Abioi

The Abii () were possibly an ancient people described by several ancient authors. They were placed by Ptolemy in the extreme north of Scythia extra Imaum, near the Hippophagi ("horse eaters"); but there are very different opinions about whether they existed. Strabo discourses on the various opinions respecting the Abii up to his time.

In the Iliad, Homer represents Zeus, on the summit of Mount Ida, as turning away his eyes from the battle before the Greek camp, and looking down upon the land of the Thracians: Μυσῶν τ᾽ ἀγχεμάχων, καὶ ἀγαυῶν ἱππημολγῶν, γλακτοφάγων, ἀβίων τέ δικαιοτάτων ἀνθρώπων ("the Abii, most decent men alive"). Ancient and modern commentators have doubted greatly which of these words to take as proper names, except the first two, which nearly all agree to refer to the Mysians of Thrace. The fact would seem to be that the poet had heard accounts of the great nomadic peoples who inhabited the steppes northwest and north of the Euxine (the Black Sea), whose whole wealth lay in their herds, especially of horses, on the milk of which they lived, and who were supposed to preserve the innocence of a state of nature; and of them, therefore, he speaks collectively by epithets suited to such descriptions, and, among the rest, as ἄβιοι, poor, with scanty means of life (from ἀ- and Βίος). The people thus described answer to the later notions respecting the Hyperboreans, whose name does not occur in Homer. Afterwards, the epithets applied by Homer to this supposed primitive people were taken as proper names, and were assigned to different tribes of the Scythians, so that we have mention of the Scythae Agavi, Hippemolgi, Galactophagi (and Galactopotae) and Abii. The last are mentioned as a distinct people by Aeschylus, who prefixes a guttural to the name, and describes the Gabii as the most just and hospitable of men, living on the self-sown fruits of the untilled earth; but we have no indication of where he placed them. Of those commentators, who take the word in Homer for a proper name, some place them in Thrace, some in Scythia, and some near the (also fabulous) Amazons, who in vain urged them to take part in an expedition against Asia.