Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 117 



the Sarmatians neither dig nor import iron, being the most 

 isolated of the barbarous peoples in these regions. But their 

 ingenuity has supplied the defect. Their spears are tipped with 

 bone instead of iron, their bows and arrows are of the cornel-tree, 

 and the barbs of the arrows are of bone. They throw ropes round 

 the enemies whom they fall in with ; then wheeling their horses' 

 round they upset their foes entangled in the ropes. They make 

 their corselets in the following way. Every man breeds many 

 mares, for the land is not divided up into private lots, and 

 it produces nothing but wild forest ; for the people are nomads. 

 These mares they not only employ in war, but also sacrifice to 

 their local gods, and, moreover, use them as food. They collect 

 the hoofs, clean them, and split them till they resemble the 

 scales of a dragon. Anyone who has not seen a dragon has 

 at least seen a green fir-cone. Well, the fabric which they 

 make out of the hoofs may not be inaptly likened to the clefts 

 on a fir-cone. In these pieces they bore holes, and having 

 stitched them together with the sinews of horses and oxen, 

 they use them as corselets, which are inferior to Greek breast- 

 plates neither in elegance nor strength, for they are both 

 sword-proof and arrow-proof. Linen corselets, on the other 

 hand, are not so serviceable in battle, for they yield to the 

 thrust of iron ; but they are useful to huntsmen, for the teeth 

 of leopards and lions break off short in them." 



According to Grunau 1 the East Prussians acquired horses 

 and a knowledge of arrow-shooting from the Masuren, a people 

 who lived in what is now Poland, in the district round Warsaw, + 

 and whose name still survives in the dance called ' mazurka.' 

 The same writer also mentions a sacrifice of white horses 2 , and 

 we are told that white horses are to be kept for the gods. 

 Moreover, a sacred shield described by Grunau 3 is represented 

 as supported by two white horses. The last statement naturally 

 reminds the reader of the white horse in the arms of Hanover 4 . 

 The evidence of Grunau concerning the acquisition of horses 

 and a knowledge of arrow-shooting from the Masuren, who 

 were almost certainly a Sarmatian tribe, taken along with 



1 Tract, in. 5, 1. 2 Tract, n. 3, 8. 3 Tract, n. 5, 1. 



4 The cream-white horses used by our king on state occasions are descended 

 from white horses formerly kept in the royal stables at Hanover. 



