10                              NOTES   UPON   RUSSIA.
reins of government. This prince proceeded with his forces
still further than his predecessor, and reached Heraclea and
Nicomedia; at length, however, he was overthrown in battle
and fled. He met his death subsequently at the hand of
Maldittus,1 a prince of the Drevlians, at a place called
Ciresti,2 and was there buried. As his son Svyatoslav', whom
he left an infant, could not reign on account of his tender
age, his mother Olga became regent in the interim; and on
one occasion^ when the Drevlians sent twenty messengers to
her with commands that she should marry their prince, Olga
first ordered the messengers of the Drevlians to be buried
alive, and then dispatched messengers of her own to them to
say, that if they wished her to be their princess and mistress,
they should send a greater number of wooers, and of higher
rank : after this she scalded to death, in a bath, fifty picked
men that had been sent to her, and again sent other messen-
gers to announce their arrival, and ordered that they should
prepare some aqua mulsa3 and other things which were usually
considered necessary in providing for the obsequies of a de-
ceased husband. Moreover, when she came to the Drevlians,
she held a mourning for her husband, and having made the
Drevlians drunk, slew five thousand of them : she then re-
turned to Kiev, raised an army, and proceeding against the
Drevlians, oppressed them with a siege which lasted a whole
year, during wWch she persecuted those who fled to her
camp, and finally obtained the victory. Terms of peace
being afterwards agreed upon, she demanded a tribute from
1 Nestor calls this prince " Male",
3 This is a misspelling for Korosien, the ancient capital of the Drev-
lians. It occupied the site of the present town of Iskorosk in Volhynia.
A mound called the " Tomb of Igor" is still to be seen on a plain near
the town by the banks of the river Oosha. — Geographicfrnky Slovar
Mossyeskaffo Oosoodarstva,   Moscow, 1804, 4to.
3 Hydromel. Pliny, in his twenty-second book, says, " Mellis quidem
ipsius natura talis esfc ufc putrescere corpora non sinat". Columella (Mb.
xii, cap. 12, fo. 420) speaks of the preparation of aqua mulsa.