200

CONTINUANCE OF THE CIMMERII AND GETÆ. APP. Book IV.

about this time the Scyths altogether perished; or if they lingered anywhere, as a weakly and expiring tribe, in the forests of the far interior, the Mongol ravages of later times completed their destruction. In vain we look for their descendants at the present day. While the Cimmerians, whom they drove before them with such ease on their first passage of the Tanais, continue to exist as Cymry in the mountains of Wales,7 and the Getæ, their neighbours upon the west, have their descendants among the great Gothic or Teutonic family by which nearly one-half of Europe is still occupied, the Scyths have disappeared from the earth. Like the Mexican Aztecs, whom they resembled in some degree, they have been swept away by the current of immigration, and, except in the mounds which cover their land and in the pages of the historian or ethnologist, not a trace remains to tell of their past existence.

7 See the preceding chapter.

ESSAY III.

GEOGRAPHY OF SCYTHIA.

201

ESSAY III.

ON THE GEOGRAPHY OF SCYTHIA.

1. Necessity of examining Niebuhr's theory of the Scythia of Herodotus. 2. The theory stated. 3. Its grounds 4. Considerations which disprove it. 5. Real views of Herodotus. 6. His personal knowledge of the region. 7. His correctness as to leading facts, and mistakes as to minutiæ. 8. Possibility of changes since his time. 9. Identification of rivers and places.

1. BEFORE entering upon any direct statements as to the actual shape and extent of Scythia, or attempting to identify any of the geographical features pointed out by Herodotus, and explain his real or apparent errors, it is necessary to examine that theory on the subject which was first broached by Niebuhr in his 'Kleine Schriften' about the year 1828, and which has recently been brought a second time before the public, only slightly modified, in his Vorträge über alte Geschichte,' published in 1847.1 The authority of Niebuhr is so great, and his conjectures, even when not correct, are always so ingenious, that his view cannot be put aside without distinct and formal examination.

2. Now Niebuhr's view is, that Herodotus regarded Scythia as a square bounded on two sides by the sea; that he looked upon its southern coast as extending in a straight line from the mouth of the Danube to the Palus Mæotis, a distance of 4000 stades, its eastern as reaching an equal distance from thence to the embouchure of the Tanais (Don), its western frontier as parallel to this, and formed by the Lower Danube (which river he thinks Herodotus supposed to make a sudden bend at the north-western angle of Scythia, and to run thence with a southerly course to the Euxine), and its northern frontier as marked by a line drawn from this sharp bend in the Danube to the mouth of the Tanais. The annexed plan, which is taken from his 'Map of the World according to Herodotus,' will more plainly show his meaning,

3. This account he gathers chiefly from chs. 99-101; but he conceives it to be confirmed by various scattered notices, as by the comparison between the Nile and the Danube in Book ii.,3 by what is said in Book v. of the great size of Thrace, and of

1 See pp. 182, 183. 2 Geography of Herod. p. 29, E. T. Scythians, pp. 39-41, E. T. 3 Chs. 33, 34. 4 Ch. 3.

202

OBJECTIONS TO NIEBUHR'S SCHEME.

APP. BOOK IV.

the countries north of the Danube being desert,5 as well as by other casual remarks.

4. The following considerations appear to be fatal to the scheme in question:

(i.) Its derangement of the course of the Danube, in favour of which nothing can be brought but a supposed analogy, and which

is contradicted by the whole account, so very consonant with facts, which Herodotus gives of that river and its tributaries. The Danube, he says, runs from the west right through Europe, and falls into the Black Sea, "with its mouth facing the east."7 It receives many great tributaries on both sides: from the side of Scythia five -the Porata, Ararus, Naparis, Ordessus, and Tiarantus, of which the Porata (Pruth) is the most easterly, the Tiarantus (Aluta) most

5 Book v. ch. 10.

6 Book iv. ch. 49.

7 Ibid. ch. 99.

ESSAY III.

OBJECTIONS TO NIEBUHR'S SCHEME.

203

towards the west; from the mountain-chain of Thrace and Illyria eight others, which all run "with a northern course " into it. This whole account is exactly in accordance with the real geography, and cannot possibly be made to square with the scheme of Niebuhr, in which the mouth of the Danube fronts the south; and the five Scythian tributaries, if they can be imagined to exist at all, must be interposed between the sea and the Maris, according to the dotted lines inserted in the accompanying plan to represent them, in which case the terms "most eastern,' ," "most western," would cease to be applicable. (ii.) The assertion of Herodotus that "the mart of the Borysthenites is situated in the very centre of the whole sea-coast of Scythia.' Niebuhr's view places it in the centre of the south side only, while the east, according to him, is also washed by the sea.

