Massagetae
group · 3 works · 4 mentions · 5 anchored passages
the Massagetae · the Massagetes
in the texts
The Histories
A powerful eastern people beyond the Araxes whom Cyrus attacks and by whom he is ultimately defeated and killed.
they sacrifice horses to him;
but the Caspian is separate and by itself.
it is not, but a custom of the Massagetae.
Letters
A foreign people invoked pejoratively alongside the Scythians for the coarse newcomers dominating the marketplace.
In their place has been brought in the boorishness of certain Scythians or Massagetae;
Adversus Marcionem
Central Asian tribe invoked as a byword for inhumanity.
more foul than any Scythian, more unsettled than the wagon-dweller, more inhuman than the Massagetes, more audacious than an Amazon, darker than the fog, colder than winter, more brittle than the ice, more treacherous than the Danube, more precipitous than the Caucasus.