CHAP. 100-103.

CUSTOMS OF THE TAURI.

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instances may suggest a number of others, where the shape of the land closely resembles that of Taurica.

100. Beyond this tract, we find the Scythians again in possession of the country above the Tauri and the parts bordering on the eastern sea, as also of the whole district lying west of the Cimmerian, Bosphorus and the Palus Mæotis, as far as the river Tanais, which empties itself into that lake at its upper end. As for the inland boundaries of Scythia, if we start from the Ister, we find it enclosed by the following tribes, first the Agathyrsi, next the Neuri, then the Androphagi, and last of all, the Melanchlani.

101. Scythia then, which is square in shape, and has two of its sides reaching down to the sea, extends inland to the same distance that it stretches along the coast, and is equal every way. For it is a ten days' journey from the Ister to the Borysthenes, and ten more from the Borysthenes to the Palus Mæotis, while the distance from the coast inland to the country of the Melanchlani, who dwell above Scythia, is a journey of twenty days. I reckon the day's journey at two hundred furlongs. Thus the two sides which run straight inland are four thousand furlongs each, and the transverse sides at right angles to these are also of the same length, which gives the full size of Scythia.10

102. The Scythians, reflecting on their situation, perceived that they were not strong enough by themselves to contend with the army of Darius in open fight. They, therefore, sent envoys to the neighbouring nations, whose kings had already met, and were in consultation upon the advance of so vast a host. Now they who had come together were the kings of the Tauri, the Agathyrsi, the Neuri, the Androphagi, the Melanchlani, the Gelôni, the Budini, and the Sauromatæ.

103. The Tauri have the following customs. They offer in sacrifice to the Virgin all shipwrecked persons, and all Greeks compelled to put into their ports by stress of weather. The mode of sacrifice is this. After the preparatory ceremonies, they strike the victim on the head with a club. Then, according to some accounts, they hurl the trunk from the precipice whereon the temple stands,' and nail the head to a cross

tract an ἀκροτήριον (p. 70), and Strabo is the first who speaks of it as a χερρόνησος or peninsula (vii. p. 445).

10 See the Appendix, Essay iii., "On the Geography of Scythia."

This temple occupied a promontory on the south coast of the Crimea, not far from Criumetopon (Cape Aia). The promontory itself was named by the Greeks Parthenium, from the temple (Strab. vii. p. 446; Plin. H. N. iv. 12; Mela, ii. i. &c.) It is thought that the monastery of St. George occupies the site.

76

THE AGATHYRSI.

Book IV.

Others grant that the head is treated in this way, but deny that the body is thrown down the cliff-on the contrary, they say, it is buried. The goddess to whom these sacrifices are offered the Tauri themselves declare to be Iphigenia the daughter of Agamemnon. When they take prisoners in war they treat them in the following way. The man who has taken a captive cuts off his head, and carrying it to his home, fixes it upon a tall pole, which he elevates above his house, most commonly over the chimney. The reason that the heads are set up so high, is (it is said) in order that the whole house may be under their protection. These people live entirely by war and plundering.3

4

104. The Agathyrsi are a race of men very luxurious, and very fond of wearing gold on their persons. They have wives in common, that so they may be all brothers, and, as members of one family, may neither envy nor hate one another. In other respects their customs approach nearly to those of the Thracians. 6

2 The virgin goddess of the Tauri was more generally identified by the Greeks with their own Artemis: hence Artemis got the epithet of Tauponóλos. (Cf. Diod. Sic. iv. 44; Etym. Mag. ad voc. Scholiast. ad Soph. Aj. 172.) The legend of Iphigenia is probably a mere Greek fancy, having the Tauric custom of offering human sacrifices as its basis. In the time of Herodotus the Tauri were not averse to admitting the legend, and identifying their national goddess with the virgin worshipped by the Greeks.

