The city gates swung shut.

The Scythian army was left outside, camped in the suburbs. Inside, the king of the Scythians took off his Scythian clothes and put on Greek dress.

No spearmen walked behind him, and no attendants of any kind. He went into the marketplace alone and moved about it like any Greek of the town.

The gates were guarded. The guards were there for one thing only: to make sure no Scythian saw the king in those clothes.

The king's name was Scyles.

I. The Second Proof

Last time I said that the Scythians go to great lengths to avoid other peoples' customs, and that Greek customs are the ones they will touch least of all. I said I had two proofs. Anacharsis was the first.

Scyles is the second. He came many, many years after Anacharsis, and his end was much the same.

Yet the two men took different roads. Anacharsis went out into the world. He travelled through many lands, saw a foreign goddess's festival at Cyzicus, made a vow, carried it home, and hid in the woods to keep it.

Scyles did not have to go so far. Greece was close to him, as close as his mother's tongue.

II. What His Mother Taught Him

Scyles' father, Ariapeithes, was king of the Scythians. Tymnes, the man who told me Anacharsis' family history last time, was this same Ariapeithes' agent.

Ariapeithes had several sons, and Scyles was one of them.

His mother was not a native Scythian. She came from Istria. The Ister flows clean across Europe into the Black Sea, and where it meets the sea stands Istria, a town of Milesian settlers.

This mother taught her son to speak Greek, and to read and write it.

I have said that the Scythians shy away even from their neighbors' customs. Yet in Scyles' own home, Greek came to him word by word from his mother's mouth. At the time, probably no Scythian gave it a thought.

III. His Father's Death

Some time later Ariapeithes died. He did not fall in battle. He was caught in a trap: Spargapeithes, king of the Agathyrsi, had him treacherously killed.

I will say more about the Agathyrsi later. They are the most luxurious of men and wear more gold than anyone; in their other customs they are close to the Thracians.

Scyles took the kingship, and with it one of his father's wives. Her name was Opoea. She was a native Scythian woman and had borne Ariapeithes a son named Oricus.

Ariapeithes had yet another son, Octamasades, whose mother was a daughter of Teres, a king of the Thracians. This son will come back later in the story.

So in one Scythian king's house there was a son of a Greek woman from Istria, a son of a Scythian woman, and a son of a Thracian princess. The one who took the throne was the Greek woman's son.

IV. A Life He Could Not Get Used To

Scyles was king of the Scythians, but he could not get used to the Scythian way of life at all. The upbringing he had received pulled his heart toward the Greeks, and pulled it far.

How the Scythians live I told you last time: no cities, no walls, houses on wagons, every man a mounted archer. What such a life tasted like to a man raised on Greek speech and Greek letters, I will not say for him. I will only tell you what he did.

This is what he did.

V. The City of the Borysthenites

On the northern shore of the Black Sea there is a Greek city.

The Borysthenes reaches the sea there, and the Hypanis joins it, the two rivers running into the same marsh. Between them a tongue of land juts out like a ship's beak. It is called the promontory of Hippolaus, and on it stands a temple of Demeter. Past the temple, on the bank of the Hypanis, is the city.

Other people call the Greeks who live there Borysthenites. They call themselves Olbiopolitans, and they say their forefathers were Milesians. Their trading post lies at the very middle of the whole Scythian coast.

About the Borysthenes I must add one word. In my judgment no river in the world is more bountiful, except the Nile of Egypt. Its water is sweet, the pasture along it is the richest, its fish are many and fine, salt crusts form of themselves at its mouth, and it yields great fish without spines, which people salt.

For a Scythian king to come here was nothing strange in itself.

What was strange was what he did once he was inside.

VI. The Gates Close

Whenever Scyles led the Scythian army to the city of the Borysthenites, he left the army in the suburb. He went into the city alone, and once inside, had the gates shut.

As soon as the gates were shut, he took off his Scythian clothes and put on Greek dress.

In it he walked about the marketplace, with no spearmen and no one else following him. Men guarded the gates so that no Scythian would see him dressed that way.

