ns which they cover with a
curved awning made of the bark of trees, and then drive them through
their boundless deserts. And when they come to any pasture land, they
pitch their wagons in a circle, and live like a herd of beasts, eating
up all the forage--carrying, as it were, their cities with them in their
wagons. In them the husbands sleep with their wives--in them their
children are born and brought up; these wagons, in short, are their
perpetual habitation, and, wherever they fix them, that place they look
upon as their home.

They drive before them their flocks and herds to their pasturage; and
about all other cattle, they are especially careful of their horses. The
fields in that country are always green, and are interspersed with
patches of fruit-trees, so that, wherever they go, there is no dearth
either of food for themselves or fodder for their cattle. And this is
caused by the moisture of the soil and the number of the rivers which
flow through these districts.

All their old people, and especially all the weaker sex, keep close to
the wagons and occupy themselves in the lighter employments. But the
young men, who from their earliest childhood are trained to the use of
the horses, think it beneath them to walk. They are also all trained by
careful discipline of various sorts to become skilful warriors. And this
is the reason why the Persians, who are originally of Scythian
extraction, are very skilful in war.

Nearly all the Alani are men of great stature and beauty. Their hair is
somewhat yellow, their eyes are terribly fierce; the lightness of their
armor renders them rapid in their movements, and they are in every
respect equal to the Huns, only more civilized in their food and their
manner of life. They plunder and hunt as far as the Sea of Azov and the
Cimmerian Bosporus, ravaging also Armenia and Media.

And as ease is a delightful thing to men of a quiet and placid
disposition, so danger and war are a pleasure to the Alani, and among
them that man is called happy who has lost his life in battle; for those
who grow old, or who go out of the world from accidental sicknesses,
they pursue with bitter reproaches as degenerate and cowardly. Nor is
there anything of which they boast with more pride than of having killed
a man; and the most glorious spoils they esteem the scalps which they
have torn from the heads of those whom they have slain, which they put
as trappings and ornaments on their war horses