They are frugal in their
banquets, avoiding immoderate indulgence and especially hard drinking,
as they would the plague.

77. Nor, except at the king's table, have they any settled time for
dining, but each man's stomach serves as his sun-dial; nor does any one
eat after he is satisfied.

78. They are marvellously temperate and cautious, so that when sometimes
marching among the gardens and vineyards of enemies, they neither
desire nor touch anything, from fear of poison or witchcraft.

79. They perform all the secret functions of nature with the most
scrupulous secrecy and modesty.

80. But they are so loose in their gait, and move with such correct ease
and freedom, that you would think them effeminate, though they are most
vigorous warriors; still they are rather crafty than bold, and are most
formidable at a distance. They abound in empty words, and speak wildly
and fiercely; they talk big, are proud, unmanageable, and threatening
alike in prosperity and adversity; they are cunning, arrogant, and
cruel, exercising the power of life and death over their slaves, and all
low-born plebeians. They flay men alive, both piecemeal, and by
stripping off the whole skin. No servant while waiting on them, or
standing at their table, may gape, speak, or spit, so that their mouths
are completely shut.

81. Their laws are remarkably severe: the most stringent are against
ingratitude and against deserters; some too are abominable, inasmuch as
for the crime of one man they condemn all his relations.

82. But as those only are appointed judges who are men of proved
experience and uprightness, and of such wisdom as to stand in no need of
advice, they laugh at our custom of sometimes appointing men of
eloquence and skill in public jurisprudence as guides to ignorant
judges. The story that one judge was compelled to sit on the skin of
another, who had been condemned for his injustice, is either an ancient
fable, or else, if ever there was such a custom, it has become obsolete.

83. In military system and discipline, by continual exercises in the
business of the camp, and the adoption of the various manoeuvres which
they have learnt from us, they have become formidable even to the
greatest armies; they trust chiefly to the valour of their cavalry, in
which all their nobles and rich men serve. Their infantry are armed like
mirmillos,[148] and are as obedient as grooms; and they always follow
the cavalry like a band condemned to