Res Gestae

For they have no huts and care nothing for using the plowshare, but they live upon flesh and an abundance of milk, and dwell in wagons, which they cover with rounded canopies of bark and drive over the boundless wastes. And when they come to a place rich in grass, they place their carts in a circle and feed like wild beasts. As soon as the fodder is used up, they place their cities, as we might call them, on the wagons and so convey them: in the wagons the males have intercourse with the women, and in the wagons their babes are born and reared; wagons form their permanent dwellings, and wherever they come, that place they look upon as their natural home.

Driving their plow-cattle before them, they pasture them with their flocks, and they give particular attention to breeding horses. In that land the fields are always green, and here and there are places set thick with fruit trees. Hence, wherever

Therefore, all those who through age or sex are unfit for war remain close by the wagons and are occupied in light tasks; but the young men grow up in the habit of riding from their earliest boyhood and regard it as contemptible to go on foot; and by various forms of training they are all skilled warriors. From the same causes the Persians[*](That is, the Parthians; for their Scythian origin, cf. Q. Curtius, vi. 2, 11, etc.) also, who are Scythians by origin, are highly expert in fighting.

Moreover, almost all the Halani are tall and handsome, their hair inclines to blond, by the ferocity of their glance they inspire dread, subdued though it is. They are light and active in the use of arms. In all respects they are somewhat like the Huns, but in their manner of life and their habits they are less savage. In their plundering and hunting expeditions they roam here and there as far as the Maeotic Sea and the Cimmerian Bosporus, and also to Armenia and Media.

Just as quiet and peaceful men find pleasure in rest, so the Halani delight in danger and warfare. There the man is judged happy who has sacrificed his life in battle, while those who grow old and depart from the world by a natural death they assail with bitter reproaches, as degenerate and cowardly; and there is nothing in which they take more pride than in killing any man whatever: as glorious spoils of the slain they tear off their heads, then strip off their skins[*](This seems to be the meaning with the punctuation of the text, based on the clausulae. The skins are com. monly understood to be those of the head (i.e. scalps), but apparently wrongly; cf. 2, 14, above, of the Vidini and Geloni.) and hang them upon their war-horses as trappings.

No temple or sacred

They have a remarkable way of divining the future; for they gather very straight twigs of osier and sort them out at an appointed time with certain secret incantations, and thus clearly learn what impends.[*](Ammianus is too brief to be clear. The twigs were marked with certain signs (notae) from which the predicttions were made; see Hdt. iv. 67; Caesar, B.G. i. 50, 4–5; Tac., Germ. 10.)

They do not know the meaning of slavery, since all are born of noble blood, and moreover they choose as chiefs[*](Cf. iudex in § 4, below, and Introd., p. xxvi, note 2.) those men who are conspicuous for long experience as warriors. But let us return to what remains of our chosen subject.