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The Budini are a large and powerful nation: they have all deep blue
eyes, and bright red hair. There is a city in their territory,
called Gelonus, which is surrounded with a lofty wall, thirty
furlongs each way, built entirely of wood. All the houses in the
place and all the temples are of the same material. Here are temples
built in honour of the Grecian gods, and adorned after the Greek
fashion with images, altars, and shrines, all in wood. There is
even a festival, held every third year in honour of Bacchus, at which
the natives fall into the Bacchic fury. For the fact is that the
Geloni were anciently Greeks, who, being driven out of the factories
along the coast, fled to the Budini and took up their abode with
them. They still speak a language half Greek, half Scythian.
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