349But not so where the Scythian tribes are, and the Maeotic water, and the muddy Danube rolling its yellow sands, and where Rhodope turns back, stretched out beneath the middle of the pole. 352There they keep the herds shut in stalls, and no grass appears on the plain nor leaves on the tree; 354but the earth lies shapeless far and wide under snowdrifts and deep ice, and rises seven ells high. 356Always winter, always north-west winds breathing cold. 357And the Sun never scatters the pale shadows, neither when, borne by his horses, he seeks the high heaven, nor when he bathes his plunging chariot in the red water of Ocean.
360Sudden crusts form on the running river, and the water now bears iron-rimmed wheels on its back, once host to ships, now to broad wagons; 363bronze vessels commonly burst, clothes freeze as they are worn, they cut the liquid wine with axes, whole pools turn to solid ice, and rough icicles have stiffened on uncombed beards. 367Meanwhile it snows no less over all the sky: the cattle perish, the great bodies of oxen stand wrapped in frost, and the deer in a crowded herd are numb under the strange mass and scarcely show the tips of their horns above it. 371These they hunt not by loosing hounds, nor with any nets, nor by scaring them with the terror of the crimson feather, but as they push in vain with their breasts against the mountain in their way, they slay them hand to hand with the steel, cut them down as they bellow loudly, and carry them home with glad shouting.
376They themselves live in carefree leisure in caves dug deep under the earth, and have rolled heaps of logs and whole elms to their hearths and given them to the fire. 379Here they spend the night in games, and gladly imitate draughts of the vine with ferment and sour service-berries. 381Such is the unbridled race of men that lives beneath the seven stars of the northern Wain, buffeted by the Rhipaean east wind, and they cover their bodies with the tawny pelts of beasts.