CHAPTER XVII.

LYDIANS. — MEDES. — CIMMERIANS. — SCYTHIANS.

The early relations between the Lydians and the Asiatic Greeks, anterior to the reign of Gygês, are not better known to us than those of the Phrygians. Their native music became partly incorporated with the Greek, as the Phrygian music was; to which it was very analogous, both in instruments and in character, though the Lydian mode was considered by the ancients as more effeminate and enervating. The flute was used alike by Phrygians and Lydians, passing from both of them to the Greeks; but the magadis or pectis (a harp with sometimes as many as twenty strings, sounded two together in octave) is said to have been borrowed by the Lesbian Terpander from the Lydian banquets.[416] The flute-players who acquired esteem among the early Asiatic Greeks were often Phrygian or Lydian slaves; and even the poet Alkman, who gained for himself permanent renown among the Greek lyric poets, though not a slave born at Sardis, as is sometimes said, was probably of Lydian extraction.

[416] Pindar. ap. Athenæ. xiv, p. 635: compare Telestês ap. Athenæ. xiv, p. 626; Pausan. ix, 5, 4.

It has been already mentioned that Homer knows nothing of Lydia or Lydians. He names Mæonians in juxtaposition with Karians, and we are told by Herodotus that the people once called Mæonian received the new appellation of Lydian from Lydus son of Atys. Sardis, whose almost inexpugnable citadel was situated on a precipitous rock on the northern side of the ridge of Tmôlus, overhanging the plain of the river Hermus, was the capital of the Lydian kings: it is not named by Homer, though he mentions both Tmôlus and the neighboring Gygæan lake: the fortification of it was ascribed to an old Lydian king named Mêlês, and strange legends were told concerning it.[417] Its possessors were enriched by the neighborhood of the river Paktôlus, which flowed down from Mount Tmôlus towards the Hermus, and brought with it considerable quantities of gold in its sands. To this cause historians often ascribe the abundant treasure belonging to Crœsus and his predecessors; but Crœsus possessed, besides, other mines near Pergamus;[418] and another cause of wealth is also to be found in the general industry of the Lydian people, which the circumstances mentioned respecting them seem to attest. They were the first people, according to Herodotus, who ever carried on retail trade; and the first to coin money of gold and silver.[419]

[417] Herodot. i, 84.

[418] Aristot. Mirabil. Auscultat. 52.

[419] Herodot. i, 94.

The archæologists of Sardis in the time of Herodotus, a century after the Persian conquest, carried very far back the antiquity of the Lydian monarchy, by means of a series of names which are in great part, if not altogether, divine and heroic. Herodotus gives us first, Manês, Atys, and Lydus,—next, a line of kings beginning with Hêraklês, twenty-two in number, succeeding each other from father to son and lasting for 505 years. The first of this line of Herakleid kings was Agrôn, descended from Hêraklês in the fourth generation,—Hêraklês, Alkæus, Ninus, Bêlus, and Agrôn. The twenty-second prince of this Herakleid family, after an uninterrupted succession of father and son during 505 years, was Kandaulês, called by the Greeks Myrsilus the son of Myrsus: with him the dynasty ended, and ended by one of those curious incidents which Herodotus has narrated with his usual dramatic, yet unaffected, emphasis. It was the divine will that Kandaulês should be destroyed, and he lost his rational judgment: having a wife the most beautiful woman in Lydia, his vanity could not be satisfied without exhibiting her naked person to Gygês son of Daskylus, his principal confidant and the commander of his guards. In spite of the vehement repugnance of Gygês, this resolution was executed; but the wife became aware of the inexpiable affront, and took her measures to avenge it. Surrounded by her most faithful domestics, she sent for Gygês, and addressed him: “Two ways are now open to thee, Gygês: take which thou wilt. Either kill Kandaulês, wed me, and acquire the kingdom of Lydia,—or else thou must at once perish. For thou hast seen forbidden things, and either thou, or the man who contrived it for thee must die.” Gygês in vain entreated to be spared so terrible an alternative: he was driven to the option, and he chose that which promised safety to himself.[420] The queen planted him in ambush behind the bed-chamber door, in the very spot where Kandaulês had placed him as a spectator, and armed him with a dagger, which he plunged into the heart of the sleeping king.

[420] Herodot. i, 11. αἱρέεται αὐτὸς περιεῖναι,—a phrase to which Gibbon has ascribed an intended irony, which it is difficult to discover in Herodotus.

Thus ended the dynasty of the Herakleids; but there was a large party in Lydia who indignantly resented the death of Kandaulês, and took arms against Gygês. A civil war ensued, which both parties at length consented to terminate by reference to the Delphian oracle. The decision of that holy referee was given in favor of Gygês, and the kingdom of Lydia thus passed to his dynasty, called the Mermnadæ. But the oracle accompanied its verdict with an intimation, that in the person of the fifth descendant of Gygês, the murder of Kandaulês would be avenged,—a warning of which, Herodotus innocently remarks, no one took any notice, until it was actually fulfilled in the person of Crœsus.[421]

[421] Herodot. i, 13. τούτου τοῦ ἔπεος ... λόγον οὐδένα ἐποιεῦντο, πρὶν δὴ ἐπετελέσθη.

In this curious legend, which marks the commencement of the dynasty called Mermnadæ, the historical kings of Lydia,—we cannot determine how much, or whether any part, is historical. Gygês was probably a real man, contemporary with the youth of the poet Archilochus; but the name Gygês is also an heroic name in Lydian archæology. He is the eponymus of the Gygæan lake near Sardis; and of the many legends told respecting him, Plato has preserved one, according to which Gygês is a mere herdsman of the king of Lydia: after a terrible storm and earthquake, he sees near him a chasm in the earth, into which he descends and finds a vast horse of brass, hollow and partly open, wherein there lies a gigantic corpse with a golden ring. This ring he carries away, and discovers unexpectedly that it possesses the miraculous property of rendering him invisible at pleasure. Being sent on a message to the king, he makes the magic ring available to his ambition: he first possesses himself of the person of the queen, then with her aid assassinates the king, and finally seizes the sceptre.[422]

[422] Plato, Republ. ii, p. 360; Cicero, Offic. iii, 9. Plato (x, p. 612) compares very suitably the ring of Gygês to the helmet of Hadês.

The legend thus recounted by Plato, different in almost all points from the Herodotean, has this one circumstance in common, that the adventurer Gygês, through the favor and help of the queen, destroys the king and becomes his successor. Feminine preference and patronage is the cause of his prosperity. Klausen has shown[423] that this “aphrodisiac influence” runs in a peculiar manner through many of the Asiatic legends, both divine and heroic. The Phrygian Midas, or Gordius, as before recounted, acquires the throne by marriage with a divinely privileged maiden: the favor shown by Aphroditê to Anchisês, confers upon the Æneadæ sovereignty in the Troad: moreover, the great Phrygian and Lydian goddess Rhea or Cybelê has always her favored and self-devoting youth Atys, who is worshipped along with her, and who serves as a sort of mediator between her and mankind. The feminine element appears predominant in Asiatic mythes: Midas, Sardanapalus, Sandôn, and even Hêraklês,[424] are described as clothed in women’s attire and working at the loom; while on the other hand the Amazons and Semiramis achieve great conquests.