The conjecture that the Tauri were a remnant of the Cimmerians (Grote, vol. iii. p. 327; Heeren's As. Nat. vol. ii. p. 260, E. T.) has little more than its internal probability to rest upon. We do not know their language, and there is scarcely anything in their manners and customs to distinguish them from the Scythians. As, however, it is declared by Herodotus that they were not Scythians, and we must therefore seek for them some other ethnic connexion, the Cimmerian theory may be accepted as probable. It is clear that the strong and mountainous region extending along the south coast of the Crimea would offer just that refuge in which a weak nation, when driven from the plains, is able to maintain itself against a strong one. It is noticeable also that the tradition made the last resting-place of the Cimmerians to be the Crimea (supra, ch. 12), where they left their name so firmly fixed that it has clung to the country till the present day. Names also closely resembling that of the Tauri are found in a clearly Cimbric, or at any rate Celtic, connexion, as those of the Teurist and Taurisci, who were called Gauls by Posidonius (Fr. 75); and that of the city Tauroeis or Tauroentium (cf. Apollod. Fr. 105, with Strab. iv. p. 247), a Celtic town, according to Stephen (ad voc. Tavpóeis). It may be questioned also whether the Taurini, whose name remains in the modern Turin, were not really Gauls, though called Ligurians by Strabo (iv. p. 286). At least it is strange, if they were really different from the Taurisci, who are acknowledged to be Gauls (Polyb. ii. 15, § 8), and who afterwards dwelt in these parts.

The country of the Agathyrsi is distinctly marked (sup. 49) as the plain of the Marosch (Maris). This region, enclosed on the north and east by the Carpathian Alps, would be likely to be in early times auriferous.

This anticipation of the theory of Plato (Rep. v.) is curious. Was Plato indebted to Herodotus?

Niebuhr (Researches, &c., p. 62, E. T.) gathers from this that the Agathyrsi were actually Thracians, and ventures to identify them with the Daci of later times. Ritter (Vorhalle, i. pp. 286-7) considers them to have been Sarmatians. There

CHAP. 104-106.

THE ANDROPHAGI.

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105. The Neurian customs are like the Scythian. One generation before the attack of Darius they were driven from their land by a huge multitude of serpents which invaded them. Of these some were produced in their own country, while others, and those by far the greater number, came in from the deserts on the north. Suffering grievously beneath this scourge, they quitted their homes, and took refuge with the Budini. It seems that these people are conjurers: for both the Scythians and the Greeks who dwell in Scythia say, that every Neurian once a year becomes a wolf' for a few days, at the end of which time he is restored to his proper shape. Not that I believe this, but they constantly affirm it to be true, and are even ready to back their assertion with an oath."

8

106. The manners of the Androphagi1 are more savage than those of any other race. They neither observe justice, nor are governed by any laws. They are nomads, and their dress is Scythian; but the language which they speak is peculiar to

scarcely appear to be sufficient grounds for either of these opinions. All that can be said is, that the Agathyrsi dwelt in the time of Herodotus in the country now called Transylvania, and were afterwards driven more to the north. They are mentioned by Ephorus (Fr. 78); Pliny (iv. 12); Mela (ii. 1); Dionys. Per. (310); Marc. Heracl. p. 56; and Ptolemy (iii. 5). The last-mentioned geographer places them near the Baltic. The custom of the Agathyrsi which drew most attention in later times, was their practice of painting their bodies. (See Virg. Æn. iv. 146; Solin. Polyhist. 20; Mela, 1. s. c. &c.)

7 A class of people in Abyssinia are believed to change themselves into hyænas when they like. On my appearing to discredit it, I was told by one who lived for years there that no well informed person doubted it, and that he was once walking with one of them when he happened to look away for a moment, and on turning again towards his companion he saw him trotting off in the shape of a hyæna. He met him afterwards in his old form. These worthies are blacksmiths. The story recalls the loup-garou of France.-[G. W.]

As Herodotus recedes from the sea his accounts become more mythic, and less trustworthy. Still the Neuri must be regarded as a real nation. They seem, in the time of Herodotus, to have inhabited the modern Lithuania and Volhynia, extending eastward perhaps as far as the government of Smolensk. Their name may perhaps be traced in the town Nur, and the river Nuretz, which lie in this district. They are mentioned by Ephorus (Frag. 78); Pliny (Hist. Nat. iv. 12); Mela (ii. 1); and Ammianus Marcellinus (xxii. 8). Perhaps also by Ptolemy, under the name of Navapo: (iii. 5). Schafarik (Slav. Alt. pp. 194–9) ventures to pronounce them Slaves, but on very slight grounds.

