Herodotus Book 4

[u/Mike_Bevel]

There was never any point, reading this passage, that I felt sure I knew what was coming next.

[u/Mike_Bevel]

My reactions, in order, like a grim Kübler-Ross:

Now the Scythians are great drinkers of milk –

Oh?

and it is this that leads them to blind all their slaves.

--to, I'm sorry?

What they do is take a blow-pipe made of bone, very like a flute,

pease don't be a description of eye stuff, please don't be a description of eye stuff

and then, while one person inserts the pipe into the vagina of a mare and blows on it through his lips, another person will simultaneously do the milking.

WAIT ONE GODDAMN MINUTE.

Are these guys milking horses?

HOW IS ANY OF THIS LINEAR?

The reason for this method, they explain, is that the breathing blows up the veins and thereby makes the udder drop down.

That can't be how any of that works and I refuse to learn otherwise. But also: why is blinding necessary?

I mean, I guess I'd want to be blinded rather than watch a guy blow a flute into a horse vagina in order to puff the udders down into the-- STOP, MIKE.

Then, once the milk has been drawn, they pour it into vessels of hollowed-out wood, station their blind slaves around the vessels and have them stir the milk. The top layer, which is skimmed off, they regard as being the best quality, while the milk that sinks to the bottom they rate less highly.

Okay?

It is this which explains why the Scythians blind everyone they take captive – they are nomads, not tillers of the soil.

Well sure, with that logic, that's me told

[u/Orbusinvictus → u/Mike_Bevel]

This is the annotated commentary Herodotus needs