[459] Niebuhr (Dissertat. _ut sup._ p. 360), Boeckh (Introd. Inscrip. _ut sup._ p. 110), and Ritter (Vorhalle der Geschichte, p. 316) advance this opinion. But we ought not on this occasion to depart from the authority of Herodotus, whose information respecting the people of Scythia, collected by himself on the spot, is one of the most instructive and precious portions of his whole work. He is very careful to distinguish what is Scythian from what is not: and these tribes, which Niebuhr (contrary to the sentiment of Herodotus) imagines _not_ to be Scythian, were the tribes nearest and best known to him; probably he had personally visited them, since we know that he went up the river Hypanis (Bog) as high as the Exampæus, four days’ journey from the sea (iv, 52-81). That some portions of the same ἔθνος should be ἀροτῆρες, and other portions νόμαδες, is far from being without parallel; such was the case with the Persians, for example (Herodot. i, 126), and with the Iberians between the Euxine and the Caspian (Strabo, xi, p. 500). The Pontic Greeks confounded Agathyrsus, Gelônus, and Scythês in the same genealogy, as being three brethren, sons of Hêraklês by the μιξοπάρθενος Ἔχιδνα of the Hylæa (iv, 7-10). Herodotus is more precise: he distinguishes both the Agathyrsi and Gelôni from Scythians. [460] Both Niebuhr and Boeckh account the ancient Scythians to be of Mongolian race (Niebuhr in the Dissertation above mentioned, Untersuchungen über die Geschichte der Skythen, Geten, und Sarmaten, among the Kleine Historische Schriften, p. 362; Boeckh, Corpus Inscriptt. Græcarum, Introductio ad Inscriptt. Sarmatic. part xi, p. 81). Paul Joseph Schafarik, in his elaborate examination of the ethnography of the ancient people described as inhabiting northern Europe and Asia, arrives at the same result (Slavische Alterthümer, Prag. 1843, vol. i, xiii, 6, p. 279). A striking illustration of this analogy of race is noticed by Alexander von Humboldt, in speaking of the burial-place and the funeral obsequies of the Tartar Tchinghiz Khan:— “Les cruautés lors de la pompe funèbre des grands-khans ressemblent entièrement à celles que nous trouvons décrites par Hérodote (iv, 71) environ 1700 ans avant la mort de Tchinghiz, et 65° de longitude plus à l’ouest, chez les Scythes du Gerrhus et du Borysthène.” (Humboldt, Asie Centrale, vol. i, p. 244.)