| [p. 125]
dries up from their joints, and their bodies become
more braced, more nourished and better articulated.
Their bodies grow relaxed and squat, firstly because,
unlike the Egyptians, they do not use swaddling
clothes, of which they have not the habit, | This is a literal translation of the text, but see the footnote
on the opposite page. |
for the
sake of their riding, that they may sit a horse well ;
secondly, through their sedentary lives. For the
boys, until they can ride, sit the greater part of the
time in the wagon, and because of the migrations
and wanderings rarely walk on foot ; while the girls
are wonderfully flabby and torpid in physique. The
Scythians are a ruddy race because of the cold, not
through any fierceness in the sun's heat. It is the
cold that burns their white skin and turns it ruddy.
PART 21
XXI. A constitution of this kind prevents fertility.
The men have no great desire for intercourse because
of the moistness of their constitution and the softness
and chill of their abdomen, which are the greatest
checks on venery. Moreover, the constant jolting
on their horses unfits them for intercourse. Such
are the causes of barrenness in the men ; in the
women they are the fatness and moistness of their
flesh, which are such that the womb cannot absorb
the seed. For neither is their monthly purging as
it should be, but scanty and late, while the mouth
of the womb is closed by fat and does not admit the
seed. They are personally fat and lazy, and their
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