Histories

These are most notable of their usages. They worship no gods but Ares, Dionysus, and Artemis.[*](Herodotus as usual identifies foreign with Greek deities: v. How and Wells ad loc.) Their princes, however, unlike the rest of their countrymen, worship Hermes above all gods and swear only by him, claiming him for their ancestor.

The wealthy have the following funeral practices. First they lay out the dead for three days, and after killing all kinds of victims and making lamentation, they feast. After that they do away with the body either by fire or else by burial in the earth, and when they have built a barrow, they initiate all kinds of contests, in which the greatest prizes are offered for the hardest type of single combat. Such are the Thracian funeral rites.

As for the region which lies north of this country, none can tell with certainty what men dwell there, but what lies beyond the Ister is a desolate and infinitely large tract of land. I can learn of no men dwelling beyond the Ister save certain that are called Sigynnae and wear Median dress.

Their horses are said to be covered all over with shaggy hair[*](Strabo says much the same of the Sigynni, according to him a Caucasian tribe.) five fingers' breadth long, and to be small, blunt-nosed, and unable to bear men on their backs, but very swift when yoked to chariots. It is for this reason that driving chariots is the usage of the country. These men's borders, it is said, reach almost as far as the Eneti on the +Adriatic Sea [16,43] (sea), Europe Adriatic Sea.