9

Welcker, in his "Kleine Schriften" (vol. iii. p. 157, et seq.) has collected the various traditions of distant nations with respect to this belief, which the Germans have embodied in their wehr-wolf, and the French in their loup-garou. It is a form of the belief in witchcraft, and probably quite unconnected with the disease of lycanthropy.

1 Or "Men-eaters." Here the national name is evidently lost, but a peculiar people is meant. Heeren (As. Nat. ii. p. 265, E. T.) thinks the Bastarnæ; but, as it seems to me, on insufficient grounds. The country of the "men-eaters" is Central Russia, from the Dniepr to the Desna probably. Compare with their name the Red Indian "Dog-eaters" and "Fish-eaters." (Ross's Fur-Hunters of the Far West, vol. i. p. 249.)

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THE MELANCHLÆNI—THE BUDINI.

Book IV.

themselves. Unlike any other nation in these parts, they are cannibals.

107. The Melanchlani 2 wear, all of them, black cloaks, and from this derive the name which they bear. Their customs are Scythic.

108. The Budini are a large and powerful nation they have all deep blue eyes, and bright red hair. There is a city in their territory, called Gelônus, which is surrounded with a lofty wall, thirty furlongs each way, built entirely of wood.* All the houses in the place and all the temples are of the same material. Here are temples built in honour of the Grecian gods, and adorned after the Greek fashion with images, altars, and shrines, all in wood. There is even a festival, held every third year, in honour of Bacchus, at which the natives fall into the Bacchic fury. For the fact is that the Gelôni were anciently Greeks, who, being driven out of the factories along the coast, fled to the

Or "Black-cloaks." This is probably a translation of the native name. There is at present a tribe in the Hindoo Koosh, who call themselves Siah-poosh, which is an exact equivalent of Meλayxλaîvol. (Rennell's Geograph. of Herod. p. 87.) There is also a tribe of "Black-robes" among the North-American Indians (Ross, vol. i. p. 305). Such titles are common among barbarous people.

The dress of the Melanchlani is noted by Dio Chrysostom (Orat. xxxvi. p. 439), who says it had been adopted by the Olbiopolites. He describes the cloak as "small, black, and thin" (upov, μéλav, λetтóv). Probably the dress was the more remarked, as the other nations of these parts, like the modern Calmucks and Tatars generally, may have affected bright colours.

The Melanchlani had been mentioned by Hecateus (Fr. 154) as a Scythian nation." They continue to figure in the Geographies (Plin. vi. 5; Mela, i. 19; Dionys. Perieg. 309; Ptol. v. 19, &c.), but appear to be gradually pressed eastward. By Ptolemy they are placed upon the Rha or Wolga.

Their position in the time of Herodotus seems to be the country between the Desna and the Don, or Tanais.

These physical characteristics of the Budini are very remarkable, and would give them a far better title to be be considered the ancestors of the German race, than the Androphagi and Melanchlani, to whom Heeren grants that honour. (As.. Nat. ii. p. 265, È. T.) The nomade races which people the entire tract from the Don to the North Pacific, have universally dark eyes and hair. May not the Budini have been a remnant of the Cimmerians, to whom the woody country between the upper Don and the Wolga furnished a protection? In that case Gel-oni (compare "Gael," and "Galli") might be their true ethnic title, as the Greeks generally maintained. (Vide infra, ch. 109.)

Heeren (As. Nat. ii. p. 292, E. T.) sees in this city, or slobode, a staple for the fur-trade, founded expressly for commercial purposes by the Greeks of the coast. Schafarik regards it as not of Greek, but of barbaric origin, and grounds upon it an argument that the Budini were a Sclavonic people. (Slavische Alterth. i. 10, pp. 185-95.) This last view, of which Mr. Grote speaks with some favour (Hist. of Greece, vol. iii. p. 325, note) is utterly at variance with the statements in Herodotus. Heeren is probably right, that the place became a staple, for it lay in the line of the trade carried on by the Greeks with the interior (supra, chs. 21–4); but as we know no other instance of the Greeks founding a factory for trading purposes at a distance from the coast, it is perhaps best simply to accept the narrative of Herodotus, that it was a place where certain fugitive Greeks happened to settle.