120

THE DECLINE AND FALL

CHAP.

XVIII.

The moveable camps or cities, the ordinary re-sidence of their wives and children, consistedonly of large waggons drawn by oxen, and co-vered in the form of tents. The military strengthof the nation was composed of cavalry ; and thecustom of their warriors, to lead in their handone or two spare horses, enabled them to ad-vance and to retreat with a rapid diligence,which surprised the security, and eluded thepursuit, of a distant enemy. q Their poverty ofiron prompted their rude industry to invent asort of cuirass, which was capable of resistinga sword or javelin, though it was formed onlyof horses' hoofs, cut into thin and polishedslices, carefully laid over each other in the man-ner of scales or feathers, and strongly sewedupon an under-garment of coarse linen/ Theoffensive arms of the Sarmatiaus were short dag-gers, long lances, and a weighty bow with aquiver of arrows. They were reduced to thenecessity of employing fish bones for the pointsof their weapons; but the custom of dippingthem in a venomous liquor, that poisoned thewounds which they inflicted, is alone sufficientto prove the most savage manners ; since a peo-ple impressed with a sense of humanity wouldhave abhorred so cruel a practice, and a nationskilled in the arts of war would have disdained

11 Ammian. 1. xvii, c. 12. The Savmatian horses were castrated, toprevent the mischievous accidents which might happen from the noisyand ungovernable passions of the males.

r Pausanias , 1. i, p. 50, edit. Ktilin. That inquisitive traveller hadcarefully examined a Sarmatian cuirass, which was preserved in thetemple of jEsculapius at Athens.