But surely the complaint, since it is above all others of divine origin, must attack not solely the noblest and richest Scythians, but all equally,—or even to a greater extent those who possess little, and therefore fail to make offerings; if that is to say the gods take pleasure in (active) veneration on the part of men and see that they win a due return for it[398]. For naturally the rich offer much to the gods, bring correspondingly great contributions from their goods as marks of their veneration; but the poor less, because they possess nothing. Then are these discontented, because they have given them no wealth; so that those who possess little suffer more of the punishments for such faults than the rich. But as a matter of fact, as I have said before, these things come from the deity to just the same degree as the others; for everything happens in accordance with nature, and so does this affection arise among the Scythians from the original cause I have pointed out. Now it is precisely the same among the rest of mankind; where riding is practised most and most continuously, there very many suffer from κέδματα (varicose dilatations), hip and foot affections, and accomplish coition very badly (are only slightly disposed to coition). And this is the case with the Scythians, and they are of all men most like eunuchs, for the following reasons: Because they always wear trousers, and besides that pass the greatest part of their time on horseback, so that they cannot touch the genitals with the hand, through cold and lassitude forget the desire for coition and coition itself, and (in their senseless infatuation) think of nothing else but how to resign their manly privilege[399]. This is an account of how it is with the stock of the Scythians.”
Now if we separate the facts which are brought forward in this passage of Hippocrates from his attempted explanations, there can be no doubt that the same thing is in question here as that which Herodotus describes. There are men amongst the Scythians who behave as women, speak as women, perform women’s work and keep with the women, and their condition the Scythians consider as something sent by the deity, and for this reason honour and fear these men. All the rest is part of the attempted explanations of the author, who brings together every possible consideration in order to discover a natural cause of the phenomenon, leaving utterly and entirely unrecognized all the time the most natural cause of all. This of course was due to no other reason except that it was _unknown_ to him, and that he was acquainted with the circumstances not from his own observation, but only from hearsay. This is a conjecture which _Heyne_ (_loco citato_) had already made in his time, but which has met with many opponents, yet without the argument having ever been properly brought to the test of the evidence. In favour of Heyne’s view a passage from the book περὶ ἄρθρων (On Joints)[400] might be cited, in which the limping of the men of the Amazons in consequence of the dislocation of the limbs is clearly declared to be an unauthenticated myth; for which reason _Gruner_[401] denied Hippocrates’ authorship of this work in opposition to the general witness of Antiquity.