(iii.) The impossibility of reconciling Herodotus's account of the Persian campaign with the supposed figure of Scythia. The division of Scythians with which Darius first fell in, had orders to retreat "along the shores of the Palus Mæotis" to the Tanais,1 orders which appear to have been duly executed. Darius, following in their track, is said to have marched "eastward" to that stream.2 Niebuhr's plan would make this march at least as much north as east. Arrived at the Tanais, they cross into the country of the Sauromatæ, which they traverse from south to north, a distance of 15 days' journey; whence they pass on to the Budini, the next nation to the north, whose country they likewise traverse. According to Niebuhr, they would now be nearly 20 days' journey beyond. the borders of Scythia, and separated from Scythia by the entire country of the Melanchlani. Yet here the Scythians, suddenly giving Darius the slip, make a détour through the country above the Budini, and at once return into Scythia; while Darius, missing. them, turns westward, and is shortly within the Scythian borders, where he falls in with the other division of the Scythian army, and is led for the first time into the country of the Melanchlani. All this is absolutely impossible upon Niebuhr's theory, where the Budini lie north of Scythia, at a vast distance, and separated by the tract in which the Melanchlani live. It is indifferent, so far as this argument is concerned, whether we admit the expedition into these parts as a reality or no, since all that we are at present considering is how Herodotus himself conceived of Scythia.

8 Herod. iv. chs. 48, 49. 9 Ibid. ch. 17. 3 Ibid. ch. 21.

4

1 lbid. ch. 120. 2 Ibid. ch. 122. 4 Ibid. ch. 124.

204

REAL NOTION OF HERODOTUS.

APP. BOOK IV.

5. The truth seems to be that Herodotus regarded Scythia as having only one of its sides washed by the sea; 5 that he took the coast from the Danube to the Tanais as representing tolerably well a straight line, when the peninsula occupied by the Tauri (the Crimea) was cut off; that he estimated the length of this at 4000 stades (460 miles),6 2000 between the Danube and the mouth of the Borysthenes, 2000 between that and the place where the Tanais reached the sea; that he regarded this side of Scythia, thus divided into two parts and fronting towards the south-east, as reaching down to two seas, one of which (the Euxine) might be called "southern," the other (the Sea of Azof), "eastern;" that he thought Scythia extended inland about the same distance as its length along the coast; and that he therefore called it square, meaning thereby not to give its exact figure, but to describe its general shape. He did not regard the Danube as bounding one side of the square, but as meeting it obliquely at a corner. This is implied in the expression ἐς τὰ πλάγια τῆς Σκυθίης ἐσβάλλει. On the other hand he regarded the Tanais as not merely touching an angle of the square, but as washing at least a portion of the eastern side, and

5 "Scythia," he says, "which is square in shape, and has two of its sides (or parts) reaching down to the sea, extends inland to the same distance that it reaches 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. . . . Thus the two sides which run straight inland (Tà ὄρθια τὰ ἐς μεσόγαιαν φέροντα) are 4000 furlongs (stadia) each, and the transverse sides at right angles to these (Tà mikapoia) are of the same length." This passage alone would appear to me to settle the controversy. The opia τὰ ἐς μεσόγαιαν φέροντα must be parallel sides, not, as in Niebuhr's plan, sides at right angles to one another.

6 The actual distance of a straight line from the most northern mouth of the Danube to the embouchure of the Tanais is about 40 miles more.

7 Ch. 49. Yet the Danube separated between Scythia and Thrace because

in this place the square was particu larly irregular, there being a projection from it consisting of the country between the Black Sea and the Carpathian chain, the modern province of Wallachia. The general course of the Danube was rightly apprehended by Herodotus, and its tributaries up to Belgrade were known with an ap

proach to accuracy. Above Belgrade his knowledge was less exact. He confounded the Marosch (Maris) with the Theiss, and the two great streams flowing in from the south side of the Danube at about the same point, of which he had heard from the inhabitants of the lower part of the river, and which were really the Drave and the Save, he confounded with the two Alpine streams of which he had heard the Umbrians of Northern Italy discourse as flowing into the Danube from the country just beyond their borders. These were the Salga and the Inn, or possibly the latter stream and the Rhine, which in its upper course has nearly the same direction as the Inn, and would flow into the Danube if it did not make a right angle at the Lake of Constance.