S4 
Pliny's nattjeal histoet. 
[Book VI. 
belongs to only the nearest nation of them. The more ancient 
writers give them the name of Aramii. The Scythians them- 
selves give the name of Chorsari'' to the Persians, and they call 
Mount Caucasus Graucasis, which means white with snow." 
The multitude of these Scythian nations is quite innumerable : 
in their life and habits they much resemble the people of Parthia. 
The tribes among them that are better known are the Sacge, the 
Massagetse/^ the Dahae,®^ the Essedones,^^ the Ariacge/^ the 
Rhymmici, the Paesici, the Amardi/^ the Histi, the Edones, the 
Camae, the Camacae, the Euchatae,^^ the Cotieri, the Anthusiani, 
the Psacae, the Arimaspi,^^ the Antacati, the Chroasai, and the 
are now peopled by the Kirghiz Cossacks, in whose name that of their 
ancestors, the Sacse, is traced by some geographers. 
89 Meaning the " Great Getae." They dwelt beyond the Jaxartes and 
the Sea of Aral, and their country corresponds to that of the Khirghiz 
Tartars in the north of Independent Tartary. 
9^ The Dahae were a numerous and warlike Nomad tribe, who wandered 
over the vast steppes lying to the east of the Caspian Sea. Strabo has 
grouped them with the Sacae and Massagetse, as the great Scythian tribes 
of Inner Asia, to the north of Bactriana. 
91 See also B. iv. c. 20, and B. vi. c. 7. The position of the Essedones, 
or perhaps more correctly, the Issedones, may probably be assigned to the 
east of Ichim, in the steppes of the central border of the Kirghiz, in the 
immediate vicinity of the Arimaspi, who dwelt on the northern declivity 
of the Altai chain. A communication is supposed to have been carried on 
between these two peoples for the exchange of the gold that was the produce 
of those mountain districts. 
92 They dwelt, according to Ptolemy, along the southern banks of the 
Jaxartes. 
^3 Or the Mardi, a warlike Asiatic tribe. Stephanus Byzantinus, fol- 
lowing Strabo, places the Amardi near the Hyrcani, and adds, " There 
are also Persian Mardi, without the a;' and, speaking of the Mardi, he 
mentions them as an Hyrcanian tribe, of predatory habits, and skilled in 
archery. 
9* D'Anville supposes that the Euchatse may have dwelt at the modern 
Koten, in Little Bukharia. It is suggested, however, by Parisot, that 
they may have possibly occupied a valley of the Himalaya, in the midst 
of a country known as " Cathai," or the " desert." 
95 The first extant notice of them is in Herodotus ; but before him there 
was the poem of Aristeas of Proconnesus, of which the title was ^ Ari- 
maspea ;' and it is mainly upon the statements in it that the stories told re- 
lative to this people rest — such as their being one-eyed, and as to their stealing 
the gold from the Gryphes, or Griffins, under whose custody it was placed. 
Their locality is by some supposed to have been on the left bank of the 
Middle Yolga, in the governments of Kasan, Simbirsk, and Saratov : a 
