Kitap 3
3.7
In Bastetania the women dance promiscuously with the men, each holding the other’s hand. They all dress in black, the majority of them in cloaks called saga, in which they sleep on beds of straw. They make use of wooden vessels like the Kelts. The women wear dresses and embroidered garments. Instead of money, those who dwell far in the interior exchange merchandise, or give pieces of silver cut off from plates of that metal. Those condemned to death are executed by stoning; parricides are put to death without the frontiers or the cities. They marry according to the customs of the Greeks.This is said to distinguish them from their neighbours, the inhabitants of Majorca and Minorca, whose peculiar marriage ceremonies are thus described by Diodorus Siculus, lib. v. c. 18: παράδοξον δέ τι καὶ κατὰ τοὺς γάμους νόμιμον παρ’ αὐτοῖς ἐστιν ἐν γὰρ ταῦς κατὰ τοὺς γάμους εὐωχίαις, οἰκείων τε καὶ φίλων κατὰ τὴν ὴλικίαν ὁ πρῶτος άνὰ και ὁ δετερος, καὶ οἱ λοιποὶ κατὰ τὸ ἑξῆς, μίσγονται ταῖς νύμφαις ἀνὰ μέρος, ἐσχάτου τοῦ νυμφίου τυγχάνοντος ταύτης τῆς τιμῆς. Their sick they expose upon the highways, in the same way as the EgyptiansThe mention of Egyptians here seems surprising, inasmuch as no writer appears to have recorded this as one of their customs. Of the Assyrians it is stated, both by Herodotus, i. 197, and also by Strabo himself xvi. cap. i. 746. It seems therefore most probable that Assyrians are intended, Egyptians being merely an error of the transcriber. did anciently, in the hope that some one who has experienced the malady may be able to give them advice. Up to the time of [the expedition of] Brutus they made use of vessels constructed of skins for crossing the lagoons formed by the tides; they now have them formed out of the single trunk of a tree, but these are scarce. Their salt is purple, but becomes white by pounding. The life of the mountaineers is such as I have described, I mean those bordering the northern side of Iberia, the Gallicians, the Asturians, and the Cantabrians,Inhabitants of Biscay. as far as the VasconsPeople of Navarre. and the Pyrenees. The mode of life amongst all these is similar. But I am reluctant to fill my page with their names, and would fain escape the disagreeable task of writing them, unless perchance the Pleutauri, the Bardyetae, the Allotriges,Who the Pleutauri were, we do not know. The Bardyete appear to be the same people whom Strabo afterwards speaks of as Bardyiti, or Bardyali, who occupied a narrow slip of land between the east of Alava and the west of Navarre. The Allotriges Casaubon supposes to be the same as the Autrigones, who occupied the coast from Laredo to the Gulf of Bilboa. and other names still worse and more out of the way than these might be grateful to the ear of some one.