[423] See Klausen, Æneas und die Penaten, pp. 34, 110, etc: compare Menke, Lydiaca, ch. 8, 9.

[424] See the article of O. Müller in the Rheinisch. Museum für Philologie Jahrgang, iii, pp. 22-38; also Movers, Die Phönizier, ch. xii, pp. 452-470.

Admitting therefore the historical character of the Lydian kings called Mermnadæ, beginning with Gygês about 715-690 B. C., and ending with Crœsus, we find nothing but legend to explain to us the circumstances which led to their accession. Still less can we make out anything respecting the preceding kings, or determine whether Lydia was ever in former times connected with or dependent upon the kingdom of Assyria, as Ktêsias affirmed.[425] Nor can we certify the reality or dates of the old Lydian kings named by the native historian Xanthus,—Alkimus, Kamblês, Adramytês.[426] One piece of valuable information, however, we acquire from Xanthus,—the distribution of Lydia into two parts, Lydia proper and Torrhêbia, which he traces to the two sons of Atys,—Lydus and Torrhêbus; he states that the dialect of the Lydians and Torrhebians differed much in the same degree as that of Doric and Ionic Greeks.[427] Torrhêbia appears to have included the valley of the Kaïster, south of Tmôlus, and near to the frontiers of Karia.

[425] Diodor. ii, 2. Niebuhr also conceives that Lydia was in early days a portion of the Assyrian empire (Kleine Schriften, p. 371).

[426] Xanthi Fragment. 10, 12, 19, ed. Didot; Athenæ. x, p. 415; Nikolaus Damasc. p. 36, Orelli.

[427] Xanthi Fragm. 1, 2; Dionys. Halik. A. R. i, 28; Stephan. Byz. v. Τόῤῥηβος. The whole genealogy given by Dionysius is probably borrowed from Xanthus,—Zeus, Manês, Kotys, Asiês and Atys, Lydus and Torrhêbus.

With Gygês, the Mermnad king, commences the series of aggressions from Sardis upon the Asiatic Greeks, which ultimately ended in their subjection. Gygês invaded the territories of Milêtus and Smyrna, and even took the city, probably not the citadel, of Kolophôn. Though he thus, however, made war upon the Asiatic Greeks, he was munificent in his donations to the Grecian god of Delphi, and his numerous as well as costly offerings were seen in the temple by Herodotus. Elegiac compositions of the poet Mimnermus celebrated the valor of the Smyrnæans in their battle with Gygês.[428] We hear also, in a story which bears the impress of Lydian more than of Grecian fancy, of a beautiful youth of Smyrna named Magnês, to whom Gygês was attached, and who incurred the displeasure of his countrymen for having composed verses in celebration of the victories of the Lydians over the Amazons. To avenge the ill-treatment received by this youth, Gygês attacked the territory of Magnêsia (probably Magnêsia on Sipylus) and after a considerable struggle took the city.[429]

[428] Herod, i, 14; Pausan. ix, 29, 2.

[429] Nikolaus Damasc. p. 52, ed. Orelli.

How far the Lydian kingdom of Sardis extended during the reign of Gygês, we have no means of ascertaining. Strabo alleges that the whole Troad[430] belonged to him, and that the Greek settlement of Abydus on the Hellespont was established by the Milesians only under his auspices. On what authority this statement is made, we are not told, and it appears doubtful, especially as so many legendary anecdotes are connected with the name of Gygês. This prince reigned (according to Herodotus) thirty-eight years, and was succeeded by his son Ardys, who reigned forty-nine years (about B. C. 678-629). We learn that he attacked the Milesians, and took the Ionic city of Priênê, but this possession cannot have been maintained, for the city appears afterwards as autonomous.[431] His long reign, however, was signalized by two events, both of considerable moment to the Asiatic Greeks; the invasion of the Cimmerians,—and the first approach to collision, at least the first of which we have any historical knowledge, between the inhabitants of Lydia and those of Upper Asia under the Median kings.

[430] Strabo, xiii, p. 590.

[431] Herodot. i, 15.

It is affirmed by all authors that the Medes were originally numbered among the subjects of the great Assyrian empire, of which Nineveh—or Ninos, as the Greeks call it—was the chief town, and Babylon one of the principal portions. That the population and power of these two great cities, as well as of several others which the Ten Thousand Greeks in their march found ruined and deserted in those same regions, is of high antiquity,[432] there is no room for doubting; but it is noway incumbent upon a historian of Greece to entangle himself in the mazes of Assyrian chronology, or to weigh the degree of credit to which the conflicting statements of Herodotus, Ktêsias, Berosus, Abydênus, etc. are entitled. With the Assyrian empire,[433]—which lasted, according to Herodotus, five hundred and twenty years, according to Ktêsias, thirteen hundred and sixty years,—the Greeks have no ascertainable connection: the city of Nineveh appears to have been taken by the Medes a little before the year 600 B. C. (in so far as the chronology can be made out), and exercised no influence upon Grecian affairs. Those inhabitants of Upper Asia, with whom the early Greeks had relation, were the Medes, and the Assyrians or Chaldæans of Babylon,—both originally subject to the Assyrians of Nineveh,—both afterwards acquiring independence,—and both ultimately embodied in the Persian empire. At what time either of them became first independent, we do not know:[434] the astronomical canon which gives a list of kings of Babylon, beginning with what is called the era of Nabonassar, or 747 B. C., does not prove at what epoch these Babylonian chiefs became independent of Nineveh: and the catalogue of Median kings, which Herodotus begins with Dêïokês, about 709-711 B. C., is commenced by Ktêsias more than a century earlier,—moreover, the names in the two lists are different almost from first to last.

[432] Xenophon, Anabas. iii, 4, 7; 10, 11.

[433] Herodot. i, 95; Ktêsias, Fragm. Assyr. xiii, p. 419, ed. Bahr; Diodor. ii, 21. Ktêsias gives thirty generations of Assyrian kings from Ninyas to Sardanapalus: Velleius, 33; Eusebius, 35; Syncellus, 40; Castor, 27; Cephalion, 23. See Bahr ad Ctesiam, p. 428. The Babylonian chronology of Berosus (a priest of Belus, about 280 B. C.) gave 86 kings and 34,000 years from the Deluge to the Median occupation of Babylon; then 1,453 years down to the reign of Phul king of Assyria (Berosi Fragmenta, p. 8, ed. Richter).

