37
First of all, I wish to tell you how we make our friends. Not through boon-companionship, as you do, nor because a man has been a comrade of ours in military training or a neighbour. No, when we see a brave man, capable of great achievements, we all make after him, and we think fit to behave in forming friendships as you do in seeking brides, paying them protracted court and doing everything in their company to the end that we may not fall short of attaining their friendship or be thought to deserve rejection. And whena man has been singled out and is at last a friend, there ensue formal compacts and the most solemn of oaths that we will not only live with one another but die, if need be, for each other; and we do just that. For, once we have cut our fingers, let the blood drip into a cup, dipped our sword-points into it, and then, both at once, have set it to our lips and drunk, there is nothing thereafter that can dissolve the bond between us.Cf. Herodotus, IV, 70, who, however, makes no reference to the point that both drink from the same cup at the same time, which is proved by a gold plaque from the tomb of Kul-Oba near Kertch (often reproduced; e.g., Minns, Scythians and Greeks, p. 203), where a drinking horn is used. _ We are permitted at most to enter into three such compacts, since a man of many friends resembles, we think, promiscuous women with their lovers, and we consider that his friendship is no longer of the same strength when it has been split up into a multitude of loyalties.
38
I shall begin with the affair of Dandamis, which happened recently. In our engagement with the Sauromatae, when Amizoces had been taken prisoner, his friend Dandamis—but stay! first let me take my oath for you in our way, since that also was part of the agreement that I made with you in the beginning. I swear by Wind and Glaive that I shall tell you no falsehood, Mnesippus, about Scythian friends.
