Ἄβιοι

Abioi: a Skythian people. Homer: ‘of the Glaktophagoi and the Abioi, most just of men.’ Alexander, in his On the Euxeinos Pontos, says, as per Diophantos, that they are so called because they inhabit 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 have a settled way of life, since they are carried about on wagons. Didymos says they are a Thracian [people]. Aischylos too has ‘Gabioi’, written with γ, in Prometheus Unbound:

Then you will come to the most just people

of all [mortals], and the most hospitable,

the Gabioi, where neither plough nor earth-cutting

mattock cuts the tilth,

but self-sown fields bear abundant livelihood for mortals.

Philostephanos and others say the same. They are Skythai. Most of the commentators say that ‘glaktophagon’ and ‘abion’ are epithets of the Agauoi, some understanding it as ‘of those who do not use force’, and therefore ‘most just’; others as ‘of those without houses’, because they do not have a way of life like ours; others as ‘of those who live alike’, that is, ‘of those with the same bow’. For they are the same archers.