4.99.5
I mean, so to speak, to compare small things with great. Such a land is the Tauric country. But those who have not sailed along that part of Attica may understand from this other analogy: it is as though in Calabria some other people, not Calabrian, were to live on the promontory within a line drawn from the harbor of Brundisium to Tarentum. I am speaking of these two countries, but there are many others of a similar kind that Tauris resembles. note
ch. 100
4.100.1
Beyond the Tauric country the Scythians begin, living north of the Tauri and beside the eastern sea, west of the Cimmerian Bosporus and the Maeetian lake, as far as the Tanaïs river, which empties into the end of that lake.
4.100.2
Now it has been seen that on its northern and inland side, running from the Ister, Scythia is bounded first by the Agathyrsi, next by the Neuri, next by the Man-eaters, and last by the Black-cloaks.
ch. 101
4.101.1
Scythia, then, is a four-sided country, two of whose sides are coastline, the frontiers running inland and those that are by the sea making it a perfect square;
4.101.2
for it is a ten days' journey from the Ister to the Borysthenes, and the same from the Borysthenes to the Maeetian lake; and it is a twenty days' journey from the sea inland to the country of the Black-cloaks who live north of Scythia.
4.101.3
Now, as I reckon a day's journey at two hundred stades, the cross-measurement of Scythia would be a distance of five hundred miles, and the line drawn straight up inland the same. Such then is the extent of this land.
ch. 102
4.102.1
Convinced that they alone were not able to repel Darius' army in open warfare, the Scythians sent messengers to their neighbors, whose kings had already gathered and were deliberating on the presumption that a great army was marching against them.
4.102.2
The assembled kings were those of the Tauri, Agathyrsi, Neuri, Maneaters, Black-cloaks, Geloni, Budini, and Sauromatae.
ch. 103
4.103.1
Among these, the Tauri have the following customs: all ship-wrecked men, and any Greeks whom they capture in their sea-raids, they sacrifice to the Virgin goddess note as I will describe: after the first rites of sacrifice, they strike the victim on the head with a club;
4.103.2
according to some, they then place the head on a pole and throw the body off the cliff on which their temple stands; others agree as to the head, but say that the body is buried, not thrown off the cliff. The Tauri themselves say that this deity to whom they sacrifice is Agamemnon's daughter Iphigenia.