Mr. Clinton sets forth the chief statements and discrepancies respecting Assyrian chronology in his Appendix, c. 4. But the suppositions to which he resorts, in order to bring them into harmony, appear to me uncertified and gratuitous.

Compare the different, but not more successful, track followed by Larcher (Chronologie, c. 3, pp. 145-157).

[434] Here again both Larcher and Mr. Clinton represent the time, at which the Medes made themselves independent of Assyria, as perfectly ascertained, though Larcher places it in 748 B. C., and Mr. Clinton in 711 B. C. “L’époque ne me paroit pas douteuse,” (Chronologie, c. iv, p. 157,) says Larcher. Mr. Clinton treats the epoch of 711 B. C. for the same event, as fixed upon “_the authority of Scripture_” and reasons upon it in more than one place as a fact altogether indisputable (Appendix, c. iii, p. 259): “We may collect from Scripture that the Medes did not become independent till after the death of Sennacherib; and accordingly Josephus (Ant. x, 2), having related the death of this king, and the miraculous recovery of Hezekiah from sickness, adds—ἐν τούτῳ τῷ χρόνῳ συνέβη τὴν τῶν Ἀσσυρίων ἀρχὴν ὑπὸ Μήδων καταλυθῆναι. But the death of Sennacherib, as will be shown hereafter, is determined to the beginning of 711 B. C. The Median revolt, then, did not occur before B. C. 711; which refutes Conringius, who raises it to B. C. 715, and Valckenaer, who raises it to B. C. 741. Herodotus, indeed, implies an interval of some space between the revolt of the Medes and the election of Dêïokês to be king. But these anni ἀβασίλευτοι could not have been prior to the fifty-three years of Dêïokês, since the revolt is _limited by Scripture_ to B. C. 711.” Again, p. 261, he says, respecting the four Median kings mentioned by Eusebius before Dêïokês: “If they existed at all, they governed Media during the empire of the Assyrians, as we _know from Scripture_.” And again, p. 280: “The precise date of the termination (of the Assyrian empire) in B. C. 711 is _given by Scripture_, with which Herodotus agrees,” etc.

Mr. Clinton here treats, more than once, the revolt of the Medes as fixed to the year 711 B. C. _by Scripture_; but he produces no passage of Scripture to justify his allegation: and the passage which he cites from Josephus alludes, not to the Median revolt, but to the destruction of the Assyrian empire by the Medes. Herodotus represents the Medes as revolting from the Assyrian empire, and maintaining their independence for some time (undefined in extent) before the election of Dêïokês as king; but he gives us no means of determining the date of the _Median revolt_; and when Mr. Clinton says (p. 280, Note O.): “I suppose Herodotus to place the revolt of the Medes in Olymp. 17, 2, since he places the accession of Dêïokês in Olymp. 17, 3,”—this is a conjecture of his own: and the narrative of Herodotus seems plainly to imply that he conceived an interval far greater than one year between these two events. Diodorus gives the same interval as lasting “for many generations.” (Diod. ii, 32.)

We know—both from Scripture and from the Phœnician annals, as cited by Josephus—that the Assyrians of Nineveh were powerful conquerors in Syria, Judæa, and Phœnicia, during the reigns of Salmaneser and Sennacherib: the statement of Josephus farther implies that Media was subject to Salmaneser, who took the Israelites from their country into Media and Persis, and brought the Cuthæans out of Media and Persis into the lands of the Israelites (Joseph. ix, 14, 1; x, 9, 7). We know farther, that after Sennacherib, the Assyrians of Nineveh are no more mentioned as invaders or disturbers of Syria or Judæa; the Chaldæans or Babylonians become then the enemies whom those countries have to dread. Josephus tells us, that at this epoch the Assyrian empire was destroyed by the Medes,—or, as he says in another place, by the Medes and Babylonians (x, 2, 2; x, 5, 1). This is good evidence for believing that the Assyrian empire of Nineveh sustained at this time a great shock and diminution of power; but as to the nature of this diminution, and the way in which it was brought about, it appears to me that there is a discrepancy of authorities which we have no means of reconciling,—Josephus follows the same view as Ktêsias, of the destruction of the empire of Nineveh by the Medes and Babylonians united, while Herodotus conceives successive revolts of the territories dependent upon Nineveh, beginning with that of the Medes, and still leaving Nineveh flourishing and powerful in its own territory: he farther conceives Nineveh as taken by Kyaxarês the Mede, about the year 600 B. C., without any mention of Babylonians,—on the contrary, in his representation, Nitokris the queen of Babylon is afraid of the Medes (i, 185), partly from the general increase of their power, but especially from their having taken Nineveh (though Mr. Clinton tells us, p. 275, that “Nineveh was destroyed B. C. 606, as we have seen from the united testimonies of the Scripture and Herodotus, _by the Medes and Babylonians_.”)

Construing fairly the text of Herodotus, it will appear that he conceived the relations of these Oriental kingdoms between 800 and 560 B. C. differently on many material points from Ktêsias, or Berosus, or Josephus: and he himself expressly tells us, that he heard “four different tales” even respecting Cyrus (i, 95); much more, respecting events anterior to Cyrus by more than a century.

The chronology of the Medes, Babylonians, Lydians, and Greeks in Asia, when we come to the seventh century B. C., acquires some fixed points which give us assurance of correctness within certain limits; but above the year 700 B. C. no such fixed points can be detected. We cannot discriminate the historical from the mythical in our authorities,—we cannot reconcile them with each other, except by violent changes and conjectures,—nor can we determine which of them ought to be set aside in favor of the other. The names and dates of the Babylonian kings down from Nabonassar, in the Canon of Ptolemy, are doubtless authentic, but they are names and dates only: when we come to apply them to illustrate real or supposed matters of fact, drawn from other sources, they only create a new embarrassment, for even the _names_ of the kings as reported by different authors do not agree and Mr. Clinton informs us (p. 277): “In tracing the identity of Eastern kings, the times and the transactions are better guides than the names; for these, from many well-known causes (as the changes which they undergo in passing through the Greek language, and the substitution of a title or an epithet for the name), are variously reported, so that _the same king frequently appears under many different appellations_.” Here, then, is a new problem: we are to employ “the times and transactions” to identify the kings: but unfortunately the _times_ are marked only by the succession of kings, and the _transactions_ are known only by statements always scanty and often irreconcilable with each other. So that our means of identifying the kings are altogether insufficient, and whoever will examine the process of identification as it appears in Mr. Clinton’s chapters, will see that it is in a high degree arbitrary; more arbitrary still are the processes which he employs for bringing about a forced harmony between discrepant authorities. Nor is Volney (Chronologie d’Hérodote, vol. i, pp. 383-429) more satisfactory in his chronological results.

