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Singular as this method of obtaining a fair lady by a price paid in blood may appear, it was not peculiar to the northerns: we have already taken notice of the price which David paid for the daughter of Saul, and shall add, that among the Sacæ, a people of ancient Scythia, a custom something of this kind, but still more extraordinary, obtained: every young man who made his addresses to a lady, was obliged to engage her in single combat; if he vanquished, he led her off in triumph, and became her husband and sovereign; if he was conquered, she led him off in the same manner, and made him her husband and her slave.
They are together, and therefore they are happy, and would be so, though they were in the burning deserts of Lybia, or the dreary wastes of Scythia. She is blest in his arms wherever she is, and therefore she shall pay for all I shall suffer till I find her."
There is no trace of it in the Gathas, in the Yagna haptanhaiti, or in the older portions of the Vendidad. It was a Scythic practice; and probably the best extant account of it is that which Herodotus gives of the mode wherein it was managed by the Scyths of Europe. "Scythia," he says, "has an abundance of soothsayers, who foretell the future by means of a number of willow wands.
No sooner had the Ionian revolt been brought to an end, and the Ionians punished for their daring, than the angry Oriental despot prepared to visit upon Athens the vengeance he had vowed. His preparations for this enterprise were great. His experience in Scythia had taught him that the Western barbarians as he doubtless considered them were not to be despised.
A lonely old hunter, who had built this hut, was the only human being in the place, and he was slowly dying, and he would have died alone but for the opportune arrival of old Scythia and myself. He told us that the Nez Percees had crossed the river about two weeks before, and were far on their migration west."
The Oriental clergy who would have preferred the destruction, impatiently sighed for the absence, of the Manichæans: the warlike emperor had felt and esteemed their valor: their attachment to the Saracens was pregnant with mischief; but, on the side of the Danube, against the Barbarians of Scythia, their service might be useful, and their loss would be desirable.
By the frequent repetition of these arts, and at the expense of sums which would have purchased the service of half the nations of Scythia, Julian gradually acquired for his troops the imaginary protection of the gods, and for himself the firm and effectual support of the Roman legions.
The other cities which still held out were quickly taken, and visited like Miletus, with the same fate of fire and bloodshed. It was now 495 B.C., more than twenty years after the invasion of Scythia. As for Histiæus, he was at first blamed by Darius for the revolt. But as he earnestly declared his innocence, and asserted that he could soon bring it to an end, Darius permitted him to depart.
Joseph Maynard, that such as did inhabitare montes gibberosos, were called Gubbings, such will smile at the ingenuity who dissent from the truth of the etymology. "I have read of an England beyond Wales, but the Gubbings land is a Scythia within England, and they pure heathens therein. It lieth nigh Brent.
During his exile he travelled through Greece, Thrace, and Macedonia through Scythia, Asia, and Egypt. Thus he collected the materials of his work, which is, in fact, a book of travels narrated historically.
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