of their numerous flocks and herds, the pursuit of game, and the
exercises of war, or rather of rapine, directed the vagrant
motions of the Sarmatians. The movable camps or cities, the
ordinary residence of their wives and children, consisted only of
large wagons drawn by oxen, and covered in the form of tents.
The military strength of the nation was composed of cavalry; and
the custom of their warriors, to lead in their hand one or two
spare horses, enabled them to advance and to retreat with a rapid
diligence, which surprised the security, and eluded the pursuit,
of a distant enemy. ^37 Their poverty of iron prompted their rude
industry to invent a sort of cuirass, which was capable of
resisting a sword or javelin, though it was formed only of
horses' hoofs, cut into thin and polished slices, carefully laid
over each other in the manner of scales or feathers, and strongly
sewed upon an under garment of coarse linen. ^38 The offensive
arms of the Sarmatians were short daggers, long lances, and a
weighty bow with a quiver of arrows. They were reduced to
the necessity of employing fish-bones for the points of their
weapons; but the custom of dipping them in a venomous liquor,
that poisoned the wounds which they inflicted, is alone
sufficient to prove the most savage manners, since a people
impressed with a sense of humanity would have abhorred so cruel a
practice, and a nation skilled in the arts of war would have
disdained so impotent a resource. ^39 Whenever these Barbarians
issued from their deserts in quest of prey, their shaggy beards,
uncombed locks, the furs with which they were covered from head
to foot, and their fierce countenances, which seemed to express
the innate cruelty of their minds, inspired the more civilized
provincials of Rome with horror and dismay.