But what are we to understand by this? May we assume at once that
they were a Turanian people, in race, habits, and language akin to the
various tribes of Turkomans who are at present dominant over the entire
region between the Oxus and the Parthian mountain-tract, and within
that tract have many settlements? May we assume that they stood in an
attitude of natural hostility to the Arian nations by which they were
surrounded, and that their revolt was the assertion of independence by
a down-trodden people after centuries of subjection to the yoke of a
stranger? Did Turan, in their persons, rise against Iean after perhaps a
thousand years of oppression, and renew the struggle for predominance
in regions where the war had been waged before, and where it still
continues to be waged at the present day?

Such conclusions cannot safely be drawn from the mere fact that the
Scythic character of the Parthians is asserted in the strongest terms
by the ancient writers. The term "Scythic" is not, strictly speaking,
ethnical. It designates a life rather a descent, habits rather than
blood. It is applied by the Greeks and Romans to Indo-European and
Turanian races indifferently, provided that they are nomads, dwelling
in tents or carts, living on the produce of their flocks and herds,
uncivilized, and, perhaps it may be added, accustomed to pass their
lives on horseback. We cannot, therefore, assume that a nation is
Turanian simply because it is pronounced "Scythic." Still, as in fact
the bulk of those races which have remained content with the nomadic
condition, and which from the earliest times to the present day have led
the life above described in the broad steppes of Europe and Asia, appear
to have been of the Turian type, a presumption is raised in favor of a
people being Turanian by decided and concordant statements that it is
Scythic. The presumption may of course be removed by evidence to the