of insolence, that they were the first people who painted their faces, and who wore headbands and false hair, and who clothed themselves in robes embroidered with flowers, and who considered it disgraceful to cultivate the land, or to do any kind of labour. And most of them made their houses more beautiful than the temples of the gods; and so they say, that the leaders of the Iapygians, treating the Deity with insult, destroyed the images of the gods out of the temples, ordering them to give place to their superiors. On which account, being struck with fire and thunderbolts, they gave rise to this report; for indeed the thunderbolts with which they were stricken down were visible a long time afterwards. And to this very day all their descendants live with shaven heads and in mourning apparel, in want of all the luxuries which previously belonged to them. 25. But the Spaniards, although they go about in robes like those of the tragedians, and richly embroidered, and in tunics which reach down to the feet, are not at all hindered by their dress from displaying their vigour in war; but the people of Massilia became very effeminate, wearing the same highly ornamented kind of dress which the Spaniards used to wear; but they behave in a shameless manner, on account of the effeminacy of their souls, behaving like women, out of luxury: from which the proverb has gone about,—May you sail to Massilia. And the inhabitants of Siris, which place was first inhabited by people who touched there on their return from Troy, and after them by the Colophonians, as Timæus and Aristotle tell us, indulged in luxury no less than the Sybarites; for it was a peculiar national custom of theirs to wear embroidered tunics, which they girded up with expensive girdles (uírpai); and on this account they were called by the inhabitants of the adjacent countries μιτροχίτωνες, since Homer calls those who have no girdles αμιτροχίτωνες. And Archilochus the poet marvelled beyond anything at the country of the Siritans, and at their prosperity. Accordingly, speaking of Thasos as inferior to Siris, he says For there is not on earth a place so sweet, Or lovely, or desirable as that Which stands upon the stream of gentle Siris. But the place was called Siris, as Timæus asserts, and as Euripides says too in his play called The Female Prisoner, or Melanippe, from a woman named Siris, but according to Archilochus, from a river of the same name. And the number of the population was very great in proportion to the size of the place and extent of the country, owing to the luxurious and delicious character of the climate all around. On which account nearly all that part of Italy which was colonised by the Greeks was called Magna Græcia. 26. "But the Milesians, as long as they abstained from luxury, conquered the Scythians," as Ephorus says, "and founded all the cities on the Hellespont, and settled all the country about the Euxine Sea with beautiful cities. And they all betook themselves to Miletus. But when they were enervated by pleasure and luxury, all the valiant character of the city disappeared, as Aristotle tells us; and indeed a proverb arose from them,— Once on a time Milesians were brave." Heraclides of Pontus, in the second book of his treatise on Justice, says, "The city of the Milesians fell into misfortunes, on account of the luxurious lives of the citizens, and on account of the political factions; for the citizens, not loving equity, destroyed their enemies root and branch. For all the rich men and the populace formed opposite factions (and they call the populace Gergitha). At first the people got the better, and drove out the rich men, and, collecting the children of those who fled into some threshing-floors, collected a lot of oxen, and so trampled them to death, destroying them in a most impious manner. Therefore, when in their turn the rich men got the upper hand, they smeared over all those whom they got into their power with pitch, and so burnt them alive. And when they were being burnt, they say that many other prodigies were seen, and also that a sacred olive took fire of its own accord; on which account the God drove them for a long time from his oracle; and when they asked the oracle on what account they were driven away, he said My heart is grieved for the defenceless Gergithæ, Of the poor pitch-clad bands, and for the tree And Clearchus, in his fourth book, says that the Milesians, imitating the luxury of the Colophonians, disseminated it among their neighbours. And then he says that they, when reproved for it, said one to another, "Keep at home your native Milesian wares, and publish them not." 27. And concerning the Scythians, Clearchus, in what follows these last words, proceeds to say-"The nation of the Scythians was the first to use common laws; but after that, they became in their turn the most miserable of all nations, on account of their insolence: for they indulged in luxury to a degree in which no other nation did, being prosperous in everything, and having great resources of all sorts for such indulgences. And