For the historian of Greece, the Medes first begin to acquire importance about 656 B. C., under a king whom Herodotus calls Phraortês, son of Dêïokês. Respecting Dêïokês himself, Herodotus recounts to us how he came to be first chosen king.[435] The seven tribes of Medes dwelt dispersed in separate villages, without any common authority, and the mischiefs of anarchy were painfully felt among them: Dêïokês having acquired great reputation in his own village as a just man, was invoked gradually by all the adjoining villages to settle their disputes. As soon as his efficiency in this vocation, and the improvement which he brought about, had become felt throughout all the tribes, he artfully threw up his post and retired again into privacy,—upon which the evils of anarchy revived in a manner more intolerable than before. The Medes had now no choice except to elect a king,—the friends of Dêïokês expatiated warmly upon his virtues, and he was the person chosen.[436] The first step of the new king was to exact from the people a body of guards selected by himself; next, he commanded them to build the city of Ekbatana, upon a hill surrounded with seven concentric circles of walls, his own palace being at the top and in the innermost. He farther organized the scheme of Median despotism; the king, though his person was constantly secluded in his fortified palace, inviting written communications from all aggrieved persons, and administering to each the decision or the redress which it required,—informing himself, moreover, of passing events by means of ubiquitous spies and officials, who seized all wrong-doers and brought them to the palace for condign punishment. Dêïokês farther constrained the Medes to abandon their separate abodes and concentrate themselves in Ekbatana, from whence all the powers of government branched out; and the seven distinct fortified circles in the town, coinciding as they do with the number of the Median tribes, were probably conceived by Herodotus as intended each for one distinct tribe,—the tribe of Dêïokês occupying the innermost along with himself.[437]

[435] Herodot. i, 96-100.

[436] Herodot. i, 97. ὡς δ᾽ ἐγὼ δοκέω, μάλιστα ἔλεγον οἱ τοῦ Δηϊόκεω φίλοι, etc.

[437] Herodot. i, 98, 99, 100. Οἰκοδομηθέντων δὲ πάντων, κόσμον τόνδε Δηϊόκης πρῶτός ἐστιν ὁ καταστησάμενος· μήτε ἐσιέναι παρὰ βασιλέα μηδένα, δι᾽ ἀγγέλων δὲ πάντα χρέεσθαι, ὁρᾶσθαι δὲ βασιλέα ὑπὸ μηδενός· πρὸς δὲ τούτοισι ἔτι γελᾷν τε καὶ πτύειν ἄντιον, καὶ ἅπασι εἶναι τοῦτό γε αἰσχρόν, etc. and ... οἱ κατάσκοποί τε καὶ κατήκοοι ἦσαν ἀνὰ πᾶσαν τὴν χώρην τῆς ἦρχε.

Except the successive steps of this well-laid political plan, we hear of no other acts ascribed to Dêïokês: he is said to have held the government for fifty-three years, and then dying, was succeeded by his son Phraortês. Of the real history of Dêïokês, we cannot be said to know anything. For the interesting narrative of Herodotus, of which the above is an abridgment, presents to us in all its points Grecian society and ideas, not Oriental: it is like the discussion which the historian ascribes to the seven Persian conspirators, previous to the accession of Darius,—whether they shall adopt an oligarchical, a democratical, or a monarchical form of government;[438] or it may be compared, perhaps more aptly still, to the Cyropædia of Xenophon, who beautifully and elaborately works out an ideal which Herodotus exhibits in brief outline. The story of Dêïokês describes what may be called the despot’s progress, first as candidate, and afterwards as fully established. Amidst the active political discussion carried on by intelligent Greeks in the days of Herodotus, there were doubtless many stories of the successful arts of ambitious despots, and much remark as to the probable means conducive to their success, of a nature similar to those in the Politics of Aristotle: one of these tales Herodotus has employed to decorate the birth and infancy of the Median monarchy. His Dêïokês begins like a clever Greek among other Greeks, equal, free, and disorderly. He is athirst for despotism from the beginning, and is forward in manifesting his rectitude and justice, “as beseems a candidate for command;”[439] he passes into a despot by the public vote, and receives what to the Greeks was the great symbol and instrument of such transition, a personal body-guard; he ends by organizing both the machinery and the etiquette of a despotism in the Oriental fashion, like the Cyrus of Xenophon,[440] only that both these authors maintain the superiority of their Grecian ideal over Oriental reality by ascribing both to Dêïokês and Cyrus a just, systematic, and laborious administration, such as their own experience did not present to them in Asia. Probably Herodotus had visited Ekbatana (which he describes and measures like an eye-witness, comparing its circuit to that of Athens), and there heard that Dêïokês was the builder of the city, the earliest known Median king, and the first author of those public customs which struck him as peculiar, after the revolt from Assyria: the interval might then be easily filled up, between Median autonomy and Median despotism, by intermediate incidents, such as would have accompanied that transition in the longitude of Greece. The features of these inhabitants of Upper Asia, for a thousand years forward from the time at which we are now arrived,—under the descendants of Dêïokês, of Cyrus, of Arsakês, and of Ardshir,—are so unvarying,[441] that we are much assisted in detecting those occasions in which Herodotus or others infuse into their history indigenous Grecian ideas.

[438] Herodot. iii, 80-82. Herodotus, while he positively asserts the genuineness of these deliberations, lets drop the intimation that many of his contemporaries regarded them as of Grecian coinage.

[439] Herodot. i, 96. Ἐόντων δὲ αὐτονόμων πάντων ἀνὰ τὴν ἤπειρον, ὧδε αὖτις ἐς τυραννίδας περιῆλθον. Ἀνὴρ ἐν τοῖσι Μήδοισι ἐγένετο σοφὸς, τῷ οὔνομα ἦν Δηϊόκης.... Οὗτος ὁ Δηϊόκης, ἐρασθεὶς τυραννίδος, ἐποίεε τοιάδε, etc.... Ὁ δὲ δὴ, οἷα μνεώμενος ἀρχὴν, ἰθύς τε καὶ δίκαιος ἦν.

