Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/485

 B. vii. c. in. 18. DANUBE TO PALUS MJEOTIS. 471 Indeed the whole of the northern regions with which we are acquainted, from Germany to the Caspian, is an extended plain. Whether any dwell still farther than the Roxolani is unknown to us. However, the Roxolani fought against the generals of Mithridates Eupator. Their leader was Tasius. They came as allies of Palacus, the son of Scilurus, and were considered good soldiers, but against the serried and well- armed phalanx every barbarous and light-armed tribe is ineffective. Thus they, although numbering fifty thousand men, could not withstand the six thousand arrayed by Dio- phantns, the general of Mithridates, but were almost all cut to pieces. They make use of helmets and breastplates made of untanned ox-hide. They bear wicker shields ; and as weapons, lances, the bow, and the sword, such as most of the other barbarians do. The woollen tents of the nomades are fixed upon their chariots, in which they pass their lives. Their herds are scattered round their tents, and they live on the milk, the cheese, and the meat which they supply. They shift their quarters ever in search of pasture, changing the places they have exhausted for others full of grass. In the winter they encamp in the marshes near the Palus Masotis, 1 and in the summer on the plains. 18. The whole of this country, which reaches to the sea- coast extending from the Dnieper 2 to the Palus Masotis, is subject to severe winters ; so also are the most northern of the districts bordering on the sea, as the mouth of the Palus MaBotis, and farther that of the Dnieper and the head of the Gulf of Tamyraca, or Carcinites, 3 which washes the isthmus 4 of the Magna Chersonesus. The intense cold of the districts inhabited, notwithstanding their being plains, is manifest, for they rear no asses, as that animal is too susceptible of cold ; some of their oxen are without horns by nature, of the others they file off the horns, as a part most susceptible of injury from cold. Their horses are diminutive and their sheep large. Their brazen vessels are split with the frosts, and their con- tents frozen into a solid mass. However, the rigour of the frosts may be best illustrated by the phaenomena which are 1 The Sea of Zabache. 2 The Borysthenes. 3 The Gulf of Perecop, called also Olou-Degniz. Gossellin. the ancient Taurica Chersonesus.
 * The Isthmus of Perecop, which connects the Peninsula of Crimea,