heir women?"
Hear, then, the tale of the famous and glorious
valor of the men. Now Dio, the historian and diligent
investigator of ancient times, who gave to his work the
title "Getica" (and the Getae we have proved in a previous
passage to be Goths, on the testimony of Orosius
Paulus)--this Dio, I say, makes mention of a later king
of theirs named Telefus. Let no one say that this name
is quite foreign to the Gothic tongue, and let no one who
is ignorant cavil at the fact that the tribes of men make
use of many names, even as the Romans borrow from the
Macedonians, the Greeks from the Romans, the Sarmatians
from the Germans, and the Goths frequently from
the Huns. This Telefus, then, a son of Hercules by 59
Auge, and the husband of a sister of Priam, was of
towering stature and terrible strength. He matched his
father's valor by virtues of his own and also recalled the
traits of Hercules by his likeness in appearance. Our
ancestors called his kingdom Moesia. This province has
on the east the mouths of the Danube, on the south
Macedonia, on the west Histria and on the north the
Danube. Now this king we have mentioned carried on 60
wars with the Greeks, and in their course he slew in battle
Thesander, the leader of Greece. But while he was making
a hostile attack upon Ajax and was pursuing Ulysses,
his horse became entangled in some vines and fell. He
himself was thrown and wounded in the thigh by a javelin
of Achilles, so that for a long time he could not be healed.
Yet, despite his wound, he drove the Greeks from his
land. Now when Telefus died, his son Eurypylus succeeded
to the throne, being a son of the sister of Priam,
king of the Phrygians. For love of Cassandra he sought
to take part in the Trojan war, that he might come to the
help of her parents and his own father-in-law; but soon
after his arrival he was killed.

[Sidenote: Cyrus the Great B.C. 559-529]

[Sidenote: QUEEN TOMYRIS AND CYRUS B.C. 529]

X Then Cyrus, king of the Persians, after a long 61
interval of almost exactly six hundred and thirty years
(as Pompeius Trogus relates), waged an unsuccessful
war against Tomyris, Queen of the Getae. Elated by his
victories in Asia, he strove to conquer the Getae, whose
queen, as I have said, was Tomyris. Though she could
have stopped the approach of Cyrus at the river Araxes,
yet she permitted him to cross, preferring to overcome
him in battle rather than to thwart him by advantage of 6