CHAP. 23-25. THE ARGIPPEANS. 21 good pasturage. Each of them dwells under a tree, and they cover the tree in winter with a cloth of thick white felt, but take off the covering in the summer-time. No one harms these people, for they are looked upon as sacred,-they do not even possess any warlike weapons. When their neighbours fall out they make up the quarrel; and when one flies to them for refuge, he is safe from all hurt. They are called the Argippæans.3 24. Up to this point the territory of which we are speaking is very completely explored, and all the nations between the coast and the bald-headed men are well known to us. For some of the Scythians are accustomed to penetrate as far, of whom inquiry may easily be made, and Greeks also go there from the mart on the Borysthenes, and from the other marts along the Euxine. The Scythians who make this journey communicate with the inhabitants by means of seven interpreters and seven languages.5 25. Thus far therefore the land is known; but beyond the bald-headed men lies a region of which no one can give any exact account. Lofty and precipitous mountains, which are never crossed, bar further progress. The bald men say, but it does not seem to me credible, that the people who live in these mountains have feet like goats; and that after passing 3 Pliny (H. N. vi. 14) and Mela (i. 19) call the Argippæans by the name of Arimphæans. In their account of them they simply follow Herodotus. 4 Vide supra, ch. 17, note. Herodotus probably intends the languages of the Scythians, the Sauromatæ, the Budini, the Geloni, the Thyssagetæ, the Iyrcæ, and the Argippæans. But it may be questioned whether the traders would have had to pass through all these tribes. 6 Heeren considers the mountains here spoken of to be the Altai (As. Nat. ii. p. 272); but to me it seems that Herodotus in these chapters speaks only of a single mountain-chain, and that is the Ural. The country is 6 flat and deep-soiled all the way from the Palus Mæotis to the Refugee Scythians; then it begins to be rough and stony. Passing this rough country, which cannot, I think, represent the Ural, we come to the Argippaans, who dwell at the base of a lofty mountainrange. Here we have the first mention of mountains. Separated from the Argippaans by the inaccessible peaks of this chain dwell the Issedonians. I should therefore place the Argippæans to the east, and the Issedonians to the west of the Ural range, in lat. 54° to 56°. This agrees with the statement of Book i. ch. 201, that the Issedonians are "opposite,"-that is, in the same longitude as the Massagetæ. 22 THE ISSEDONIANS. Book IV. them you find another race of men, who sleep during one half of the year. This latter statement appears to me quite unworthy of credit. The region east of the bald-headed men is well known to be inhabited by the Issedonians,8 but the tract that lies to the north of these two nations is entirely unknown, except by the accounts which they give of it. 26. The Issedonians are said to have the following customs. When a man's father dies, all the near relatives bring sheep to the house; which are sacrificed, and their flesh cut in pieces, while at the same time the dead body undergoes the like treatment. The two sorts of flesh are afterwards mixed together, and the whole is served up at a banquet. The head of the dead man is treated differently: it is stripped bare, cleansed, and set in gold. It then becomes an ornament on which they pride themselves, and is brought out year by year at the great festival which sons keep in honour of their fathers' death, just as the Greeks keep their Genesia.1 In other respects the Issedonians are reputed to be observers of justice and it is to be remarked that their women have equal authority with the men. Thus our knowledge extends as far as this nation. 7 The remark of Heeren, that "in this tradition we can perceive a ray of truth, inasmuch as we know that the polar regions continue for six months, more or less, without having the light of the sun (As. Nat. 1. s. c.), is not altogether happy. It does not seem likely that any account could have reached Herodotus of what only takes place very near the pole. A different explanation will be found in the Ap. pendix (Essay iii. § 7). [The Orientals, however, have the same idea of the zoolmát, or region of darkness, in the far north, which was supposed to be visited by Alexander the Great, and which is alluded to in the Koran.