herodotus

swear falsely, and complains indignantly: and when he denies it, theking sends for other diviners twice as many in number, and if thesealso by looking into their divination pronounce him guilty of havingsworn falsely, at once they cut off the man's head, and the divinerswho came first part his goods among them by lot; but if the divinerswho came in afterwards acquit him, other diviners come in, and againothers after them. If then the greater number acquit the man, thesentence is that the first diviners shall themselves be put to death.69. They put them to death accordingly in the following manner:--firstthey fill a waggon with brushwood and yoke oxen to it; then havingbound the feet of the diviners and tied their hands behind them andstopped their mouths with gags, they fasten them down in the middle ofthe brushwood, and having set fire to it they scare the oxen and letthem go: and often the oxen are burnt to death together with thediviners, and often they escape after being scorched, when the pole towhich they are fastened has been burnt: and they burn the diviners inthe manner described for other causes also, calling them falseprophets. Now when the king puts any to death, he does not leave alivetheir sons either, but he puts to death all the males, not doing anyhurt to the females. 70. In the following manner the Scythians makeoaths to whomsoever they make them:--they pour wine into a greatearthenware cup and mingle with it blood of those who are taking theoath to one another, either making a prick with an awl or cutting witha dagger a little way into their body, and then they dip into the cupa sword[64] and arrows and a battle-axe and a javelin; and having donethis, they invoke many curses on the breaker of the oath, andafterwards they drink it off, both they who are making the oath andthe most honourable of their company.71. The burial-place of the kings is in the land of the Gerrians, theplace up to which the Borysthenes is navigable. In this place, whentheir king has died, they make a large square excavation in the earth;and when they have made this ready, they take up the corpse (the bodybeing covered over with wax and the belly ripped up and cleansed, andthen sewn together again, after it has been filled with /kyperos/[69]cut up and spices and parsley-seed and anise), and they convey it in awaggon to another nation. Then those who receive the corpse thusconveyed to them do the same as the Royal Scythians, that is they cutoff a part of their ear and shave their hair round about and cutthemselves all over the arms and tear their forehead and nose and passarrows through their left hand. Thence they convey in the waggon thecorpse of the king to another of the nations over whom they rule; andthey to whom they came before accompany them: and when they have goneround to all conveying the corpse, then they are in the land of theGerrians, who have their settlements furthest away of all the nationsover whom they rule, and they have reached the spot where the burial