Inside the city he lived the Greek way in everything, and he sacrificed to the gods by Greek custom.

After a month or more, he put his Scythian clothes back on, left the city and went back to the army.

He did this many times.

He also built himself a house in the city, and married a local woman and installed her there.

So Scyles had two homes. Outside the walls were the wagons and the horses, everything a Scythian king should have. Inside was a Greek house, a wife, and a set of clothes he could wear only behind shut gates.

VII. Sphinxes of White Stone

Let me tell you what that house was like.

It was large, finely built and very costly. A wall ran around it, and around the wall stood sphinxes and griffins carved in white stone.

The sphinx is a beast with a lion's body and a human head; the griffin, a lion's body with an eagle's head.

A Scythian king, on the shore of the Black Sea, living inside a ring of white-stone monsters. I do not say I saw this house myself. When I have finished, you will see why no one can see it now.

VIII. The Rites of Dionysus

Since it was bound to go badly for Scyles, this is how it began.

He wanted to be initiated into the rites of Dionysus Bacchius.

First you need to know something about the Scythians. They reproach the Greeks for this Bacchic frenzy. It makes no sense, they say, to go and find a god like that, a god who drives people mad.

To a Scythian, being taken by this god is simply being out of your mind.

And this was the very god whose rites Scyles wanted to enter.

Just as he was about to receive the initiation, a very great portent came. The god hurled a bolt at his house, the one ringed with white-stone monsters, and it burned to the ground.

Scyles did not stop. He went through the initiation to the end all the same.

IX. The Men on the Tower

After Scyles had been initiated, one of the Borysthenites slipped out and went over to the Scythians, and said to them:

Scythians, you laugh at us because we rave for Bacchus and the god takes hold of us. Well, now this god has taken hold of your own king. He is raving for Bacchus too, driven mad by the god. If you don't believe me, follow me and I will show you.

The leading men of the Scythians went with him. The Borysthenite brought them in secretly, took them up onto a tower and sat them down there.

Before long Scyles came by below with his band of revellers.

The Scythians on the tower saw it: their king, dancing in the Bacchic frenzy.

They took it as a great disaster. They left the city and told the whole army everything they had seen.

Shut the gates as tightly as you like; they will not stop a tower. A man had lived his other life in that city many times over, and a few pairs of eyes saw all of it, once, from above. Those are my words, not anyone's report.

X. After He Rode Home

After this Scyles rode back to his own country.

As he went, the Scythians rose against him. They set up his brother Octamasades as their leader, the son of Teres' daughter.

Scyles learned what was happening to him and why. He fled to Thrace.

When Octamasades heard he had fled, he led his army into Thrace after him.

The Thrace Scyles fled to was the very home of Octamasades' mother's family. Of the three sons of three mothers I named before, one was now running and another was in pursuit.

XI. The Exchange by the Ister

When Octamasades' army reached the Ister, the Thracians came out and barred the way.

The armies were about to engage when Sitalces, on the Thracian side, sent Octamasades this message:

Why should we put each other to the test? You are my sister's son, and you have a brother of mine with you. Give him back to me, and I will hand your Scyles over to you. That way neither of us has to risk an army.

Sitalces had a brother, you see, who had run away from him and was staying with Octamasades.

Octamasades agreed. He handed his own uncle over to Sitalces and took back his brother Scyles.

Sitalces led his brother away.

And Octamasades, right there on the spot, cut off Scyles' head.

A brother for a brother. An uncle handed over, a brother taken back. A battle that never happened, settled with two runaways. What became of Sitalces' brother afterward I have not heard, so I do not say.

XII. How Closely They Guard It

That is how closely the Scythians guard their own customs, and that is the penalty they give anyone who adds foreign ways to them.

This is my conclusion, the same one I drew from Anacharsis. Anacharsis died in the woods; Scyles died by a river. The first was shot by a king with his own hand; the second was himself a king.

