Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/478

 464 STRABO. CASAUE. 302. fall on them, but that they valued the friendship of such a man as him above every thing. These examples sufficiently manifest the open sincerity of the barbarians, both of the one who would not suffer Alexander to land on the island, but nevertheless sent presents and concluded a treaty of friend- ship with him. and also of those who asserted that they feared no man, but that they valued the friendship of great men above every price. In like manner Dromichsetes, who was king of the Getas in the times of the successors of Alexander, having taken cap- tive Lysimachus, who had come to wage war against him, showed him his poverty and that of his people, and likewise their great frugality, bade him not to make war on such, but rather seek them as friends ; after which he received him as a guest, made a treaty of friendship, and suffered him to depart. 1 [*And Plato, in his Republic, 2 considers that the neighbour- hood of the sea ought to be shunned as being productive of vice, and that those who would enjoy a well-governed city, should plant it very far from the sea, and not near it.*] 9. Ephorus, in the fourth book of his History, which is entitled " Of Europe," having gone over Europe as far as the Scythians, concludes by saying that there is great differ- ence in the manner of life both of the Sauromatse and the other Scythians, for while some of them are exceedingly mo- rose, and are indeed cannibals, others abstain even from the flesh of animals. Other historians, he observes, descant upon their ferocity, knowing that the terrible and the wonderful always excite attention ; but they ought also to relate the better features of these people, and point to them as a pat- tern ; for his part, he declares he will speak of those who ex- cel in the justness of their actions, as there are some of the nomade Scythians who subsist on mares' milk, and excel all 1 Diodorus Siculus, in Excerpt. Peiresc. pag. 257 ; Memnon apud Photium, cod. 214, cap. 6 ; and Plutarch, in Demetrio, 39 and 52, confirm what Strabo says here of the manner in which Dromichsetes treated Lysimachus. 2 This is not in Plato's Republic, but in his fourth book of Laws. note of some learned reader, should doubtless be transferred back to the end of 7 of this chapter.
 * This passage, if it is the writing of Strabo, and not the marginal