e is buried together with her husband;
and the others are exceedingly grieved at it, for this is counted as the
greatest reproach to them.

6. Of the other Thracians the custom is to sell their children to be
carried away out of the country; and over their maidens they do not keep
watch, but allow them to have commerce with whatever men they please,
but over their wives they keep very great watch; and they buy their
wives for great sums of money from their parents. To be pricked with
figures is accounted a mark of noble rank, and not to be so marked is a
sign of low birth. 4 Not to work is counted most honourable, and to be a
worker of the soil is above all things dishonourable: to live on war and
plunder is the most honourable thing.

7. These are their most remarkable customs; and of the gods they worship
only Ares and Dionysos and Artemis. Their kings, however, apart from the
rest of the people, worship Hermes more than all gods, and swear by him
alone; and they say that they are descended from Hermes.

8. The manner of burial for the rich among them is this:--for three days
they expose the corpse to view, and they slay all kinds of victims
and feast, having first made lamentation. Then they perform the burial
rites, either consuming the body with fire or covering it up in the
earth without burning; and afterwards when they have heaped up a mound
they celebrate games with every kind of contest, in which reasonably the
greatest prizes are assigned for single combat. 5 This is the manner of
burial among the Thracians.

9. Of the region lying further on towards the North of this country
no one can declare accurately who the men are who dwell in it; but the
parts which lie immediately beyond the Ister are known to be uninhabited
and vast in extent. The only men of whom I can hear who dwell beyond
the Ister are those who are said to be called Sigynnai, and who use the
Median fashion of dress. Their horses, it is said, have shaggy hair all
over their bodies, as much as five fingers long; and these are small and
flat-nosed and too weak to carry men, but when yoked in chariots they
are very high-spirited; therefore the natives of the country drive
chariots. The boundaries of this people extend, it is said, to the parts
near the Enetoi, who live on the Adriatic; and people say that they
are colonists from the Medes. In what way however these have come to
be colonists from the Medes I am not able for my part to conceive, bu