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What the population of Scythia is I was not able to learn with
certainty; the accounts which I received varied from one another. I
heard from some that they were very numerous indeed; others made their
numbers but scanty for such a nation as the Scyths. Thus much,
however, I witnessed with my own eyes. There is a tract called
Exampaeus between the Borysthenes and the Hypanis. I made some
mention of it in a former place, where I spoke of the bitter stream
which rising there flows into the Hypanis, and renders the water of
that river undrinkable. Here then stands a brazen bowl, six times as
big as that at the entrance of the Euxine, which Pausanias, the son
of Cleombrotus, set up. Such as have never seen that vessel may
understand me better if I say that the Scythian bowl holds with ease
six hundred amphorae, and is of the thickness of six fingers'
breadth. The natives gave me the following account of the manner in
which it was made. One of their kings, by name Ariantas, wishing to
know the number of his subjects, ordered them all to bring him, on
pain of death, the point off one of their arrows. They obeyed; and
he collected thereby a vast heap of arrow-heads, which he resolved to
form into a memorial that might go down to posterity. Accordingly he
made of them this bowl, and dedicated it at Exampaeus. This was all
that I could learn concerning the number of the Scythians.
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