Book 9
4
Those books, then, contained matter of the following sort: that the most remote of the Scythians, who pass their life in the far north, eat human flesh and subsist on the nourishment of that food, and are called a)nqrwpofa/goi, or cannibals. Also that there are men in the same latitude having one eye in the middle of the forehead and called Arimaspi, who are of the appearance that the poets give the Cyclopes. The Arimaspi are mentioned as good riders by Aeschylus, Prom. 805. Since Herodotus (iv. 27; L.C.L. ii, p. 227) says that in Scythian a)/rima meant one and spou=, eye, Strabo (i, 2, 10; L.C.L. vol. i, pp. 77 f.) thought that Homer might have derived his Cyclopes from the Scythian Arimaspi. See Milton, P.L. 2, 945. That there are also in the same region other men, of marvellous swiftness, whose feet are turned backwards and do not point forward, as in the rest of mankind. Cf. Pliny, N.H. vii. 11; Augustine, Civ. Dei, xvi. 8. Further, that it was handed down by tradition that in a distant land called Albania men are born whose hair turns white in childhood and who see better by night than in the daytime. That it was also a matter of assured belief that the Sauromatae, who dwell far away beyond the river Borysthenes, take food only every other day That is, every third day, according to the Roman method of reckoning; cf. xvii. 12. 2, febrim quartis diebus recurrentem, and xvii. 12. 5, haec biduo medio intervallata febris, and see Class. Phil. viii, pp. 1 ff. and fast on the intervening day.
