As is so often the case, a people’s enemies have a tendency to call them savage and dangerous in warfare; there is, after all, little glory in beating weaklings and cowards. The Scythians, however, do seem to have been particularly savage and merciless to their foes, and fully deserving of the reputation they were given by their civilised victims. Their practice of taking heads and, according to some sources, scalps, was not all that unusual; Gallic tribes took the heads of their enemies as trophies. It was the Scythian method of dividing the spoils after a battle that set them apart: men would be rewarded according the number of, and (presumably) the previously-living status of, heads that they took in battle. The heads themselves therefore attained the status of a currency used to purchase a share of captured enemy baggage.
