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[1]
How numerous the Scythians are, I was not able to learn exactly, and the accounts that I heard did not tally, some saying that they are very numerous, and some that they are few, so far as they are true Scythians.
How numerous the Scythians are, I was not able to learn exactly, and the accounts that I heard did not tally, some saying that they are very numerous, and some that they are few, so far as they are true Scythians.
[2] But this much they let me see for myself: there is a region between the
+Dnepr (river), Europe Borysthenes and
Hypanis rivers, whose name is
Exampaeus; this is the land that I mentioned when I said that there is a spring of salt water in it, whose water makes the
Hypanis unfit to drink.
[3] In this region is a bronze vessel, as much as six times greater than the cauldron dedicated by
Pausanias son of
Cleombrotus at the entrance of the
+Black Sea [38,42] (sea) Pontus.
1
[4] For anyone who has not yet seen the latter, I will make my meaning plain: the
Scythian bronze vessel easily contains five thousand four hundred gallons, and it is of six fingers' thickness. This vessel (so the people of the country said) was made out of arrowheads.
[5] For their king, whose name was
Ariantas, desiring to know the census of the
Scythians, commanded every
Scythian to bring him the point from an arrow, threatening death to all who did not.
[6] So a vast number of arrow-heads was brought, and he decided to make and leave a memorial out of them; and he made of these this bronze vessel, and set it up in this country
Exampaeus. This much I heard about the number of the
Scythians.
Histories. Herodotus. ed. A.D. Godley. Cambridge. 1920-1925.
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