As for Sitalces, I heard of him again later. In the war between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians, when the Lacedaemonians sent envoys toward Asia, it was Sitalces, son of Teres and king of the Thracians, who betrayed them together with a man of Abdera. The envoys were seized at Bisanthe on the Hellespont, taken to Attica, and put to death by the Athenians. Handing over men who had fallen into his hands was something this Thracian did more than once. That last remark is my own connection.

As for Scyles, this is all I can tell you: words his mother taught him, a city with its gates shut, clothes he could wear only inside it, a house burned by a bolt from the god, a tower, a river.

He did the same thing many times: the gates shut, one set of clothes came off, another went on.

The last time, the gates were shut as usual. But someone inside let the Scythians in, and took them up the tower.

Sources, versions, and editorial boundaries

1. Core narrative: Histories 4.78 (following Anacharsis, "many, many years later" Scyles met a like fate; Scyles one of the sons of the Scythian king Ariapeithes, by a mother from Istria, not native, who taught him Greek speech and letters; Ariapeithes treacherously killed by Spargapeithes, king of the Agathyrsi; Scyles inherits the kingship and his father's wife Opoea; Scyles dislikes the Scythian way of life and leans to Greek ways from his upbringing; leads the army to the town of the Borysthenites, leaves it in the suburb, enters and shuts the gates, puts on Greek dress, goes about the marketplace without guards, the gates watched lest a Scythian see him; lives in the Greek manner and sacrifices by Greek custom; after a month or more changes back and leaves; does this often; builds a house in the city and marries a local woman); 4.79 (his ruin comes from wishing to be initiated into Dionysus Bacchius; as the rite approached, a very great portent: his great and costly house in the city, surrounded by white-stone sphinxes and griffins, was struck by the god's bolt and burned entirely, yet Scyles completed the initiation; the Scythians reproach the Greeks for Bacchic frenzy; a Borysthenite goes to the Scythians and offers to show them; leads their chief men secretly up a tower; they see Scyles pass with his band, think it a great disaster, leave the city and tell the whole army); 4.80 (Scyles rides home; the Scythians rise and set up his brother Octamasades, son of Teres' daughter; Scyles flees to Thrace; Octamasades marches to the Ister and is met by the Thracians; Sitalces proposes the exchange; Octamasades gives up his maternal uncle, takes Scyles and beheads him on the spot; "this is how the Scythians guard their customs"). Supplementary: 4.76 (the Scythians shun foreign, especially Greek, customs, as Anacharsis and Scyles showed; see no. 29 in this series), 2.33 (the Ister crosses Europe and enters the Black Sea at Istria, a Milesian colony), 4.104 (the Agathyrsi most luxurious and gold-wearing, otherwise close to the Thracians in custom), 4.17–18 (the trading post of the Borysthenites at the middle of the Scythian coast; the Greeks on the Hypanis called Borysthenites, calling themselves Olbiopolitans), 4.53 (the Borysthenes the most bountiful river after the Nile; it and the Hypanis enter one marsh; the promontory of Hippolaus and its temple of Demeter; the Borysthenite settlement beyond the temple, on the Hypanis), 4.46 (the Scythians without cities or walls, houses on wagons, mounted archers; see no. 29), 7.137 (in the Peloponnesian War, Lacedaemonian envoys betrayed by Sitalces son of Teres, king of the Thracians, and Nymphodorus of Abdera, seized at Bisanthe on the Hellespont, taken to Attica and killed). Read in A. D. Godley's public-domain 1920 translation (PerseusDL canonical-greekLit TEI, tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-eng2), with 4.78–80 checked in full against the Greek of the same repository (tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2), key sentences of 2.33, 4.17–18, 4.104 and 7.137 also checked in Greek, and key words of 4.78–80 checked online in the Perseus Digital Library (1999.01.0125).

2. Levels of evidence: Herodotus tells Scyles' story right after Anacharsis' as the second "proof" that the Scythians guard their customs (4.76). He names no informant and does not say he visited Scyles' house, so the story does not have him see it. The Scythian reproach of Bacchic frenzy, and their view that one should not believe in a god who drives people mad, is Herodotus' report of Scythian opinion (4.79). The Borysthenite's speech is direct speech in Herodotus; the story renders it from the Greek without additions.

