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time called these people Hippemolgi even Hesiod is a witness
in the words which Eratosthenes has quoted:
He went and saw the Ethiopians, the Ligurians, note and the Scythians,
milkers of mares.
And when we consider the amount of fraud connected with
trading speculations even amongst ourselves, what ground
have we to wonder that Homer should have designated as the
justest and most noble those who had but few commercial and
monetary transactions, and with the exception of their swords
and drinking-cups, possessed all things in common, and especially their wives and children, who were cared for by the
whole community according to the system of Plato. Aeschylus
too seems to plead the poet's cause, when he says,
But the Scythians, governed by good laws, and feeding on cheese of
mares' milk.
And this is still the opinion entertained of them by the
Greeks; for we esteem them the most sincere, the least deceitful of any people, and much more frugal and self-relying
than ourselves. And yet the manner of life customary among
us has spread almost every where, and brought about a change
for the worse, effeminacy, luxury, and over-great refinement,
inducing extortion in ten thousand different ways; and doubtless much of this corruption has penetrated even into the
countries of the nomades, as well as those of the other barbarians; for having once learnt how to navigate the sea, they
have become depraved, committing piracy and murdering
strangers; and holding intercourse with many different nations, they have imitated both their extravagance and their
dishonest traffic, which may indeed appear to promote civility
of manners, but do doubtless corrupt the morals and lead to
dissimulation, in place of the genuine sincerity we have before noticed.
8
Those however who lived before our time, and more especially those who lived near to the times of Homer, were such as he describes them, and so they were esteemed to be by the Greeks. Take for instance what Herodotus relates concerning the king note of the Scythians, against whom Darius waged war, and especially the answer he sent [to the messen-
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Strabo, Geography (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Str.].