4.26.2
As for his head, they strip it bare and clean and gild it, and keep it for a sacred relic, to which they offer solemn sacrifice yearly. Every son does this for his father, just like the Greeks in their festivals in honor of the dead. In other respects, these are said to be a law-abiding people, too, and the women to have equal power with the men.
ch. 27
4.27.1
Of these too, then, we have knowledge; but as for what is north of them, it is from the Issedones that the tale comes of the one-eyed men and the griffins that guard gold; this is told by the Scythians, who have heard it from them; and we have taken it as true from the Scythians, and call these people by the Scythian name, Arimaspians; for in the Scythian tongue “arima” is one, and “spou” is the eye.
ch. 28
4.28.1
All the aforesaid country is exceedingly cold: for eight months of every year there is unbearable frost, and during these you do not make mud by pouring out water but by lighting a fire; the sea freezes, as does all the Cimmerian Bosporus; and the Scythians living on this side of the trench lead armies over the ice, and drive their wagons across to the land of the Sindi.
4.28.2
So it is winter for eight months, and cold in that country for the four that remain. Here, there is a different sort of winter than the winters in other lands: for in the season for rain scarcely any falls, but all summer it rains unceasingly;
4.28.3
and when there are thunderstorms in other lands, here there are none, but in summer there are plenty of them; if there is a thunderstorm in winter they are apt to wonder at it as at a portent. And so, too, if there is an earthquake summer or winter, it is considered a portent in Scythia.
4.28.4
Horses have the endurance to bear the Scythian winter; mules and asses cannot bear it at all; and yet in other lands, while asses and mules can endure frost, horses that stand in it are frostbitten.
ch. 29
4.29.1
And in my opinion it is for this reason that the hornless kind of cattle grow no horns in Scythia. A verse of Homer in the Odyssey
attests to my opinion:
“Libya, the land where lambs are born with horns on their foreheads,”
Hom. Od. 4.85in which it is correctly observed that in hot countries the horns grow quickly, whereas in very cold countries beasts hardly grow horns, or not at all.
ch. 30
4.30.1
In Scythia, then, this happens because of the cold. But I think it strange (for it was always the way of my history to investigate excurses) that in the whole of Elis no mules can be conceived although the country is not cold, nor is there any evident cause. The Eleans themselves say that it is because of a curse that mules cannot be conceived among them;
4.30.2
but whenever the season is at hand for the mares to conceive, they drive them into the countries of their neighbors, and then send the asses after them, until the mares are pregnant, and then they drive them home again.
ch. 31
4.31.1
But regarding the feathers of which the Scythians say that the air is full, so thickly that no one can see or traverse the land beyond, I have this opinion. North of that country snow falls continually, though less in summer than in winter, as is to be expected.
4.31.2
Whoever has seen snow falling thickly near him knows himself my meaning; for snow is like feathers; and because of the winter, which is as I have said, the regions to the north of this continent are uninhabited. I think therefore that in this story of feathers the Scythians and their neighbors only speak of snow figuratively. So, then, I have spoken of those parts that are said to be most distant.
ch. 32
4.32.1
Concerning the Hyperborean people, neither the Scythians nor any other inhabitants of these lands tell us anything, except perhaps the Issedones. And, I think, even they say nothing; for if they did, then the Scythians, too, would have told, just as they tell of the one-eyed men. But Hesiod speaks of Hyperboreans, and Homer too in his poem The Heroes' Sons
, note if that is truly the work of Homer.
