Good evening. Sorry the post took so long to come out. Hectic week.
I also wanted to you know that next Sunday, December 24, I will be writing a post on a winter-themed story rather than Herodotus. I will resume Herodotus on December 31 which will focus once again on Darius’ campaigns.
Without further ado…
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But the Scythian race has made the cleverest discovery that we know in what is the most important of all human affairs; I do not praise the Scythians in all respects, but in this, the most important: that they have contrived that no one who attacks them can escape, and no one can catch them if they do not want to be found. For when men have no established cities or forts, but are all nomads and mounted archers, not living by tilling the soil but by raising cattle and carrying their dwellings on wagons, how can they not be invincible and unapproachable?
HERODOTUS, HISTORIES, BOOK 4.46; A. D. GODLEY TRANSLATION
Summary
King Darius now turned his attention toward the Scythians. He wanted to get revenge for when the Scythians invaded Asia when the Medes were in power and ruled for 28 years (see Book 1.103-06). Herodotus then takes the opportunity to talk about the Scythians.
The Scythians claimed they were the youngest nation known—only being around for about one thousand years. The Scythians say they came about from the three sons of Targitaus, a son of Zeus and the daughter of the Borysthenes river. The youngest son became king when he was able to handle golden implements sent to the land by the gods which burned hot toward everyone except him. However, the Greeks say the Scythians appeared when Heracles wandered into what became Scythia and slept with a half-woman, half-snake creature and she bore him three sons. Heracles told the creature only the son who could bend his bow could stay in the land and be ruler, and the youngest, named Scythes, passed that test. Herodotus, however, believes the Scythians once lived in Asia, but were driven out and ended up taking territory that belonged to the Cimmerians (their neighbors to the north).
The Scythians were divided up into tribes, with the “Royal” Scythians being the tribe who rules the other tribes and from which their kings come from.
The Scythians were nomadic and very warlike. This made them a very difficult people to subdue. Their primary god was a war god and his image was an ancient scimitar. The Scythians would sacrifice prisoners of war to him. They would also scalp enemies they killed in battle to use as hand towels and turn their skulls into cups. Additionally, they had zero tolerance toward foreign customs. Herodotus tells two different stories of Scythians who left the land and returned practicing Greek customs. Those two Scythians, of which one was one of their kings, were executed immediately.
Herodotus says Scythia was a land that had the most rivers of any other and is wintry eight months out of the year. There were eight primary rivers, with many channels springing from them. The greatest of the rivers was the Ister, but the most fruitful was the Borysthenes which almost rivaled the Nile in its bounty to the people: fertile soil, fish (especially sturgeon), clean water, salt, and pasturing land.
Griffons, One-Eyed Men, and Giants
Honestly, there isn’t a whole lot to talk about because Herodotus goes into a lot of details about the Scythians and Scythia’s geography—and most of it is just not interesting enough (for me) to write about. However, there were little bits here and there that peaked my interest like his mentioning of Griffons, a tribe of one-eyed men, and potential proof that Heracles was a giant.
Herodotus mentions that the poet Aristeas talked about a people north of the Cimmerians who were born with one eye, called Arimaspians, and that they were constantly at war with the griffons who guarded hoards of gold (they are also briefly mentioned in 3.116).
It’s pretty interesting to me that people in Herodotus’ day believed that hoards of gold were located in places unknown or mostly unknown. In Book Three, for example, Herodotus mentions that in the desert lands east of the Indians were giant ants that dug out gold dust from their underground dwellings and Indian warriors would retrieve this gold dust at great risk to their life (see 3.102-05). Also in Book Three, he mentions that the Ethiopians have so much gold they fetter their prisoners with chains of gold (see 3.23, 114).
What is it about people ascribing all of these fantastical elements to lands they’ve heard of but never seen? Places where you can find tons of riches, miracle cures, mythological creatures, strange peoples, and the like.
Anyway, Herodotus also mentions that the only real marvel in Scythia is a 40” footprint on a rock that was formed by the foot of Heracles. This implies that Heracles was a giant of a man.
This isn’t the first time Herodotus mentions giants. In Book 1.68, the bones of Orestes were found and supposedly showed that he was twelve feet tall. The Lacedaemonians were trying to conquer a people group in their area, but were unsuccessful. The oracle at Delphi told them they needed to find the bones of Orestes and bring them back to the land. When a Spartan went looking for the bones, he heard about a coffin that had been found that was twelve feet long. He realized that that had to have been Orestes and managed to get the coffin back to Lacaedom.
There is three things interesting about this story: 1) The Lacedaemonians were not surprised at finding a twelve foot coffin; 3) The Lacedaemonians immediately knew this giant was Orestes; and 3) Herodotus didn’t question the story. This implies the Greeks believed the people (or just the men?) in their legends were giant people.
Giants appear a lot in the stories of the ancients—even in the Bible. When patterns like giant people or distant lands with fantastical elements emerge in all these ancient cultures, it makes you wonder why. Why did these ancient cultures believe these things?
The Ancient Greek Rip van Winkle
Speaking of Aristeas the poet, Herodotus tells an interesting story about him. Aristeas one day went into the shop of a fuller (someone who washes and shrinks cloth) and suddenly died. However, when his relatives went to retrieve the body, it was nowhere to be found. However, a man in another city claimed to have seen Aristeas around the same time as his death.
Seven years later, Aristeas reappeared, wrote a poem about the Arimaspians (the one-eyed people), and then disappeared again.
240 years later, Aristeas reappeared yet again in Italy, told them to set up an altar to Apollo along with an image bearing the name of Aristeas, then disappeared one last time.
Even the ancients were fascinated by the concept of time travel. The big difference, of course, is we today think about it through the prism of science, whereas the ancients thought about through the prism of divine intervention.
Nothing new under the sun.
Scythian Exclusivity
Aside from their extremely warlike and violent nature, one of the notable traits of Scytian culture was their revulsion toward foreign customs.
Modern people today would probably call them xenophobic.
Whatever.
You could argue that the Scythians were way too rigid about foreign customs, but that could speak to how much value they placed in their culture. They didn’t want it altered, perhaps they would use a term like “infected,” with customs that could destabilize it. For example, the Scythians were especially hostile toward the Bacchic mysteries because of the revelry and madness that went with it. I could see why a culture would want to protect itself from something like that—especially if it was a nomadic tribe that had to stay on their toes all the time. Being condemned as “closed minded” would fall on deaf ears to those who lived and died by the sword and didn’t live an agrarian way of life.
I can’t help but think about today with the incessant push toward diversity, multiculturalism, and tolerance. From my point of view, all I see is our culture being diluted and devalued by what these concepts bring. That, in turn, leaves people with less meaning, unclear goals for life, and crises of identity. It makes the world feel unstable. It makes morals hazier.
Is the so-called “melting pot” possible? Can cultures work when there are customs and elements within it that do not assimilate?
Segregation existed until the 1960s in America and now there are groups that are gravitating toward it again. Only this time, these groups are doing it voluntarily rather than being forced to by law.
Then again, even without those laws people congregated with their own groups in the past. You had the Italian neighborhood and the Irish neighborhood, for example. Even today, you have Jewish neighborhoods, Hispanic neighborhoods, black neighborhoods, Amish communities, and (predominantly white) gated communities.
Is this segregation inevitable? Is it healthy for a country to have pockets of groups like this?
Only more questions to contemplate.
That's all for the Histories, Book 4.1-82.
May your days be filled with grace.
-Andronikos Anodos
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Thumbnail: Ancient art depicting a satyr, a griffin, and an Arimaspian, c. 375-350 BC.