Herodotus, popularly hailed as the ‘Father of History’, was born in Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum) in what is now Turkey, in the early fifth century BC. He was fascinated by the customs of different peoples, and his account of the Scythians, nomads who ranged the Russian steppe in the period 900–200 BC, is among the most colourful in the whole of his Histories. The Scythians were tattooed, pot-smoking horsemen who scalped their enemies and attached the remains to their horses. In this story Herodotus describes how they reacted when Darius I, king of Persia, invaded their territory with his formidable army in the late sixth century BC.

The Scythians, after discussing the situation and concluding that by themselves they were unequal to the task of coping with Darius in a straight fight, sent off messengers to their neighbours, whose chieftains had already met and were forming plans to deal with what was evidently a threat to their safety on a very large scale. The conference was attended by the chieftains of the following tribes: the Tauri, Agathyrsi, Neuri, Androphagi, Melanchlaeni, Geloni, Budini, and Sauromatae. It is the custom of the Tauri to sacrifice to the Maiden Goddess all shipwrecked sailors and such Greeks as they happen to capture upon their coasts; their method of sacrifice is, after the preliminary ceremonies, to hit the victim on the head with a club. Some say that they push the victim’s body over the edge of the cliff on which their temple stands, and fix the head on a stake; others, while agreeing about the head, say the body is not pushed over the cliff, but buried. The Tauri themselves claim that the goddess to whom these offerings are made is Agamemnon’s daughter, Iphigenia. Any one of them who takes a prisoner in war, cuts off his head and carries it home, where he sets it up high over the house on a long pole, generally above the chimney. The heads are supposed to act as guardians of the whole house over which they hang. War and plunder are the sources of this people’s livelihood.

The Agathyrsi live in luxury and wear gold on their persons. They have their women in common, so that they may all be brothers and, as members of a single family, be able to live together without jealousy or hatred. In other respects their way of life resembles that of the Thracians.