[440] Compare the chapters above referred to in Herodotus with the eighth book of the Cyropædia, wherein Xenophon describes the manner in which the Median despotism was put in effective order and turned to useful account by Cyrus, especially the arrangements for imposing on the imagination of his subjects (καταγοητεύειν, viii, 1, 40)—(it is a small thing, but marks the cognate plan of Herodotus and Xenophon). Dêïokês forbids his subjects to laugh or spit in his presence. Cyrus also directs that no one shall spit, or wipe his nose, or turn round to look at anything, when the king is present (Herodot. i, 99; Xen. Cyrop. viii, 1, 42). Again, viii, 3, 1, about the pompous procession of Cyrus when he rides out,—καὶ γὰρ αὐτῆς τῆς ἐξελάσεως ἡ σεμνότης ἡμῖν δοκεῖ μία τῶν τεχνῶν εἶναι τῶν μεμηχανημένων, τὴν ἀρχὴν μὴ εὐκαταφρόνητον εἶναι—analogous to the Median Dêïokês in Herodotus—Ταῦτα δὲ περὶ ἑωυτὸν ἐσέμνυνε τῶνδε εἵνεκεν, etc. _Cyrus_—ἐμφανίζων δὲ καὶ τοῦτο ὅτι περὶ πολλοῦ ἐποιεῖτο, μηδένα μήτε φίλον ἀδικεῖν μήτε σύμμαχον, ἀλλὰ τὸ δίκαιον ἰσχυρῶς ὁρῶν (Cyrop. viii, 1, 26). _Dêïokês_—ἦν τὸ δίκαιον φυλάσσων χαλεπός (Herodot. i, 100). _Cyrus_ provides numerous persons who serve to him as eyes and ears throughout the country (Cyrop. viii, 2, 12), _Dêïokês_ has many κατάσκοποι and κατήκοοι (Herodot. _ib._).

[441] When the Roman emperor Claudius sends the young Parthian prince Meherdatês, who had been an hostage at Rome, to occupy the kingdom which the Parthian envoys tendered to him, he gives him some good advice, conceived in the school of Greek and Roman politics: “Addidit præcepta, ut non dominationem ac servos, sed rectorem et cives, cogitaret: clementiamque ac justitiam quanto ignara barbaris, tanto toleratiora, capesseret.” (Tacit, Annal. xii, 11.)

Phraortês (658-636 B. C.), having extended the dominion of the Medes over a large portion of Upper Asia, and conquered both the Persians and several other nations, was ultimately defeated and slain in a war against the Assyrians of Nineveh: who, though deprived of their external dependencies, were yet brave and powerful by themselves. His son Kyaxarês (636-595 B. C.) followed up with still greater energy the same plans of conquest, and is said to have been the first who introduced any organization into the military force;—before his time, archers, spearmen, and cavalry had been confounded together indiscriminately, until this monarch established separate divisions for each. He extended the Median dominion to the eastern bank of the Halys, which river afterwards, by the conquests of the Lydian king Crœsus, became the boundary between the Lydian and Median empires; and he carried on war for six years with Alyattês king of Lydia, in consequence of the refusal of the latter to give up a band of Scythian nomads, who, having quitted the territory of Kyaxarês in order to escape severities with which they were menaced, had sought refuge as suppliants in Lydia.[442] The war, indecisive as respects success, was brought to its close by a remarkable incident: in the midst of a battle between the Median and Lydian armies, there happened a total eclipse of the sun, which occasioned equal alarm to both parties, and induced them immediately to cease hostilities.[443] The Kilikian prince Syennesis, and the Babylonian prince Labynêtus, interposed their mediation, and effected a reconciliation between Kyaxarês and Alyattês, one of the conditions of which was, that Alyattês gave his daughter Aryênis in marriage to Astyagês son of Kyaxarês. In this manner began the connection between the Lydian and Median kings which afterwards proved so ruinous to Crœsus. It is affirmed that the Greek philosopher Thalês foretold this eclipse; but we may reasonably consider the supposed prediction as not less apocryphal than some others ascribed to him, and doubt whether at that time any living Greek possessed either knowledge or scientific capacity sufficient for such a calculation.[444] The eclipse itself, and its terrific working upon the minds of the combatants, are facts not to be called in question; though the diversity of opinion among chronologists, respecting the date of it, is astonishing.[445]

[442] The passage of such nomadic hordes from one government in the East to another, has been always, and is even down to the present day, a frequent cause of dispute between the different governments: they are valuable both as tributaries and as soldiers. The Turcoman Ilats—so these nomadic tribes are now called—in the north-east of Persia frequently pass backwards and forwards, as their convenience suits, from the Persian territory to the Usbeks of Khiva and Bokhara: wars between Persia and Russia have been in like manner occasioned by the transit of the Ilats across the frontier from Persia into Georgia: so also the Kurd tribes near Mount Zagros have caused by their movements quarrels between the Persians and the Turks.

See Morier, Account of the Iliyats, or Wandering Tribes of Persia, in the Journal of the Geographical Society of London, 1837, vol. vii, p. 240, and Carl Ritter, Erdkunde von Asien, West-Asien, Band ii, Abtheilung ii, Abschnitt ii, sect. 8, p. 387.

[443] Herodot. i, 74-103.

[444] Compare the analogous case of the prediction of the coming olive crop ascribed to Thalês (Aristot. Polit. i, 4, 5; Cicero, De Divinat. i, 3). Anaxagoras is asserted to have predicted the fall of an aërolithe (Aristot. Meteorol. i, 7; Pliny, H. N. ii, 58; Plutarch, Lysand. c. 5).

Thalês is said by Herodotus to have predicted that the eclipse would take place “in the year in which it actually did occur,”—a statement so vague that it strengthens the grounds of doubt.

The fondness of the Ionians for exhibiting the wisdom of their eminent philosopher Thalês, in conjunction with the history of the Lydian kings, may be seen farther in the story of Thalês and Crœsus at the river Halys (Herod. i, 75),—a story which Herodotus himself disbelieves.

[445] Consult, for the chronological views of these events, Larcher ad Herodot. i, 74; Volney, Recherches sur l’Histoire Ancienne, vol. i, pp. 330-355; Mr. Fynes Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, vol. i, p. 418 (Note ad B. C. 617, 2); Des Vignoles, Chronologie de l’Histoire Sainte, vol. ii, p. 245; Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologie, vol. i, p. 209.

No less than eight different dates have been assigned by different chronologists for this eclipse,—the most ancient 625 B. C., the most recent 583 B. C. Volney is for 625 B. C.; Larcher for 597 B. C.; Des Vignoles for 585 B. C.; Mr. Clinton for 603 B. C. Volney observes, with justice, that the eclipse on this occasion “n’est pas l’accessoire, la broderie du fait, mais le _fait principal_ lui-même,” (p. 347:) the astronomical calculations concerning the eclipse are, therefore, by far the most important items in the chronological reckoning of this event. Now in regard to the eclipse of 625 B. C., Volney is obliged to admit that it does not suit the case; for it would be visible only at half-past five in the morning on February 3, and the sun would hardly be risen at that hour in the latitude of Media and Lydia (p. 343). He seeks to escape from this difficulty by saying that the data for the calculation, according to the astronomer Pingré, are not quite accurate for these early eclipses; but after all, if there be error, it may just as well be in one direction as in another, _i. e._ the true hour at which the eclipse would be visible for those latitudes is as likely to have been _earlier_ than half-past five A. M. as to have been later, which would put this eclipse still more out of the question.

