Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/253

 TRIBES OF SCYTHIANS. T61 us tar 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 Hippokrates, 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 Dan- ube (the course of which river he conceives in a direction from N. W. to S. E.), the Euxine, and the Palus Mseotis with the river Tanais, on three sides respectively, and on the fourth or north side by the nations called Agathyrsi, Neuri, Androphagi, and Melanchlrcni. 1 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 sub- ject 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 an- imals, 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 Borysthenes and the Palus Maeotis ; they hardly even reached so far westward as the Borysthenes, since a river (not 1 Herodot. iv, 100-101. See, respecting the Scythia of Herodotus, the excellent dissertation of Xiebuhr, contained in his Kleine Historische Schriften, " Ueber die Geschichte der Skythen, Geten, and Sarmaten," p. 360, alike instructive both as to the geography and the history. Also the two chapters in Volcker's Mythische Geographic, ch. vii-viii, sects. 23-26, respecting the geographical conceptions present to Herodotus in his descrip- tion of Scythia. Herodotus has much in his Scythian geography, however, which no com- ment 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, bat also with hi* mccessors.