When done milking, they pour the milk into deep wooden buckets, and make their slaves stand around the buckets and shake the milk; they draw off what stands on the surface and value this most; what lies at the bottom is less valued. This is why the Scythians blind all prisoners whom they take: for they do not cultivate the soil, but are nomads.

So it came about that a younger generation grew up, born of these slaves and the women; and when the youths learned of their parentage, they came out to fight the Scythians returning from Media.

First they barred the way to their country by digging a wide trench from the Tauric mountains to the broadest part of the Maeetian lake;The Sea of Azov . It is not clear where the ta/fros was. Some think that Herodotus may have had in his mind the so-called “Putrid Sea,” the narrow stretch of water between the Arabat isthmus and the +Krym [34,45] (autonomous republic), Ukraine, Europe Crimea. This at least corresponds with the “point of greatest breadth” of the Sea of +Azov [39.433,47.1] (inhabited place), Rostov, Rossiya, Russia, Asia Azov. and then, when the Scythians tried to force a passage, they camped opposite them and engaged them in battle.