According to the statement of Herodotus, it was after the middle of the seventh century B.C. that the Scoloti first came from the East and reached the northern shore of the Black Sea. This is contradicted by the acquaintance which the Homeric poems show with the milkers of horses beyond the Thracians; by the narrative of Herodotus himself, according to which the Amazons, conquered in old days by Heracles on the Thermodon, fled to the shore of the Mæotis, and found the Scoloti there, and became the mothers of the Sarmatians by the young men of that tribe;[504] and lastly, by the legend of the Scoloti themselves, according to which they were derived from the daughter of the river Borysthenes. According to this they regarded themselves in any case as a tribe settled from all antiquity on the Borysthenes, and with this the statement of Herodotus agrees when he tells us, that the Scoloti maintained that 1000 years had elapsed since the time of their progenitor, the son of the sky-god, and the daughter of the Borysthenes, down to the time of King Darius.[505] Herodotus represents the Scoloti as driven to the west by the Massagetæ, who dwelt in the east, a tribe which we shall have to seek on the Jaxartes. In this way the Scoloti come into the land of the Cimmerians, who inhabit the north shore of the Black Sea, and the Cimmerians fly before them to Asia Minor. It was shown above that the Cimmerians appeared at the mouths of the Halys about the year 750 B.C., and that soon after the year 700 B.C. they traversed Phrygia, and in the first decade of the seventh century came into collision with the Assyrians and the Lydians (I. 546 ff.). If we cannot contest the fact with Herodotus, that the Scoloti formerly came from the east into the steppes above the Black Sea, his narrative of their actual irruption into the land of the Cimmerians is self-contradictory. When the Scoloti came from the east, the Cimmerians debated on the Tyras, _i.e._ on the Dniester, whether they should resist or give way; they determined to give way, and fled from this land--not westward to the Danube, but eastward along the shore of the Black Sea to Asia. If they wished, when assembled on the Dniester, to retire before the enemy coming from the east, they must go to the west: Herodotus represents them as going from the Dniester to the east directly in the teeth of the advancing enemy in order to reach Asia Minor round the north and east shores of the Black Sea. From this contradiction we may gather that the Scoloti dwelt for a long time in the steppe to the north of the land of the Cimmerians--_i.e._ to the north of the shore of the Pontus; that they pressed toward the sea, from a desire to possess themselves of the fruitful region to the south of the forest-tract at the mouths of the Dniester, Bug and Dnieper; and finally overcame the Cimmerians, the ancient population of the coast, and compelled them to seek other dwelling-places. Only the mountainous district of the Crimea