3. Herodotus' own judgments, all in the text: on Scyles' ruin, "ἐπείτε δὲ ἔδεέ οἱ κακῶς γενέσθαι, ἐγίνετο ἀπὸ προφάσιος τοιῆσδε" (4.79; "Since it was bound to go badly for Scyles, this is how it began"); on the lightning, "ἐγένετο φάσμα μέγιστον" and "ἐς ταύτην ὁ θεὸς ἐνέσκηψε βέλος" (4.79); on the whole affair, "οὕτω μὲν περιστέλλουσι τὰ σφέτερα νόμαια Σκύθαι, τοῖσι δὲ παρακτωμένοισι ξεινικοὺς νόμους τοιαῦτα ἐπιτίμια διδοῦσι" (4.80); on the Borysthenes, "πολυαρκέστατος ... πλὴν Νείλου τοῦ Αἰγυπτίου" (4.53, paraphrased from Godley).

4. Names and wording: Scyles (Σκύλης), Ariapeithes (Ἀριαπείθης), Spargapeithes (Σπαργαπείθης; the same name as Anacharsis' great-grandfather in no. 29, but a different man), the Agathyrsi (Ἀγάθυρσοι), Opoea (Ὀποίη), Oricus (Ὄρικος), Octamasades (Ὀκταμασάδης), Teres (Τήρης), Sitalces (Σιτάλκης), Borysthenes (Βορυσθένης), Hypanis (Ὕπανις), Istria (Ἰστρίη). In 4.78, "ἦν δὲ αὕτη ἡ Ὀποίη ἀστή, ἐξ ἧς ἦν Ὄρικος Ἀριαπείθεϊ παῖς" says that Oricus was the son of Ariapeithes by Opoea; Godley's "she bore Scyles a son, Oricus" does not match the Greek, and the story follows the Greek; ἀστή is rendered "a native woman." Godley's "go among the townsfolk" renders "ἠγόραζε," literally to frequent the marketplace; the story says "walked about the marketplace." "γυναῖκα ἔγημε ἐς αὐτὰ ἐπιχωρίην" is rendered "married a local woman and installed her there"; the Greek gives no name or further details. In 4.79, "φάσμα" is "portent" (Godley "vision"), "βέλος" is "bolt" (Godley "thunderbolt"), and "σὺν τῷ θιάσῳ" is "with his band of revellers." "διεπρήστευσε" is a rare word that Godley renders "scoffed"; LSJ (on Perseus), under διαδρηστεύω, records the emended sense "run off, go over to" for this passage, and the story says he "slipped out and went over to the Scythians," leaving the mockery to his speech. In 4.80, "μήτρως" is a mother's brother ("uncle"), and Sitalces' "εἶς μέν μευ τῆς ἀδελφεῆς παῖς" makes Octamasades his sister's son. The rest is paraphrase and abridgment from the English, not word-for-word translation.

5. Later and archaeological material (kept out of the story): Thucydides 2.29 calls Sitalces son of Teres and king of the Thracians, and Teres the founder of the great Odrysian kingdom; 2.97 says the Odrysian realm ran along the coast from Abdera to the mouth of the Ister; 4.101 has Sitalces die in battle against the Triballi about the time of Delium (424 BC); 2.67 places the seizure of the Lacedaemonian envoys in Thrace at the end of summer 430 and says it was Sitalces' son Sadocus who handed them over, which differs slightly from Herodotus 7.137 ("betrayed by Sitalces and Nymphodorus"). These were read in Crawley's translation on Perseus (1999.01.0200). Herodotus does not call Sitalces king in 4.80, so whether he was already king at the time of the exchange is uncertain. A gold signet ring found in the 1930s at Vadu, about 10 km south of the site of Istria in present-day Romania, has "ΣΚΥΛΕΩ" ("of Skyles") on its bezel; it is in the National History Museum of Romania, is usually dated c. 475–450 BC, and is commonly linked with this Scythian king (Wikidata Q16685910 and the museum's exhibit text; Dana and Dana 2022 study it in detail, not read in full here). The English Wikipedia "Scyles" article also mentions coins bearing his name found at Nikonion. This material is used only as a dating reference and is kept out of the story.

