Awesome. An amazing fact about the Scythians is that the sheer weight of gold recovered from Scythian sites aggregates to more than that of all other ancient cultures -combined-. Serious hoarders, with a love for bling!
That is an amazing fact! I learn someting new from GGG threads every day.
They were reputed to wear trousers made from the skins of their enemies. But its the craftsmanship and sheer bulk of their gold ornaments that catches most peoples’ attention. As far as “mare milkers” (what some Greeks called them) being an insult, the Mongols did likewise and still do. Warrior horse cultures separated by a thousand years roaming some of the same wide spaces.
That’s probably nonsense, as it would be difficult at best to verify, but regardless, the surviving accounts of Alexander the G’s conquest of Persepolis has some actual figures for the Persian treasury. No surprise that his call for professional soldiers for the expansion of the campaign in Central Asia resulted in the arrival at Balkh (Bactria) of 250,000 men, mostly Greek and Macedonian.