Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/262

 -248 STRABO. CASAUE. 165. the rugged nature of the country. It is a proof of the fero- city of the Cantabrians, that a number of them having been taken prisoners and fixed to the cross, they chanted songs of triumph. Instances such as these are proofs ot' the Ferocity oTtheir manners. There are others which, although not show- ing them to be polished, are certainly not brutish. For ex- ample, amongst the Cantabrians, the men give dowries to their wives, and the daughters are lefTTiejrs, but they pro- cure wives for their brothers. These things indicate a de- gree oF'power in The woman, although they are no proof of advanced 'civilization. 1 It is also a custom with the Iberians to furnish themselves with a poison, which kills without pain, and which they procure from a herb resembling" rjarsley. This they hold in readiness in case""of misfortune, ancTto devote themselves for those whose cause they have joined, thus dying for their sake. 2 1 We must remark that so far from the dowry given by men to their wives being an evidence of civilization, it is a custom common amongst barbarous people, and indicative of nothing so much as the despotic power of the man over the wife. These dowries were generally a sum of money from the husband to the father of his intended, on the payment of which he acquired the same power over her as over a slave. Aristotle, speaking of the ancient Greeks, tells us expressly that they bought th"eir wives, (Polit. ii. c. 8,) and observing that amongst barbarous nations women were always regarded in the same light as slaves, he cites the example of the Cyclopes, who exercised, according to Homer, sovereign authority over their families (Odyss. 1. ix. 114). This custom was so well established amongst the Greeks at the time of the poet, that he does not hesitate to introduce it amongst the gods (Odyss. viii. 318). It was not unknown among the Jews, and Strabo, in his fifteenth book, tells us that the Indians bought their wives. """"Caesar and Athenasus attribute this custom to the Gauls, and Valerius Maximus to the Keltiberians. Those men who attached themselves to the interests of any prince or famous personage, and who espoused all his quarrels, even devoting themselves to death on his account, are named by Athenaeus triXo^owpoi, and by Caesar soldurii. Speaking of GOO soldiers devoted in this manner to a Gaulish prince, named Adcantuannus, Caesar (1. iii. c. 22) says, "Sibi mortem consciscant ; neque adhuc hominum memoria repertus est quisquam, qui, eo interfecto cujus se amicitise devovisset, mori recusaret." Plutarch tells us that Sertorius had in his suite many thousand Iberians devoted to him. The following epitaph of these men, who, after the death of Sertorius, sacrificed themselves, being unwilling to survive him, was extracted by Swinburne from the Annals of Catalonia. Hie multse quac se manibus Q. Sertorii turmae, et terrae Mortalium omnium parenti Devovere, dum, eo sublato,