— H. C. R.] 8 Damastes, the contemporary of Herodotus, placed the Issedonians immediately above the Scythians. Above them were the Arimaspi, extending to the Rhipæan mountains. Beyond these were the Hyperboreans, reaching to the Northern Sea (Fr. 1). The Isse. donians were also mentioned by Hecatæus (Fr. 168). 9 Compare the Scythian custom with respect to the skulls of enemies (infra, ch. 65). A similar practice to theirs is ascribed by Livy to the Boii, a tribe of Gauls (xxiii. 24). Rennell relates that he had himself seen drinking-cups made in this fashion, which had been brought from temples in the country which he assigns to the Issedonians (Geography of Herodotus, p. 144). 1 These were ceremonial observances at the tombs of the departed, annually, on the day of the deceased person's birth. They are to be distinguished from the vekúσia, which were similar observances on the anniversary of the death. (Hesych. ad voc. yevéσia.) 2 It has been usual to scout as fables all stories of Amazons, or even of any established equality in any nation of women with men. But the travels of CHAP. 25-27. THE ARIMASPI. 23 27. The regions beyond are known only from the accounts of the Issedonians, by whom the stories are told of the oneeyed race of men and the gold-guarding griffins. These stories are received by the Scythians from the Issedonians, and by them passed on to us Greeks: whence it arises that we give the one-eyed race the Scythian name of Arimaspi, Dr. Livingstone have proved that in parts of Southern Africa such a position is actually occupied by the female sex to this day (pp. 622, 623); [and among the Nairs of Malabar the institutions all incline to a gynocracy, each woman having several husbands, and property passing through the female line in preference to the male.-H. C. R.] It is certain also that some nations have affected the government of Queens, as the Idumæan Arabs (see vol. i. p. 385, and compare the account in 2 Kings, ch. x. of the "Queen of the South"), and perhaps the Ethiopians. 3 German critics (as Bähr, Völcker, Rhode, Wahl, &c.) have regarded this tale as deserving of serious attention, and have given various explanations of its meaning which may be found in Bähr's Excursus (vol. ii. pp. 653-5). To me it seems to be a mere Arabian Night's story, of a piece with those many others wherein large birds play an important part (supra, note 1, on Book iii. ch. 111). Aristeas picked up the tale in Scythia, and from him it passed both to Eschylus (P. V. 823) and Herodotus. Later writers merely copy from them. The only truth contained in the tale is the productiveness of the Siberian gold-region (Murchison's Geology of Russia, vol. i. pp. 476-491), and the jealous care of the natives to prevent the intrusion of strangers. The griffin has been found as an ornament in Scythian tombs, the drawing, however, being Greek. It was the special emblem of Panticapæum, and is often met with on the coins. The Greek griffin is curiously like the Persepolitan (Ker Porter, vol. i. p. 672, pl. 52), and both are apparently derived from the winged lion of the Assyrians, which was the emblem of the god Nergal, or Mars. 0.JEWITT.SC. 24 THE CLIMATE OF SCYTHIA. Book IV. "arima" being the Scythic word for "one," and "spû" for 28. The whole district whereof we have here discoursed has winters of exceeding rigour. During eight months the frost is so intense, that water poured upon the ground does not form mud, but if a fire be lighted on it mud is produced. The sea 5 At freezes, and the Cimmerian Bosphorus is frozen over. that season the Scythians who dwell inside the trench make warlike expeditions upon the ice, and even drive their wagons across to the country of the Sindians.7 Such is the intensity of the cold during eight months out of the twelve; and even in the remaining four the climate is still cool.8 The character of the winter likewise is unlike that of the same season in any other country; for at that time, when the rains ought to fall in Scythia, there is scarcely any rain worth mentioning, while in summer it never gives over raining; and thunder, which elsewhere is frequent then, in Scythia is unknown in that part of the year, coming only in summer, when it is very heavy. 4 On these and other Scythic words, see the Essay at the close of this Book, 'On the Ethnography of the Scythians.' 