The chronology of that period presents difficulties which our means of knowledge hardly enable us to clear up. Volney remarks, and the language of Herodotus is with him, that not merely the war between Kyaxarês and Alyattês (which lasted five years, and was terminated by the eclipse), but also the conquest made by Kyaxarês of the territory up to the river Halys, took place anterior (Herodot. i, 103: compare i, 16) to the _first siege_ of Nineveh by Kyaxarês,—that siege which he was forced to raise by the inroad of the Scythians. This constitutes a strong presumption in favor of Volney’s date for the eclipse (625 B. C.) if astronomical considerations would admit of it, which they will not. Mr. Clinton, on the other hand, puts the first siege of Nineveh in the very first year of the reign of Kyaxarês, which is not to be reconciled with the language of Herodotus. In placing the eclipse, therefore, in 603 B. C., we depart from the relative arrangement of events which Herodotus conceived, in deference to astronomical reasons: and Herodotus is our only authority in regard to the general chronology.

According to Ideler, however (and his authority upon such a point is conclusive, in my judgment), astronomical considerations decisively fix this eclipse for the 30th September 610 B. C., and exclude all those other eclipses which have been named. Recent and more trustworthy calculations made by Oltmanns, from the newest astronomical tables, have shown that the eclipse of 610 B. C. fulfils the conditions required, and that the other eclipses named do not. For a place situated in 40° N. lat. and 36° E. long. this eclipse was nearly total, only one-eightieth of the sun’s disc remaining luminous: the darkness thus occasioned would be sufficient to cause great terror. (Ideler, Handbuch, _l. c._)

Since the publication of my first edition, I have been apprized that the late Mr. Francis Baily had already settled the date of this eclipse to the 30th of September 610 B. C., in his first contribution to the Transactions of the Royal Society as long ago as 1811,—much before the date of the publication of Ideler’s Handbuch der Chronologie. Sir John Herschel (in his Memoir of Mr. Francis Baily, in the Transactions of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. xv, p. 311), after completely approving Mr. Baily’s calculations, and stating that he had been the first to solve the disputed question, expresses his surprise that various French and German astronomers, writing on the same subject afterwards, have taken no notice of “that remarkable paper.” Though a fellow-countryman of Mr. Baily, I am sorry that I have to plead guilty to a similar ignorance, until the point was specially brought to my notice by a friend. Had I been aware of the paper and the Memoir, it would have been unnecessary to cite any other authority than that of Mr. Baily and Sir John Herschel.

It was after this peace with Alyattês, as far as we can make out the series of events in Herodotus, that Kyaxarês collected all his forces and laid siege to Nineveh, but was obliged to desist by the unexpected inroad of the Scythians. Nearly at the same time that Upper Asia was desolated by these formidable nomads, Asia Minor too was overrun by other nomads,—the Cimmerians,—Ardys being then king of Lydia; and the two invasions, both spreading extreme disaster, are presented to us as indirectly connected together in the way of cause and effect.

The name Cimmerians appears in the Odyssey,—the fable describes them as dwelling beyond the ocean-stream, immersed in darkness and unblessed by the rays of Helios. Of this people as existent we can render no account, for they had passed away, or lost their identity and become subject, previous to the commencement of trustworthy authorities: but they seem to have been the chief occupants of the Tauric Chersonesus (Crimea) and of the territory between that peninsula and the river Tyras (Dniester), at the time when the Greeks first commenced their permanent settlements on those coasts in the seventh century B. C. The numerous localities which bore their name, even in the time of Herodotus,[446] after they had ceased to exist as a nation,—as well as the tombs of the Cimmerian kings then shown near the Tyras,—sufficiently attest this fact; and there is reason to believe that they were—like their conquerors and successors the Scythians—a nomadic people, mare-milkers, moving about with their tents and herds, suitably to the nature of those unbroken steppes which their territory presented, and which offered little except herbage in profusion. Strabo tells us[447]—on what authority we do not know—that they, as well as the Trêres and other Thracians, had desolated Asia Minor more than once before the time of Ardys, and even earlier than Homer.

[446] Herodot. iv, 11-12. Hekatæus also spoke of a town Κιμμερίς (Strabo, vii, p. 294).

Respecting the Cimmerians, consult Ukert, Skythien, p. 360, _seqq._

[447] Strabo, i, pp. 6, 59, 61.

The Cimmerians thus belong partly to legend partly to history; but the Scythians formed for several centuries an important section of the Grecian contemporary world. Their name, unnoticed by Homer, occurs for the first time in the Hesiodic poems. When the Homeric Zeus in the Iliad turns his eye away from Troy towards Thrace, he sees, besides the Thracians and Mysians, other tribes, whose names cannot be made out, but whom the poet knows as milk-eaters and mare-milkers;[448] and the same characteristic attributes, coupled with that of “having wagons for their dwelling-houses,” appear in Hesiod connected with the name of the Scythians.[449] The navigation of the Greeks into the Euxine, gradually became more and more frequent, and during the last half of the seventh century B. C. their first settlements on its coasts were established. The foundation of Byzantium, as well as of the Pontic Herakleia, at a short distance to the east of the Thracian Bosphorus, by the Megarians, is assigned to the 30th Olympiad, or 658 B. C.;[450] and the succession of colonies founded by the enterprise of Milesian citizens on the western coast of the Euxine, seem to fall not very long after this date,—at least within the following century. Istria, Tyras, and Olbia, or Borysthenes, were planted respectively near the mouths of the three great rivers Danube, Dniester, and Bog: Kruni, Odêssus, Tomi, Kallatis, and Apollonia, were also planted on the south-western or Thracian coast, northward of the dangerous land of Salmydessus, so frequent in wrecks, but south of the Danube.[451] According to the turn of Grecian religious faith, the colonists took out with them the worship of the hero Achilles (from whom, perhaps, the œkist and some of the expatriating chiefs professed to be descended), which they established with great solemnity both in the various towns and on the small adjoining islands: and the earliest proof which we find of Scythia, as a territory familiar to Grecian ideas and feeling, is found in a fragment of the poet Alkæus (about B. C. 600), wherein he addresses Achilles[452] as “sovereign of Scythia.” There were, besides, several other Milesian foundations on or near the Tauric Chersonese (Crimea) which brought the Greeks into conjunction with the Scythians,—Herakleia, Chersonêsus, and Theodosia, on the southern coast and south-western corner of the peninsula,—Pantikapæum and the Teian colony of Phanagoria (these two on the European and Asiatic sides of the Cimmerian Bosphorus respectively), and Kêpi, Hermônassa, etc. not far from Phanagoria, on the Asiatic coast of the Euxine: last of all, there was, even at the extremity of the Palus Mæotis (Sea of Azof), the Grecian settlement of Tanais.[453] All or most of these seem to have been founded during the course of the sixth century B. C., though the precise dates of most of them cannot be named; probably several of them anterior to the time of the mystic poet Aristeas of Prokonnêsus, about 540 B. C. His long voyage from the Palus Mæotis (Sea of Azof) into the interior of Asia as far as the country of the Issêdones (described in a poem, now lost, called the Arimaspian verses), implies an habitual intercourse between Scythians and Greeks which could not well have existed without Grecian establishments on the Cimmerian Bosphorus.

