Читать книгу The Herodotus Encyclopedia - Группа авторов - Страница 1045

CAROLYN DEWALD

Bard College

Herodotus locates the Budini as one of the SCYTHIANS’ northern neighbors (4.21), living in a wooded area “fifteen days beyond the SAUROMATIANS,” thus several hundred miles north of Lake MAEOTIS (Sea of Azov) and east of the mouth of the TANAIS River (the Don). Later in Book 4, in the context of DARIUS I’s forthcoming invasion of Scythia c. 513 BCE (4.102, 105, 108–9), he describes them as “a great and numerous people,” relevant as one of the three peoples willing to help the Scythians defend their territory (4.119–23, 136). The Budini are distinctive in their blue eyes (glaukon) and “redness” (pyrrhon), although it is unclear whether this means ruddy in complexion or red‐haired. They are pastoralists and “lice eaters” (phtheirotrageousi), but also live among Greeks in their city constructed of wood, Gelonus (4.108), although they have their own language (4.24, 109). Darius eventually burns Gelonus down (4.123), but the Budini, GELONIANS, and Sauromatians help the Scythians mount a strategic retreat that leads Darius around a long and ultimately ineffective chase through Scythia and neighboring lands (4.119–41).

Many attempts have been made to identify the Budini as ancestors of a variety of modern peoples, among them Votiak Finns, Slavs, and Celts. Corcella (in ALC, 595) thinks they could have inhabited a large area between the Volga, the Don, and the Dnieper RIVERS; Gelonus is sometimes identified with Bel’sk, a settlement on the Vorskla, a tributary of the Dnieper considerably to the west of where Herodotus locates the Budini at 4.21 (Rolle 1989, 117–19), although ARCHAEOLOGY has recently revealed other such settlements as possibilities as well.

SEE ALSO: Ethnography; Language and Communication; Nomads