6. Time: the Histories give no year for Scyles' reign or death. One map time is used, "5th century BC": Herodotus puts Scyles "many, many years" after Anacharsis; his counterpart Sitalces was king of the Thracians by about 430 BC (Histories 7.137; Thucydides 2.29, 2.67) and died in 424 BC (Thucydides 4.101); the English Wikipedia "Octamasadas" article places Octamasades around 446 BC, and the ring is dated c. 475–450 BC. The Scyles affair is conventionally placed around the middle of the 5th century BC; the exact year is left unresolved.

7. Geography: the city of the Borysthenites is Olbia, whose site lies on the shore of the Southern Bug estuary near Parutyne, Ukraine; coordinates from the English Wikipedia "Pontic Olbia" article (46.6925 N, 31.9036 E). The site of Istria lies on the western shore of Lake Sinoe, Constanța County, Romania; coordinates from the English Wikipedia "Histria (ancient city)" article (44.5475 N, 28.7747 E). It stands only for the home of Scyles' mother and is not linked to a time. The exact place "beside the Ister" where Scyles was beheaded is unknown; Thrace, the land of the Agathyrsi and the promontory of Hippolaus appear only in the narrative and are not mapped.

8. Fact and literary boundaries: the six opening paragraphs retell 4.78; "moved about it like any Greek of the town" narrates "ἠγόραζε" and "lived the Greek way." In section I "as close as his mother's tongue," and in section II "word by word from his mother's mouth" and "probably no Scythian gave it a thought," are the narrator's comments and inference; the Greek says only that his mother taught him Greek speech and letters. Section III calls her a "Greek woman": the Greek says only that she was from Istria and not native and that she taught him Greek; Istria was a Milesian colony (2.33). Section III sets the three mothers and three sons of 4.78 and 4.80 side by side, which is the narrator's arrangement; Octamasades' parentage appears only in 4.80 in the original and is introduced early here; Teres as a Thracian king rests on 7.137 "Σιτάλκεω τοῦ Τήρεω Θρηίκων βασιλέος" and Thucydides 2.29. "I will not say for him. I will only tell you what he did" in section IV is a narrative stance, not Herodotus' words. The "two homes" summary at the end of section VI is the narrator's. "I do not say I saw this house myself" in section VII means that Herodotus does not claim to have seen it. "To a Scythian, being taken by this god is simply being out of your mind" in section VIII sums up the Scythian reproach and the Borysthenite's speech in 4.79. The paragraph at the end of section IX ("Shut the gates as tightly as you like ...") is marked in the story as the narrator's own words. In section X, "the very home of Octamasades' mother's family" rests on Sitalces calling him "my sister's son" (4.80) and on 7.137; "one was now running and another was in pursuit" is a summary. "A brother for a brother ..." at the end of section XI is a summary; the fate of Sitalces' brother is not recorded, as the story says. Section XII links Sitalces' betrayal of the envoys in 7.137 with the exchange in 4.80, and the story marks this as "my own connection." The last three paragraphs are a literary ending, not Herodotus' words; "someone inside let the Scythians in, and took them up the tower" is inferred from 4.79 "ἀναγαγὼν ... λάθρῃ ἐπὶ πύργον" and the following "ἐξελθόντες" (they left the city).

9. Rights: the ancient work and Godley's 1920 translation are in the public domain; the Greek was checked in short ranges against the open PerseusDL TEI text; Thucydides was checked in short ranges in Crawley's translation on the Perseus Digital Library. The Chinese and English stories are original contemporary retellings by Clio Walker. Wikipedia and Wikidata pages are used only for coordinates, conventional dates and information on archaeological finds.