BOOK VII. II. 11-14 



abroad over the country with the \dld animals. It 

 is stated by Baeton, Alexander the Great's route- 

 surveyor on his journeys, that these men are unable to 

 breathe in another cHmate, and that consequently 

 none of them could be brought to the neighbouring 

 kings or had ever been brought to Alexander. Ac- 

 cording to Isogonus of Nicaea the former cannibal 

 tribes whom we stated to exist to the north, ten days' 

 journey beyond the river Dnieper, drink out of human 

 skulls and use the scalps with the hair on as napkins 

 hung round their necks. The same authority states 

 that certain people in Albania are born with keen grey 

 eyes and are bald from childhood, and that they see 

 better by night than in the daytime. He also says 

 that the Sauromatae, thirteen days' journey beyond 

 the Dnieper, always take food once every two days. 



Crates of Pergamum states that there was a race Tribes 

 of men round Parium on the Dardanelles, whom *J^'akTbi{es"' 

 he calls Ophiogenes, whose custom it was to cure 

 snake-bites by touch and draw the poison out of 

 the body by placing their hand on it. Varro says 

 that there are still a few people there whose spittle 

 is a remedy against snake-bites. According to the 

 writings of Agatharchides there was also a siniilar 

 tribe in Africa, the PsylU, named after King Psyllus, 

 whose tomb is in the region of the greater Syrtes. 

 In their bodies there was engendered a poison that was 

 deadly to snakes, and the smell of which they em- 

 ployed for sending snakes to sleep, while they had 

 a custom of exposing their children as soon as they 

 were born to the most savage snakes and of using 

 that species to test the fidehty of their wives, as 

 snakes do not avoid persons born with adulterous 

 blood in them. This tribe itself has been almost 



515 



