Hippokratês was accustomed to see the naked figure in its highest perfection at the Grecian games: hence, perhaps, he is led to dwell more emphatically on the corporeal defects of the Scythians. [463] See Pallas, Reise durch Russland, and Dr. Clarke, Travels in Russia, ch. xii, p. 238. If the habits of the Scythians were such as to create in the near observer no other feeling than repugnance, their force at least inspired terror. They appeared in the eyes of Thucydidês so numerous and so formidable, that he pronounces them irresistible, if they could but unite, by any other nation within his knowledge. Herodotus, too, conceived the same idea of a race among whom every man was a warrior and a practised horse-bowman, and who were placed by their mode of life out of all reach of an enemy’s attack.[464] Moreover, Herodotus does not speak meanly of their intelligence, contrasting them in favorable terms with the general stupidity of the other nations bordering on the Euxine. In this respect Thucydidês seems to differ from him. [464] Thucyd. ii, 95; Herodot. ii, 46-47: his idea of the formidable power of the Scythians seems also to be implied in his expression (c. 81), καὶ ὀλίγους, ὡς Σκύθας εἶναι. Herodotus holds the same language about the Thracians, however, as Thucydidês about the Scythians,—irresistible, if they could but act with union (v, 3). On the east, the Scythians of the time of Herodotus were separated only by the river Tanais from the Sarmatians, who occupied the territory for several days’ journey north-east of the Palus Mæôtis: on the south, they were divided by the Danube from the section of Thracians called Getæ. Both these nations were nomadic, analogous to the Scythians in habits, military efficiency, and fierceness: indeed, Herodotus and Hippokratês distinctly intimate that the Sarmatians were nothing but a branch of Scythians,[465] speaking a Scythian dialect, and distinguished from their neighbors on the other side of the Tanais, chiefly by this peculiarity,—that the women among them were warriors hardly less daring and expert than the men. This attribute of Sarmatian women, as a matter of fact, is well attested,—though Herodotus has thrown over it an air of suspicion not properly belonging to it, by his explanatory genealogical mythe, deducing the Sarmatians from a mixed breed between the Scythians and the Amazons. [465] The testimony of Herodotus to this effect (iv, 110-117) seems clear and positive, especially as to the language. Hippokratês also calls the Sauromatæ ἔθνος Σκυθικόν (De Aëre, Locis et Aquis, c. vi, sect. 89, Petersen).