[448] Homer, Iliad, xiii, 4.—

... Αὐτὸς δὲ πάλιν τρέπεν ὄσσε φαεινὼ, Νόσφιν ἐφ᾽ ἱπποπόλων Θρῃκῶν καθορώμενος αἶαν Μυσῶν τ᾽ ἀγχεμάχων, καὶ ἀγαυῶν Ἱππημολγῶν, Γλακτοφάγων, Ἀβίων τε, δικαιοτάτων ἀνθρώπων.

Compare Strabo, xii, p. 553.

[449] Hesiod, Fragm. 63-64, Marktscheffel:—

Γλακτοφάγων εἰς αἶαν, ἀπήναις οἴκι᾽ ἐχόντων ... Αἰθίοπας, Δίγυάς τε, ἰδὲ Σκύθας ἱππημολγούς.

Strabo, vii, pp. 300-302.

[450] Raoul Rochette, Histoire des Colonies Grecques, tom. iii, ch. xiv, p. 297. The dates of these Grecian settlements near the Danube are very vague and untrustworthy.

[451] Skymnus Chius, v, 730, Fragm. 2-25.

[452] Alkæus, Fragm. 49, Bergk; Eustath. ad Dionys. Perieg. 306.—

Ἀχιλλεῦ, ὃ τᾶς (γᾶς, Schneid.) Σκυθικᾶς μέδεις.

Alkman, somewhat earlier, made mention of the Issêdones (Alkm. Frag. 129, Bergk; Steph. Byz. v. Ἰσσήδονες,—he called them Assêdones) and of the Rhipæan mountains (Fr. 80).

In the old epic of Arktinus, the deceased Achilles is transported to an elysium in the λευκὴ νῆσος (see the argument of the Æthiopis in Düntzer’s Collection of Epicc. Poet. Græc. p. 15), but it may well be doubted whether λευκὴ νῆσος in his poem was anything but a fancy,—not yet localized upon the little island off the mouth of the Danube.

For the early allusions to the Pontus Euxinus and its neighboring inhabitants, found in the Greek poets, see Ukert, Skythien, pp. 15-18, 78; though he puts the Ionian colonies in the Pontus nearly a century too early, in my judgment.

[453] Compare Dr. Clarke’s description of the present commerce between Taganrock—not far from the ancient Greek settlement of Tanais—and the Archipelago: besides exporting salt-fish, corn, leather, etc. in exchange for wines, fruit, etc. it is the great deposit of Siberian productions: from Orenburg it receives tallow, furs, iron, etc; this is, doubtless, as old as Herodotus (Clarke’s Travels in Russia, ch. xv, p. 330).

Hekatæus of Milêtus,[454] appears to have given much geographical information respecting the Scythian tribes; but Herodotus, who personally visited the town of Olbia, together with the inland regions adjoining to it, and probably other Grecian settlements in the Euxine (at a time which we may presume to have been about 450-440 B. C.),—and who conversed with both Scythians and Greeks competent to give him information,—has left us far more valuable statements respecting the Scythian people, dominion, and manners, as they stood in his day. His conception of the Scythians, as well as that of Hippokratês, is precise and well-defined,—very different from that of the later authors, who use the word almost indiscriminately to denote all barbarous nomads. His territory, called Scythia, is a square area, twenty days’ journey or four thousand stadia (somewhat less than five hundred English miles) in each direction,—bounded by the Danube (the course of which river he conceives in a direction from N. W. to S. E.), the Euxine, and the Palus Mæotis with the river Tanais, on three sides respectively,—and on the fourth or north side by the nations called Agathyrsi, Neuri, Androphagi, and Melanchlæni.[455] However imperfect his idea of the figure of this territory may be found, if we compare it with a good modern map, the limits which he gives us are beyond dispute: from the lower Danube and the mountains eastward of Transylvania to the lower Tanais, the whole area was either occupied by or subject to the Scythians. And this name comprised tribes differing materially in habits and civilization. The great mass of the people who bore it, strictly nomadic in their habits,—neither sowing nor planting, but living only on food derived from animals, especially mare’s milk and cheese,—moved from place to place, carrying their families in wagons covered with wicker and leather, themselves always on horseback with their flocks and herds, between the Borysthenês and the Palus Mæotis; they hardly even reached so far westward as the Borysthenês, since a river (not easily identified) which Herodotus calls Pantikapês, flowing into the Borysthenês from the eastward, formed their boundary. These nomads were the genuine Scythians, possessing the marked attributes of the race, and including among their number the regal Scythians,[456]—hordes so much more populous and more effective in war than the rest, as to maintain undisputed ascendency, and to account all other Scythians no better than their slaves. It was to these that the Scythian kings belonged, by whom the religious and political unity of the name was maintained,—each horde having its separate chief, and to a certain extent separate worship and customs. But besides these nomads, there were also agricultural Scythians, with fixed abodes, living more or less upon bread, and raising corn for exportation, along the banks of the Borysthenês and the Hypanis.[457] And such had been the influence of the Grecian settlement of Olbia at the mouth of the latter river in creating new tastes and habits, that two tribes on its western banks, the Kallippidæ and the Alazônes, had become completely accustomed both to tillage and to vegetable food, and had in other respects so much departed from their Scythian rudeness as to be called Hellenic-Scythians, many Greeks being seemingly domiciled among them. Northward of the Alazônes, lay those called the agricultural Scythians, who sowed corn, not for food but for sale.[458]

[454] Hekatæi Fragment. Fr. 153, 168, ed. Klausen. Hekatæus mentioned the Issêdones (Fr. 168; Steph. Byz. v. Ἰσσήδονες); both he and Damastês seem to have been familiar with the poem of Aristeas: see Klausen, _ad loc._; Steph. Byz. v. Ὑπερβόρειοι. Compare also Æschyl. Prometh. 409, 710, 805.

Hellanikus, also, seems to have spoken about Scythia in a manner generally conformable to Herodotus (Strabo, xii, p. 550). It does little credit to the discernment of Strabo that he treats with disdain the valuable Scythian chapter of Herodotus,—ἅπερ Ἑλλάνικος καὶ Ἡρόδοτος καὶ Εὔδοξος ~κατεφλυάρησαν~ ἡμῶν (_ib._).

[455] Herodot. iv, 100-101. See, respecting the Scythia of Herodotus, the excellent dissertation of Niebuhr, contained in his Kleine Historische Schriften, “Ueber die Geschichte der Skythen, Geten, und Sarmaten,” p. 360, alike instructive both as to the geography and the history. Also the two chapters in Völcker’s Mythische Geographie, ch. vii-viii, sects. 23-26, respecting the geographical conceptions present to Herodotus in his description of Scythia.

