Ἄβιοι

Abioi: a Scythian people. Homer: ‘of the milk-eating Abioi, most just of men.’ Alexander, in his On the Euxine Pontos, says, as Diophantos said, that they are so called because they live by the Abianos river. Homer called them just because they did not wish to campaign with the Amazons against Asia. Or they are so called because they do not practise a settled way of life, since they are carried about on wagons. Didymos says they are a Thracian [people]. Aeschylus too writes ‘Gabioi’ with γ in Prometheus Unbound: Then you will come to a people most just of all [mortals] and most hospitable, the Gabioi, where neither plough nor earth-cutting mattock cuts the tilled land, but self-sown fields bring abundant livelihood to mortals. Philostephanos likewise says this, and others too. They are Scythians. Most of the commentators say that ‘milk-eating’ and ‘abioi’ are epithets of the Agauoi, some taking the latter as ‘not using force’, for which reason they are also most just; others as ‘without homes’, because they do not have a way of life like ours; others as ‘homobioi’, that is, ‘homotoxoi’, for they are the same bowmen.