this is plain from the traces which exist of it to this day in the apparel worn, and way of life practised, by their chief men. For they, being very luxurious, and indeed being the first men who abandoned themselves wholly to luxury, proceeded to such a pitch of insolence that they used to cut off the noses of all the men wherever they came; and their descendants, after they emigrated to other countries, even now derive their name from this treatment. But their wives used to tattoo the wives of the Thracians, (of those Thracians, that is, who lived on the northern and western frontiers of Scythia,) all over their bodies, drawing figures on them with the tongues of their buckles; on which account, many years afterwards, the wives of the Thracians who had been treated in this manner effaced this disgrace in a peculiar manner of their own, tattooing also all the rest of their skin all over, in order that by this means the brand of disgrace and insult which was imprinted on their bodies, being multiplied in so various a manner, might efface the reproach by being called an ornament. And they lorded it over all other nations in so tyrannical a manner, that the offices of slavery, which are painful enough to all men, made it plain to all succeeding ages what was the real character of "a Scythian command." Therefore, on account of the number of disasters which oppressed them, since every people had lost, through grief, all the comforts of life, and all their hair at the same time, foreign nations called all cutting of the hair which is done by way of insult, ἀποσκυθίζομαι. 28. And Callias, or Diocles, (whichever was the author of the Cyclopes), ridiculing the whole nation of the Ionians in that play, says What has become of that luxurious Ionia, with the sumptuous supper-tables? And the people of Abydus (and Abydus is a colony of Miletus) are very luxurious in their way of life, and wholly enervated by pleasure; as Hermippus tells us, in his Soldiers A. I do rejoice when I behold an army From o'er the sea,-to see how soft they are And well-smooth'd muscles in their tender arms. B. Have you heard Abydus has become a man? And Aristophanes, in his Triphales, ridiculing (after the fashion of the comedians) many of the Ionians, says— Then all the other eminent foreigners Who were at hand, kept following steadily, And much they press'd him, begging he would take A third was all for Ephesus; a fourth Preferred Abydus on the Hellespont: But concerning the people of Abydus, Antipho, in reply to 29. The Magnesians also, who lived on the banks of the Mæander, were undone because they indulged in too much luxury, as Callinus relates in his Elegies; and Archilochus confirms this for the city of Magnesia was taken by the Ephesians. And concerning these same Ephesians, Democritus, who was himself an Ephesian, speaks in the first book of his treatise on the Temple of Diana at Ephesus; where, relating their excessive effeminacy, and the dyed garments which they used to wear, he uses these expressions:- "And as for the violet and purple robes of the Ionians, and their saffron garments, embroidered with round figures, those are known to every one; and the caps which they wear on their heads are in like manner embroidered with figures of animals. They wear also garments called sarapes, of yellow, or scarlet, or white, and some even of purple: and they wear also long robes called calasires, of Corinthian workmanship; and some of these are purple, and some violet-coloured, and some hyacinth-coloured; and one may also see some which are of a fiery red, and others which are of a sea-green colour. There are also Persian calasires, which are the most beautiful of all. And one may see also," continues Democritus, "the garments which they call actææ; and the actæa is the most costly of all the Persian articles of dress: and this actæa is woven for the sake of fineness and of strength, and it is ornamented all over with golden millet-grains; and all the millet-grains have knots of purple thread passing through the middle, to fasten them inside the garment." And he says that the Ephesians use all these things, being wholly devoted to luxury. 30. But Duris, speaking concerning the luxury of the Samians, quotes the poems of Asius, to prove that they used to wear armlets on their arms; and that, when celebrating the festival of the Herea, they used to go about with their hair carefully combed down over the back of their head and over their shoulders; and he says that this is proved to have been their regular practice by this proverb-"To go, like a worshipper of Juno, with his hair braided." Now the verses of Asius run as follows : And they march'd, with carefully comb'd hair And on their arms were armlets, highly wrought, The praises of the mighty warrior. But Heraclides of Pontus, in his treatise on Pleasure, says that the Samians, being most extravagantly luxurious, destroyed the city, out of their meanness to one another, as effectually as the Sybarites destroyed theirs. 31. But the Colophonians (as Phylarchus says), who ori |