HORSES AND MEN SACRIFICED 35 



steppes ot Asia, and is known to have sacrificed 

 animals of many kinds, but horses most of all, 

 and usually white or dun horses. 



Thus we are told that when a Scythian king 

 died, his favourite horse, his favourite concubine. 

 and several important members of his establish- 

 ment, preferably his cook and his cupbearer, 

 were buried with him. When a year had passed, 

 a further ceremony took place. 



This consisted in the execution, generally by 

 strangulation, of some fifty of the strongest, 

 handsomest and generally most desirable young 

 men — probably young men who had belonged 

 to his suite — and in the strangulation also of an 

 equal number of the best horses that had be- 

 longed to him. 



Then, without delay, the bodies of men and 

 horses were disembowelled, next they were 

 stuffed with chaff or straw, and finally when the 

 horses, supplied each with a bit and bridle, had 

 been set up in a circle round the tomb of the 

 deceased monarch, the bodies of the slaughtered 

 men were set astride them. 



And there the ghastly squadron remained until 

 it fell away to dust. 



That the literary records in which these grue- 

 some details are to be found are accurate, has to 

 some extent been proved by discoveries made from 

 time to time — as for instance at the opening of 

 the great tumuli in Russia about half-a-century ago. 



