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ears of a dog, their one eye set in the middle of their forehead, the hair standing erect, and their breasts shaggy;[1] of the Amuktêres also, a people without nostrils, who devour everything, eat raw meat, and are short-lived, and die before old age supervenes.[2] The upper part of the mouth protrudes far over the lower lip. 9 With regard to the Hyperboreans, who live a thousand years, they give the same account as Simonidês, Pindaros, and other mythological writers.[3] 10 The story told by Timagenês, that
- ↑ What Megasthenês here mentions as the characteristics of a single tribe are by the Indians attributed to several. The one-eyed men they are wont to call êkâkshâs or eka-vilo-chanâs—the men with hair standing erect, urdhvakeśa, Indian Cyclôpes even are mentioned under the name of Lalâṭâkshas, i.e. having one eye in the forehead: vide Schwanb. 70.
- ↑ "That the Astomi are mentioned in the Indian books we cannot show so well as in the case of the Amuktêres, whom Megasthenês describes as παμφάγους, ὠμοφάγους, ᾿ολιγοχρονιους. Nevertheless the very words of the description are a proof that he followed the narratives of the Indians, for the words Παμφάγος, &c. by which he has described the Amuktêres, are very rarely used in Greek, and are translations of Indian words." Schwanb. 69.
- ↑ Pindar, who locates the Hyperboreans somewhere about the months of the Ister, thus sings of them:—"But who with venturous course through wave or waste
To Hyperborean haunts and wilds untraced
E'er found his wondrous way?
There Perseus pressed amain,
And 'midst the feast entered their strange abode,
Where hecatombs of asses slain
To soothe the radiant god
Astounded he beheld. Their rude solemnities,
Their barbarous shouts, Apollo's heart delight:
Laughing the rampant brute he sees
Insult the solemn rite.
Still their sights, their customs strange,
Scare not the 'Muse,' while all around
