there is reason to give weight to Herodotus’ statement, and to distinguish carefully between two series of events:  (1) a movement of peoples coming from Europe into Asia, by the routes that Herodotus indicates, about the latter half of the eighth century B.C., who would be more especially the Cimmerians; (2) a movement of peoples coming from Europe into Asia by the Thracian Bosphorus, and among whom there was perhaps, side by side with the Treres, a remnant of Cimmerian tribes who had been ousted by the Scythians.  The two streams would have had their confluence in the heart of Asia Minor, in the first half of the seventh century.

[Illustration:  110.jpg A CONFLICT WITH TWO GRIFFINS.]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the reliefs on the crown
     of the Great Blinitza.

Previous to this period these had been an almost mythical race in the eyes of the civilised races of the Oriental world.  They imagined them as living in a perpetual mist on the confines of the universe:  “Never does bright Helios look upon them with his rays, neither when he rises towards the starry heaven, nor when he turns back from heaven towards the earth, but a baleful night spreads itself over these miserable mortals."*

* Odyssey, xi. 14-19.  It is this passage which Ephorus applies to the Cimmerians of his own time who were established in the Crimea, and which accounts for his saying that they were a race of miners, living perpetually underground.

Fabulous animals, such as griffins with lions’ bodies, having the neck and ears of a fox, and the wings and beak of an eagle, wandered over their plains, and sometimes attacked them; the inhabitants were forced to defend themselves with axes, and did not always emerge victorious from these terrible conflicts.

[Illustration:  111.jpg SCYTHIANS ARMED FOR WAR]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the reliefs on the silver vase
     of Kul-Oba.

The few merchants who had ventured to penetrate into their country had returned from their travels with less fanciful notions concerning the nature of the regions frequented by them, but little continued to be known of them, until an unforeseen occurrence obliged them to quit their remote steppes.  The Scythians, driven from the plains of the Iaxartes by an influx of the Massagetae, were urged forwards in a westerly direction beyond the Volga and the Don, and so great was the terror inspired by the mere report of their approach, that the Cimmerians decided to quit their own territory.  A tradition current in Asia three centuries later, told how their kings had counselled them to make a stand against the invaders; the people, however, having refused to listen to their advice, their rulers and those who were loyal to them fell by each other’s hands, and their burial-place was still shown near the banks of the Tyras.  Some of their tribes took refuge in the Chersonesus Taurica, but the greater number pushed forward beyond