Note 358 — ACT III.
Reading edition
Probably booters.—S. P.
S. P. [Dr Pegge] would read booters; but he ought to have known that the Scythians were contemptuously styled porters, because they carried their huts and families about with them in wains; omnia sua secum portantes. So Lucan, lib. ii. v. 641—
"Pigra palus Scythici patiens Mæotica plaustri."
Again, Horace, "Carm.," lib. iii. Od. 24—
"Campestres melius Scythoe, Quorum plaustra vagas rite trahunt domos."
After all, what could booters mean? Unless S. P. designed to characterise the Scythians, as Homer does his countrymen, ἐϋκνήμιδες Ἀχαιοὶ, the well-booted Greeks. [II. a. 17.] Free-booters, indeed, is used for plunderers; but I know not that booters is ever employed, unless in conjunction with some epithet that fixes its meaning.—S.