Such were the most striking customs of the Scythian people, or at any rate of the Scythians of Herodotus, who were the dominant race over a large portion of the Steppe country.  Coarse and repulsive in their appearance, fierce in their tempers, savage in their habits, not individually very brave, but powerful by their numbers, and by a mode of warfare which was difficult to meet, and in which long use had given them great expertness, they were an enemy who might well strike alarm even into a nation so strong and warlike as the Medes.  Pouring through the passes of the Caucasus—­whence coming or what intending none knew—­horde after horde of Scythians blackened the rich plains of the South.  On they came, as before observed, like a flight of locusts, countless, irresistible—­swarming into Iberia and Upper Media—­finding the land before them a garden, and leaving it behind them a howling wilderness.  Neither age nor sex would be spared.  The inhabitants of the open country and of the villages, if they did not make their escape to high mountain tops or other strongholds, would be ruthlessly massacred by the invaders, or at best, forced to become their slaves.  The crops would be consumed, the herds swept off or destroyed, the villages and homesteads burnt, the whole country made a scene of desolation.  Their ravages would resemble those of the Huns when they poured into Italy, or of the Bulgarians when they overran the fairest provinces of the Byzantine Empire.  In most instances the strongly fortified towns would resist them, unless they had patience to sit down before their walls and by a prolonged blockade to starve them into submission.  Sometimes, before things reached this point, they might consent to receive a tribute and to retire.  At other times, convinced that by perseverance they would reap a rich reward, they may have remained till the besieged city fell, when there must have ensued an indescribable scene of havoc, rapine, and bloodshed.  According to the broad expression of Herodotus, the Scythians were masters of the whole of Western Asia from the Caucasus to the borders of Egypt for the space of twenty-eight years.  This statement is doubtless an exaggeration; but still it would seem to be certain that the great invasion of which he speaks was not confined to Media, but extended to the adjacent countries of Armenia and Assyria, whence it spread to Syria and Palestine.  The hordes probably swarmed down from Media through the Zagros passes into the richest portion of Assyria, the flat country between the mountains and the Tigris.  Many of the old cities, rich with the accumulated stores of ages, were besieged, and perhaps taken, and their palaces wantonly burnt, by the barbarous invaders.  The tide then swept on.  Wandering from district to district, plundering everywhere, settling nowhere, the clouds of horse passed over Mesopotamia, the force of the invasion becoming weaker as it spread itself, until in Syria it reached its term through the policy of the Egyptian king, Psammetichus.