Antique art on the northern Black sea coast

Fülszöveg

16. No one knows for certain what lies above the land just mentioned. I can not find anyone who has seen these lands with his own eyes. Even Aristeas, whow I mentioned earlier, even he says in his poem that he did not go further than the land of the Isse-dones and that when he wrote of those countries that lie above them it was from hearsay, he claiming that it was the Issedones that spake thus. As for what we have managed to learn from authentic sources about the most remote lands that will all be described here.
17. Beginning from the trading centre of the Borysthenites, the middlemost of the maritime settlement in Scythia, the first people are the Callipides, who are Hellenic Scythians; above them is another tribe, called the Alazones. . . , further live the land-tilling Scythians, further yet live the Neures, while the land to the north of these Neures, so far as we know, is not inhabited.
18. These tribes live along the River Hypanis to the west of the River Borysthenes,... Tovább

Fülszöveg

16. No one knows for certain what lies above the land just mentioned. I can not find anyone who has seen these lands with his own eyes. Even Aristeas, whow I mentioned earlier, even he says in his poem that he did not go further than the land of the Isse-dones and that when he wrote of those countries that lie above them it was from hearsay, he claiming that it was the Issedones that spake thus. As for what we have managed to learn from authentic sources about the most remote lands that will all be described here.
17. Beginning from the trading centre of the Borysthenites, the middlemost of the maritime settlement in Scythia, the first people are the Callipides, who are Hellenic Scythians; above them is another tribe, called the Alazones. . . , further live the land-tilling Scythians, further yet live the Neures, while the land to the north of these Neures, so far as we know, is not inhabited.
18. These tribes live along the River Hypanis to the west of the River Borysthenes, but if one crosses the Borysthenes coming in from the sea one comes first to a marshy scrubland above which live certain land-tilling Scythians whom the Hellenes living on the Hypanis call the Borysthenites, while these Hellenes call themselves Olbiopolites. These land-tilling Scythians occupy an area that is a three days' journey eastward to a river that bears the name Pan-ticapus, and eleven days' sailing northward up the Borysthenes. Above them over a wide area lies a desert, and beyond the desert live Anthrophages (cannibals), a tribe not of the Scythians. Above them is a true desert where no people live at all.
19. To the east of the land-tilling Scythians, beyond the River Pan-ticapus is the territory of the nomad Scythians. . .
20. On the other side of the River Herrus lie the so-called king's domains where live the best Scythians, who are also the most numerous. They consider other Scythians to be as slaves to them. The lands lying to the north of the king's Scythians are occupied by the Melanchlenes ("Black Robes"), another tribe not of the Scythians.
21. Beyond the River Tanais the land does not belong to the Scythians. The first of these lands is that of the Sarmatians. Above the Sarmatians in the second land live the Budines who occupy an area entirely covered with mixed forest.
Herodotus, IV, 16—21 Vissza