ithout encumbrance;
117 and from Colchis it is not far to pass over to Media, for there
is only one nation between them, the Saspeirians, and passing by this
nation you are in Media. However the Scythians did not make their
invasion by this way, but turned aside from it to go by the upper road
118 which is much longer, keeping Mount Caucasus on their right hand.
Then the Medes fought with the Scythians, and having been worsted in the
battle they lost their power, and the Scythians obtained rule over all
Asia.

105. Thence they went on to invade Egypt; and when they were in Syria
which is called Palestine, Psammetichos king of Egypt met them; and by
gifts and entreaties he turned them from their purpose, so that they
should not advance any further: and as they retreated, when they came
to the city of Ascalon in Syria, most of the Scythians passed through
without doing any damage, but a few of them who had stayed behind
plundered the temple of Aphrodite Urania. Now this temple, as I find
by inquiry, is the most ancient of all the temples which belong to this
goddess; for the temple in Cyprus was founded from this, as the people
of Cyprus themselves report, and it was the Phenicians who founded the
temple in Kythera, coming from this land of Syria. So these Scythians
who had plundered the temple at Ascalon, and their descendants for ever,
were smitten by the divinity 119 with a disease which made them women
instead of men: and the Scythians say that it was for this reason
that they were diseased, and that for this reason travellers who visit
Scythia now, see among them the affection of those who by the Scythians
are called Enarees.

106. For eight-and-twenty years then the Scythians were rulers of Asia,
and by their unruliness and reckless behaviour everything was ruined;
for on the one hand they exacted that in tribute from each people which
they laid upon them, 120 and apart from the tribute they rode about and
carried off by force the possessions of each tribe. Then Kyaxares with
the Medes, having invited the greater number of them to a banquet, made
them drunk and slew them; and thus the Medes recovered their power,
and had rule over the same nations as before; and they also took
Nineveh,--the manner how it was taken I shall set forth in another
history, 121--and made the Assyrians subject to them excepting only the
land of Babylon.

107. After this Kyaxares died, having reigned forty years including
those years du