5 Macrobius (Saturn. 7) ignorantly reproves Herodotus for saying that the sea freezes.-[G. W.] 6 See note on ch. 46. 7 The Sindi are not unfrequently mentioned in the inscriptions of the Leuconidæ, whose subjects they appear to have been (Dubois, 4me Série, pl. xxvi.). They dwelt on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, or Straits of Kertch, in the immediate neighbourhood of Phanagoria (Scylax, Peripl. p. 75; Strab. xi. p. 723; Plin. H. N. vi. 5; Dionys. Perieg. 681; Steph. Byz. ad voc. Zidol). They are coupled in the Inscriptions with the Mæotæ (Mætæ), the Torete, and the Dandarii. 8 The clearing of forests and the spread of agriculture have tended to render the climate of these regions less severe than in the time of Herodotus. Still, even at the present day, the south of Russia has a six months' winter, lasting from October to April. From November to March the cold is, ordinarily, very intense. The great rivers are frozen over, and remain icebound from four to five months. The sea freezes to a considerable dis. tance from the shore. The harbours are blocked up, and all commerce ceases till the return of spring. The summer is now intensely hot. "In these countries there are really but two seasons; you pass from intense cold to a Senegal heat. . . The sea. breezes alone make it possible to endure the heat, which in July and August almost always amounts to 94° or 95°." (De Hell, pp. 49-50.) That Herodotus gives a true account of the state of things in his own day is apparent from the concurrent testi. mony of Hippocrates (De Aëre, Aquâ, et Locis, § 96) and Ovid (Tristia, and Epist. ex Ponto passim), both eyewitnesses. CHAP. 27-30. THE CLIMATE OF SCYTHIA. 25 Thunder in the winter-time is there accounted a prodigy; as also are earthquakes, whether they happen in winter or summer. Horses bear the winter well, cold as it is, but mules and asses are quite unable to bear it; whereas in other countries mules and asses are found to endure the cold, while horses, if they stand still, are frost-bitten. 29. To me it seems that the cold may likewise be the cause which prevents the oxen in Scythia from having horns.1 There is a line of Homer's in the Odyssey which gives a support to my opinion :— "Lybia too, where horns bad quick on the foreheads of lambkins."2 He means to say, what is quite true, that in warm countries the horns come early. So too in countries where the cold is severe, animals either have no horns, or grow them with difficulty-the cold being the cause in this instance. 30. Here I must express my wonder-additions being what my work always from the very first affected 3-that in Elis, where the cold is not remarkable, and there is nothing else to account for it, mules are never produced. The Eleans say it is in consequence of a curse; and their habit is, when the 9 There was a smart shock of earthquake in the winter which M. de Hell passed on the banks of the Dnieper (1838-9). See his Travels, p. 45. Still the description on the whole suits the present day. (See Appendix, Essay iii. § 7, ad fin.) 1 Pallas is said to have noticed the lack of horns in these regions as extending also to rams, goats, &c. (Mustoxidi's Nove Muse di Erodoto tradotte, &c., not. ad loc.) But it is certainly not the cold which checks their growth. The vast size of the horns of the elk and reindeer is well-known. Indeed heat rather than cold would seem to check the growth of horns. When cattle were introduced from Spain and Portugal into Paraguay, which is 15 degrees nearer the equator, they lost their horns in a few generations (Prichard's Nat. Hist. of Man. p. 48). 2 Odyss. iv. 85. 4 3 Προσθήκη is more probably an addition than a digression. Probably this chapter was added at Thurii (see the Introductory Essay, vol. i. ch. i. p. 27). 4 According to Plutarch (Quæst. Græc. vol. ii. p. 303) Enomaüs, king of Elis, out of his love for horses, laid heavy curses on the breeding of mules in that country. Both he and Pausanias (v. v. § 2) vouch for the continued observance of the practice which Herodotus goes on to mention. Larcher (ad loc.) conjectures that the curse of Enomaüs was the cause of the abolition of the chariot-race at Olympia, in which the cars were drawn by mules. But as Enomaüs, according to the tradition, preceded Pelops (Strabo, viii. p. 515) his curse should rather have prevented the introduction of the mule chariot-race. |