The Royal Scythians in 218 B.C.

The Royal Scythians — Scythians.

The dominant horde of the steppe — the Basilidae, the "kingly" Scythians who hold all the other Scythian peoples as their subjects and reckon them little better than slaves. Their kings range the open grass of the lower Borysthenes country and are laid, when they die, beneath the colossal kurgans of the holy land of Gerros — vast mounds heaped over a king in his gold, his horses slaughtered above him and his slain servants set to guard him in the dark.