretime entrusted the city. The rest of the Barcaeans, then, the Persians enslaved and led away, and when they arrived before the city of Cyrene, the Cyrenaeans, in fear of some oracle, let them pass through the city. As the army was passing through, Badres,

the commander of the naval force, urged that they take the city, but Amasis, commander of the infantry, would not allow it, saying that they had been sent out against Barca alone, the only Greek city they were to attack; but once they had passed through and settled on the hill of Zeus Lycaeus, they regretted not having seized Cyrene, and they tried a second time to enter it; but the Cyrenaeans would not let them. Then, with no one fighting against the Persians,

fear fell upon them, and they fled some sixty stadia and made camp there; and while the army was encamped there, a messenger came from Aryandes recalling them. The Persians then asked the Cyrenaeans to give them provisions for the road, and having received these, they departed for Egypt. From there the Libyans took over, and for the sake of their clothing and gear killed those of them who lagged behind and straggled,

until they came to Egypt. This Persian army went farther into Libya than any other, as far as Euesperides. As for the Barcaeans they had enslaved, they carried them off from Egypt to the king, and King Darius gave them a village in Bactrian territory to settle in. They gave this village the name Barce, and it was still inhabited

in the land of Bactria down to my own time. As for Pheretime, she too did not finish out her life well. Once she had made her way back to Egypt from Libya after avenging herself on the Barcaeans, she died a horrible death: while still alive she seethed and swarmed with worms, since it seems that excessively severe vengeance taken by human beings provokes the resentment of the gods. Such, then, and so great was the vengeance that came from Pheretime, daughter of Battus,

upon the Barcaeans.

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