i(*ppopo/lwn, only here and 14.427; for the second part of the compound see note on 1.63. The epithet a)*gxema/xwn seems to have caused trouble to the ancients, as all these tribes were famed for their peaceful habits; Strabo explains ὅτιἀπόρθητοικαθὰκαὶοἱἀγαθοὶπολεμισταί. The *(ip*phmolgoi/ are evidently the nomad Scythian tribes north of the Danube, living on mares' milk like the modern Tartars on their koumiss. So the Massagetai are γαλακτοπόται, Herod.i. 216.Information of these distant tribes no doubt reached Greece in the earliest times along the primeval trade-route by which the amber of the Baltic came to the Mediterranean. The *)/abioi, most just of men, are perhaps connected with the legend of the Ἀργιππαῖοι in Herodotos (iv. 23), who τοῖσιπεριοικέουσίεἰσιοἱτὰςδιαφορὰςδιαιρέοντες, abstaining from all war and enjoying a sort of sanctity. (Similarly of the GetaiHerod., iv. 93.) They may be the same as the Γάβιοι mentioned by Aischylos in the Prom. Sol. fr. 184 (Dind.); ἔπειταδ'ἥξειδῆμονἐνδικώτατον [βροτῶν]ἁπάντωνκαὶφιλοξενώτατον, Γαβίους. This makes it probable that Ἄβιοι is really a proper name, not an epithet having no fixed subsistence, i. e. nomads, as Nauck and others have taken it, adding τ' after δικαιοτάτων, a variant alluded to by Nikanor and Did., but not approved by Ar. Similarly some of the old critics regarded Ἀγαυῶν as a proper name, and ἱππημολγῶν as an epithet.