Herodotus has much in his Scythian geography, however, which no comment can enable us to understand. Compared with his predecessors, his geographical conceptions evince very great improvement; but we shall have occasion, in the course of this history, to notice memorable examples of extreme misapprehension in regard to distance and bearings in these remote regions, common to him not only with his contemporaries, but also with his successors.

[456] Herodot. iv, 17-21, 46-56; Hippokratês, De Aëre, Locis et Aquis, c. vi; Æschyl. Prometh. 709; Justin, ii, 2.

It is unnecessary to multiply citations respecting nomadic life, the same under such wide differences both of time and of latitude,—the same with the “armentarius Afer” of Virgil (Georgic, iii, 343) and the “campestres Scythæ” of Horace (Ode iii, 24, 12), and the Tartars of the present day; see Dr. Clarke’s Travels in Russia, ch. xiv, p. 310.

The fourth book of Herodotus, the Tristia and Epistolæ ex Ponto of Ovid, the Toxaris of Lucian (see c. 36, vol. i, p. 544 Hemst.), and the Inscription of Olbia (No. 2058 in Boeckh’s Collection), convey a genuine picture of Scythian manners as seen by the near observer and resident, very different from the pleasing fancies of the distant poet respecting the innocence of pastoral life. The poisoned arrows, which Ovid so much complains of in the Sarmatians and Getæ (Trist. iii, 10, 60, among other passages, and Lucan, iii, 270), are not noticed by Herodotus in the Scythians.

The dominant Golden Horde among the Tartars, in the time of Zinghis Khan, has been often spoken of; and among the different Arab tribes now in Algeria, some are noble, others enslaved; the latter habitually, and by inheritance, servants of the former, following wherever ordered (Tableau de la Situation des Établissemens Français en Algérie, p. 393, Paris, Mar. 1846).

[457] Ephorus placed the Karpidæ immediately north of the Danube (Fragm. 78, Marx; Skymn. Chius, 102). I agree with Niebuhr that this is probably an inaccurate reproduction of the Kallippidæ of Herodotus, though Boeckh is of a different opinion (Introduct. ad Inscriptt. Sarmatic. Corpus Inscript. part xi, p. 81). The vague and dreamy statements of Ephorus, so far as we know them from the fragments, contrast unfavorably with the comparative precision of Herodotus. The latter expressly separates the Androphagi from the Scythians,—ἔθνος ἐὸν ἴδιον καὶ οὐδαμῶς Σκυθικόν (iv, 18), whereas when we compare Strabo vii. p. 302 and Skymn. Chi. 105-115, we see that Ephorus talked of the Androphagi as a variety of Scythians,—ἔθνος ἀνδροφάγων Σκυθῶν.

The valuable inscription from Olbia (No. 2058 Boeckh) recognizes Μιξέλληνες near that town.

[458] Herod. iv, 17. We may illustrate this statement of Herodotus by an extract from Heber’s journal as cited in Dr. Clarke’s Travels, ch. xv, p. 337: “The Nagay Tartars begin to the west of Marinopol: they cultivate a good deal of corn, yet they dislike bread as an article of food.”

Such stationary cultivators were doubtless regarded by the predominant mass of the Scythians as degenerate brethren; and some historians maintain that they belonged to a foreign race, standing to the Scythians merely in the relation of subjects,[459]—an hypothesis contradicted implicitly, if not directly, by the words of Herodotus, and no way necessary in the present case. It is not from them, however, that Herodotus draws his vivid picture of the people, with their inhuman rites and repulsive personal features. It is the purely nomadic Scythians whom he depicts, the earliest specimens of the Mongolian race (so it seems probable)[460] known to history, and prototypes of the Huns and Bulgarians of later centuries. The sword, in the literal sense of the word, was their chief god,[461]—an iron scymetar solemnly elevated upon a wide and lofty platform, which was supported on masses of fagots piled underneath,—to whom sheep, horses, and a portion of their prisoners taken in war, were offered up in sacrifice: Herodotus treats this sword as the image of the god Arês, thus putting an Hellenic interpretation upon that which he describes literally as a barbaric rite. The scalps and the skins of slain enemies, and sometimes the skull formed into a drinking-cup, constituted the decoration of a Scythian warrior: whoever had not slain an enemy, was excluded from participation in the annual festival and bowl of wine prepared by the chief of each separate horde. The ceremonies which took place during the sickness and funeral obsequies of the Scythian kings (who were buried at Gerrhi, at the extreme point to which navigation extended up the Borysthenês), partook of the same sanguinary disposition. It was the Scythian practice to put out the eyes of all their slaves; and the awkwardness of the Scythian frame, often overloaded with fat, together with extreme dirt of body, and the absence of all discriminating feature between one man and another, complete the brutish portrait.[462] Mare’s milk (with cheese made from it) seems to have been their chief luxury, and probably served the same purpose of procuring the intoxicating drink called _kumiss_, as at present among the Bashkirs and the Kalmucks.[463]

[459] Niebuhr (Dissertat. _ut sup._ p. 360), Boeckh (Introd. Inscrip. _ut sup._ p. 110), and Ritter (Vorhalle der Geschichte, p. 316) advance this opinion. But we ought not on this occasion to depart from the authority of Herodotus, whose information respecting the people of Scythia, collected by himself on the spot, is one of the most instructive and precious portions of his whole work. He is very careful to distinguish what is Scythian from what is not: and these tribes, which Niebuhr (contrary to the sentiment of Herodotus) imagines _not_ to be Scythian, were the tribes nearest and best known to him; probably he had personally visited them, since we know that he went up the river Hypanis (Bog) as high as the Exampæus, four days’ journey from the sea (iv, 52-81).

That some portions of the same ἔθνος should be ἀροτῆρες, and other portions νόμαδες, is far from being without parallel; such was the case with the Persians, for example (Herodot. i, 126), and with the Iberians between the Euxine and the Caspian (Strabo, xi, p. 500).

The Pontic Greeks confounded Agathyrsus, Gelônus, and Scythês in the same genealogy, as being three brethren, sons of Hêraklês by the μιξοπάρθενος Ἔχιδνα of the Hylæa (iv, 7-10). Herodotus is more precise: he distinguishes both the Agathyrsi and Gelôni from Scythians.

[460] Both Niebuhr and Boeckh account the ancient Scythians to be of Mongolian race (Niebuhr in the Dissertation above mentioned, Untersuchungen über die Geschichte der Skythen, Geten, und Sarmaten, among the Kleine Historische Schriften, p. 362; Boeckh, Corpus Inscriptt. Græcarum, Introductio ad Inscriptt. Sarmatic.