previous next


γλαυκόν κτλ. Probably ‘with blue eyes and red hair’; cf. Tac. Germ. c. 4 ‘caerulei oculi, rutilae comae’, though Stein takes it of the ‘red’ skin, with Hippocrates (de Aer. 20), who says πυρρὸν τὸ γένος τὸ Σκυθικὸν διὰ τὸ ψῦχος. Others explain that they painted themselves ‘blue’, like our British ancestors; cf. ‘picti Geloni’, Virg. Georg. ii. 115.

Some have seen in the Budini a Teutonic race, but the evidence is too inadequate for certainty. Müllenhoff (iii. 15, 102) makes them Finns, but their complexion does not agree with the dark hair and brown skin of that people.

πόλις . . . ξυλίνη. The town of Gelonus is one of the unsolved puzzles in H.; he seems to speak from good evidence, and the town lay on the north-east trade route (c. 21 n.). But it is difficult to believe in semi-barbarian Greeks so far from the sea.

Neumann (p. 91) compares the wooden walls of Saratov, still standing a hundred years ago; Bunbury (i. 195) thinks H.'s informants confused Greek and Slavonian systems of worship. Grote, too, thinks the Geloni may have been Slavs.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: