observance was the worship of
the naked sword. The country was parcelled out into districts, and in
every district was a huge pile of brushwood, serving as a temple to the
neighborhood, at the top of which was planted an antique sword or
scimitar. On a stated day in each year solemn sacrifices, human and
animal, were offered at these shrines; and the warm blood of the victims
was carried up from below and poured upon the weapon. The human
victims--prisoners taken in war--were hewn to pieces at the foot of the
mound, and their limbs wildly tossed on high by the votaries, who then
retired, leaving the bloody fragments where they chanced to fall. The
Scythians seem to have had no priest caste; but they believed in
divination; and the diviners formed a distinct class which possessed
important powers. They were sent for whenever the king was ill, to
declare the cause of his illness, which they usually attributed to the
fact that an individual, whom they named, had sworn falsely by the Royal
Hearth. Those accused in this way, if found guilty by several bodies of
diviners, were beheaded for the offence, and their original accusers
received their property. It must have been important to keep on good
terms with persons who wielded such a power as this.

Such were the most striking customs of the Scythian people, or at any
rate of the Scythians of Herodotus, who were the dominant race over a
large portion of the Steppe country. Coarse and repulsive in their
appearance, fierce in their tempers, savage in their habits, not
individually very brave, but powerful by their numbers, and by a mode of
warfare which was difficult to meet, and in which long use had given
them great expertness, they were an enemy who might well strike alarm
even into a nation so strong and warlike as the Medes. Pouring through
the passes of the Caucasus--whence coming or what intending none
knew--horde after horde of Scythians blackened the rich plains of the
South. On they came, as before observed, like a flight of locusts,
countless, irresistible--swarming into Iberia and Upper Media--finding
the land before them a garden, and leaving it behind them a howling
wilderness. Neither age nor sex would be spared. The inhabitants of the
open country and of the villages, if they did not make their escape to
high mountain tops or other strongholds, would be ruthlessly massacred
by the invaders, or at best, forced to become their slaves. The crops
would be consumed