The nation was made up of a number of tribes. According to Herodotus, the land was divided into cantons, each of which had its own chief, and a place where he pronounced justice; in each canton, besides the residence of the chief, was a place sacred to the god of war, from which it follows that at the time presupposed in the description of Herodotus the tribes of the Scoloti no longer marched at will through the whole district. This original state was not merely abandoned owing to the settlements in the agricultural districts; even the habit of wandering up and down, the search for pasture and for water, and hunting, were limited among the migratory tribes to a particular district, within which the tribe changed its encampment according to the change of the seasons, and the productiveness of the hunting and pasturage. Moreover, the nomadic habit was also so far abandoned that the head of the tribe had a definite place of abode in the canton, and there was a sacred place in each canton. The rulers of the cantons in Herodotus were undoubtedly the princes of the tribes, the chiefs of the oldest family, or of the family which once ruled the tribe. Even among the tribes themselves there was an order of precedence, which the legend of the Scoloti does not carry back to difference of age but to the favour of heaven. The tribe which held the foremost place among the Scoloti was, according to Herodotus, the tribe called the "Royal Scythians." This tribe furnished the chief of the whole nation, or rather the chief of this tribe was also the ruler of all the other tribes--the king of all the princes of the tribes. Here also, in this subordination of the chieftains and tribes under one liege lord--in this one ruler of the whole nation--we see plainly that the Scoloti had left far behind the stage of purely nomadic life. We can establish it as a fact that this monarchy was in existence among the Scoloti in the first half of the seventh century B.C., and apparently it existed far earlier. The "Royal Scythians," _i.e._ the tribe to which the royal house belonged, dwelt, according to the statement of Herodotus, on the Borysthenes, in the district of Gerrhus, fourteen days' journey from the mouth of this river. Hence the pastures of the royal horde must be sought on the rapids of the Dnieper.