The wives often followed their husbands to the wars.

From infancy the boys were trained to fight, and were taught that nothing was more disgraceful than to forgive an injury.
A mother was permitted, if she wished, to destroy her female children; but the boys were all preserved to add to the military strength of the nation.

It was lawful, also, for the children to put their parents to death when they had become infirm and useless.

"Behold," exclaims a Russian historian, "how a people naturally kind, when deprived of the light of revelation can remorselessly outrage nature, and surpass in cruelty the most ferocious animals." In different sections of this vast region there were different degrees of debasement, influenced by causes no longer known.

A tribe called Drevliens, Nestor states, lived in the most gloomy forests with the beasts and like the beasts.