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Had the Massagetse and their kindred tribes of Sakas, Tochari, Dahse, Yue-chi, and Su, which now menaced the Parthian power, succeeded in sweeping it away, the general declension of all which is lovely or excellent in human life would have been marked. Scythicism would have overspread Western Asia.
It may be added to this that we have sufficient reason to believe that the Massagetse and the other nomads of these parts regarded the use of poisoned arrows as legitimate in warfare, and employed the venom of serpents, and the corrupted blood of man, to make the wounds which they inflicted more deadly.
Belisarius upon this assembled at Daras an imposing force, composed of Romans and allies, the latter being chiefly Massagetse.
The expeditions of Cyrus against the Massagetse, of Darius Hystaspis against the European Scyths, of Alexander against the Getee, of Trajan and Probus across the Danube, were designed to check and intimidate the northern nations, to break their power, and diminish the likelihood of their taking the offensive.
As the modern Iran now suffers from the perpetual incursions of Uzbegs and Turcomans, so the north-eastern provinces of the ancient Persia were exposed to the raids of the Asiatic Scythians and the Massagetse, who were confined by no such barrier as the Caucasus, having merely to cross a river, probably often fordable during the summer, in order to be in Persia.
The general character of the barbarism in which these various races were involved may be best learnt from the description given of one of them, the Massagetae, with but few differences, by Herodotus and Strabo. According to this description, the Massagetse were nomads, who moved about in wagons or carts, accompanied by their flocks and herds, on whose milk they chiefly sustained themselves.
East of that sea also was a vast steppe-region rolling plains of sand or grass the home of nomadic hordes similar in character to those who drank the waters of the Don and Wolga. The Sacse, Massagetse, and Dahse of this country, who dwelt about the Caspian, the Aral, and the Lower Jaxartes, were an enemy scarcely less formidable than the Sarmatians and the Scyths of the West.
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