Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 2.djvu/244

 236 STRABO. CASAUB. 504. When at home they are occupied in performing with their own hands the work of ploughing, planting, pasturing cattle, and particularly in training horses. The strongest among them spend much of their time in hunting on horseback, and practise warlike exercises. All of them from infancy have the right breast seared, in order that they may use the arm with ease for all manner of purposes, and particularly for throw- ing the javelin. They employ the bow also, and sagaris, (a kind of sword,) and wear a buckler. They make helmets, and coverings for the body, and girdles, of the skins of wild animals. They pass two months of the spring on a neigh- bouring mountain, which is the boundary between them and the Gargarenses. The latter also ascend the mountain ac- cording to some ancient custom for the purpose of perform- ing common sacrifices, and of having intercourse with the women with a view to offspring, in secret and in darkness, the man with the first woman he meets. When the women are pregnant they are sent away. The female children that may be born are retained by the Amazons themselves, but the males are taken to the Gargarenses to be brought up. The children are distributed among families, in which the master treats them as his own, it being impossible to ascertain the contrary. 2. The Mermodas, 1 descending like a torrent from the mountains through the country of the Amazons, the Siracene, and the intervening desert, discharges itself into the Masotis. 2 It is said that the Gargarenses ascended together with the Amazons from Themiscyra to these places, that they then separated, and with the assistance of some Thracians and Euboeans, who had wandered as far as this country, made war against the Amazons, and at length, upon its termination, enter- ed into a compact on the conditions above mentioned, namely, that there should be a companionship only with respect to that of the Tscherkess, who occupied the country where Strabo places the Gargarenses, and might be their descendants. 1 The same river probably before called the Mermadalis. 2 This sentence has been supposed by some critics to be an interpola- tion. Strabo above, c. ii. 1, has already spoken of the Siraci, who would seem to have been the inhabitants of Siracena, and may sometimes have been called Siraceni. In c. ii. 11, he speaks of the Sittaceni, and assigns them a position which would indicate them as a different people from the Seraci, or Siraceni. Gossellin.