Iliad, Book 13
Book 13 of the Iliad describes a crucial battle for the ships. It starts with the following lines:
But once Zeus had driven Hector and Hector’s Trojans hard against the ships, he left both armies there, milling among the hulls to bear the brunt and wrenching work of war with no end in sight.
While Zeus himself, his shining eyes turned north, gazed a world away to the land of Thracian horsemen, the Mysian fighters hand-to-hand and the lordly Hippemolgi who drink the milk of mares,
and the Abii, most decent men alive.
But not a moment more would he turn his shining eyes to Troy.
Strabo Explains
The quote above tells the readers of the Iliad that Zeus, weary of the bloodshed at Troy, gazed to peoples in the North who lived without violence or injustice.
But who were those peoples? This question was asked more than two thousand years ago already.
A Greek historian, Strabo, in his famous Geography, written in the 1st century BC, provides an answer to the question.
They were undoubtedly the Scythians, he writes.
Hippemolgi, Galactophagi, and Abii still existed during Strabo’s lifetime in the 1st century BC.
He argues that Homer designated the Scythians by those names because that was how Homer’s contemporaries called those tribes.
As proof, Strabo names poet Hesiod, who was also a contemporary of Homer and who called the Scythians the milkers of mares.
Strabo also writes that there was no doubt Homer designated the Scythian tribe of Abii as the justest and most noble because it was known in Greece for centuries as such.
In the 6th century BC, the famous tragedian Aeschylus said that the Scythians were known to be governed by good laws and feeding on cheese and milk.
The Scythian communities cared for married women and children similar to Plato’s system.
Strabo himself praised the Scythians for their moral qualities, saying:
We, the Greeks, esteem them the most sincere, the least deceitful of any people, and much more frugal and self-relying than ourselves.
Anacharsis
The previous video on this channel was devoted to Anacharsis, the famous Scythian philosopher of the sixth century BC, who became known throughout Greece for his frugality and wisdom.
There is no doubt that he was a representative of the same culture Homer described in the Iliad.
Abaris Hyperborean
In the early fourth century, another representative of the same area caused sensation in the ancient world.
He was known as Abaris Hyperborean or Abaris the Scythian.
According to the Greek tradition, Abaris became friends with Pythagoras, and they made many memorable trips together.
Abii & Alexander the Great
In the late fourth century BC, representatives of the Scythian tribe of Abii came to Alexander the Great’s camp during his conquest of Asia.
They lectured Alexander on the ugly way of destruction he and his army were leaving behind.
The details of that conversation can be found in the book Royal Scythia, Greece, Kyiv Rus.
Scythian Origin
Another important question needs to be addressed.
The Trojan War is dated to the late 13th century BC.
And if high Scythian culture was present to the north of the Black Sea during that period already, then the theory of Scythian migration from the Near East in the 9th century should be discarded.
The book Cradle of Civilisations, using ancient myths such as The Golden Fleece, shows that the migration was in the opposite direction.
The most recent DNA studies have confirmed such a conclusion.
