nations were armed with missile weapons,—light shields of wicker or leather, or no shields at all,—turbans or leather caps instead of helmets,—swords, and scythes. They were not properly equipped either for fighting in regular order or for resisting the line of spears and shields which the Grecian hoplites brought to bear upon them; their persons too were much less protected against wounds than those of the latter; some of them indeed, as the Mysians and Libyans, did not even carry spears, but only staves with the end hardened in the fire.[52] A nomadic tribe of Persians, called Sagartii, to the number of eight thousand horsemen, came armed only with a dagger and with the rope known in South America as the lasso, which they cast in the fight to entangle an antagonist. The Æthiopians from the Upper Nile had their bodies painted half red and half white, wore the skins of lions and panthers, and carried, besides the javelin, a long bow with arrows of reed, tipped with a point of sharp stone. [49] Herodot. vii, 20-21. [50] See the enumeration in Herodotus, vii, 61-96. In chapter 76, one name has dropped out of the text (see the note of Wesseling and Schweighäuser), which, in addition to those specified under the head of the land-force, makes up exactly forty-six. It is from this source that Herodotus derives the boast which he puts into the mouth of the Athenians (ix, 27) respecting the battle of Marathon, in which they pretend to have vanquished forty-six nations,—ἐνικήσαμεν ἔθνεα ἓξ καὶ τεσσαράκοντα: though there is no reason for believing that so great a number of contingents were engaged with Datis at Marathon. Compare the boasts of Antiochus king of Syria. (B. C. 192) about his immense Asiatic host brought across into Greece, as well as the contemptuous comments of the Roman consul Quinctius (Livy, xxxv, 48-49). “Varia enim genera armorum, et multa nomina gentium inauditarum, Dahas, et Medos, et Cadusios, et Elymæos—Syros omnes esse: haud paulo mancipiorum melius, propter servilia ingenia, quam militum genus:” and the sharp remark of the Arcadian envoy Antiochus (Xenophon, Hellen. vii, 1, 33). Quintus Curtius also has some rhetorical turns about the number of nations, whose names even were hardly known, tributary to the Persian empire (iii, 4, 29; iv, 45, 9), “ignota etiam ipsi Dario gentium nomina,” etc. [51] Herodot. vii, 89-93. [52] Herodot. vii, 61-81.