When the other Scythians die, their nearest relations carry them about among their friends, laid in chariots; each one receives and entertains the attendants, and sets the same things before the dead body, as before the rest. In this manner private persons are carried about for forty days, and then buried. After the burial the Scythians purify themselves by wiping and thoroughly washing their heads and bodies. They set up three pieces of wood leaning against each other, extend around them woollen cloths; and having joined them together as closely as possible, they throw red-hot stones into a vessel placed in the middle of the pieces of wood and the cloths. They have a sort of hemp growing in this country, much like flax, except in thickness and height; in this respect the hemp is far superior: it grows both spontaneously and from cultivation; and from it the Thracians make garments like linen, nor would any one who is not well skilled in such matters distinguish whether they are made of flax or hemp, but a person who has never seen this hemp would think the garment was made of flax. The Scythians take seed of this hemp, creep under the cloths, and put the seed on the red-hot stones; this smokes, and produces such a steam, as no Grecian vapor-bath could surpass. Transported with vapor, they shout aloud; and this serves them instead of washing, for they never bathe the body in water. Their women pound on a rough stone pieces of cypress, cedar, and incense-tree, pouring on water; and then this pounded matter, when it is thick, they smear over the whole body and face. This at the same time gives them an agreeable odor, and when they take off the cataplasm on the following day, they become clean and shining.
I have never been able to learn with accuracy the amount of the population of the Scythians. There is a spot between the river Borysthenes and the Hypanis, called Exampæus, containing a fountain of bitter water, which renders the Hypanis unfit to be drunk. In this spot lies a bronze cauldron, in size six times as large as the bowl at the mouth of the Pontus, which Pausanias, son of Cleombrotus, dedicated. For the benefit of any one who has never seen this, I will describe it: The cauldron easily contains six hundred amphoræ; and is six fingers in thickness. The inhabitants say that it was made from the points of arrows; for their king, Ariantas, wishing to know the population of the Scythians, commanded the Scythians to bring him each one point of an arrow, and threatened death on whosoever should fail to bring it. Accordingly, a vast number of arrow points were brought, and resolving to leave a monument made from them, he made this bronze bowl, and dedicated it at Exampæus. Their country has nothing wonderful, except the rivers, which are very large and very many in number, and the extensive plains. They show the print of the foot of Hercules upon a rock near the river Tyras; it resembles the footstep of man, and is two cubits in length.