The History of Antiquity, Vol. 6 (of 6)

Still more unintelligible and extraordinary is the conduct of Darius. When the Danube has been crossed he commands the Greeks to break down the bridge; the crews are to join the army on land. It would follow from this that Darius thought the bridge no longer necessary. It was not his intention therefore to return to the Danube, but to march round the Black Sea, and over the Caucasus, if indeed he did not mean to skirt the northern shore of the Caspian and return home over the Oxus. If this was his object why did he not avail himself of the important assistance which the fleet could afford him, and command it to accompany the march of the army along the northern shore of the Black Sea? It would then have brought provisions to the army, or to the mouths of the rivers, and supported any attacks on the Greek cities of these coasts; on Tyras at the mouth of the Dniester, on Ordessus on the Teligul, on Olbia at the mouth of the Bug, and Panticapaeum on the Cimmerian Bosphorus. To leave the attack on the Greek cities to the Greek ships only would be dangerous, but there was no danger in giving them a share in it if the main point was to strengthen the army on land. But Darius wished neither to use the fleet, nor to allow the bridge to stand, which is the more remarkable as the bridges on the Bosphorus were not removed but allowed to remain, obviously under the protection of Greek men-of-war. At the Danube Darius has to be informed for the first time by a Greek that a way must be left open for his return. Nevertheless he does not order the Greeks to keep the bridge till further notice, or till his return. For sixty days only after his departure does he leave the means for his return open; so long the bridge is to remain; when that time has expired, the fleet is to sail away. What interest had Darius in allowing the Greeks to depart home as quickly as possible? In order to fix this period of time, he gives the leader of the Greeks a thong with sixty knots. The calendars of the Persians and Greeks were different; there were variations in the calendars of the Aeolians, Ionians, and Dorians; but sixty days could have been fixed without a strap and knots. Beyond the Danube Darius blindly follows the division of Scopasis, wherever it leads him away to the east and north as far as the Volga. On what did the army of Darius subsist – and it numbered 700,000 men, or if we include the train, it reached a total of about a million – for more than two months in a country in which, according to Herodotus' own statement, there was no tilled land except at the mouths of the Bug and Dnieper, and in which the advancing Scythians had destroyed the wells and pastures, as Herodotus asserts? How did the Persians cross the Tyras (Dniester), Hypanis (Bug), Borysthenes (Dnieper), and the Tanais (Don)? From whence did they procure the wood for the bridges or rafts for crossing them, in the steppe which Herodotus rightly describes as entirely without wood down to the forests on the southern edge? Whence came the water for man and beast in the waterless desert? When Darius had crossed the Don Herodotus represents him as building eight large fortresses beyond the river on the bank of the Volga, the object of which it is impossible to discover; and in a space of a little more than two months he represents the Persian army as not only building these forts but marching round the whole territory of Scythia, which in his description extends for 500 miles from the mouth of the Danube to the mouth of the Don, and an equal distance northwards into the land, and even far beyond it. Darius marches as far as the Volga on the east, and northwards to the desert which lies beyond the Sarmatians (whose territory extends for fifteen days' journey up the Don),269 and also beyond the Budini, "a great and numerous people," and the Geloni (p. 275). From this point he returns, according to Herodotus, through the territory of the northern neighbours of the Scythians to the west, as far as the lake out of which the Tyras (Dniester) rises, till the Scythians, who are a day's march in advance of the Persians, reach the land of the Agathyrsi. According to Herodotus' reckoning of the distances, Darius traversed a journey of about a hundred days' marches of twenty-five miles each, in less than fifty days. If Herodotus allows the region of the Scoloti to extend too far to the north, if on the Dnieper it reached only to the rapids of the stream, where the tombs of the Scythian kings lay, the distance, on the other hand, from the mouth of the Danube to the Don, on which the Scoloti and the Sarmatians bordered, and which Darius is said to have crossed, was far greater than Herodotus assumes; it is at least 750 miles, and from the mouth of the Danube to the Volga at least 900 miles, which on the route taken by Darius could not possibly have been traversed both ways in eighty or ninety days. Herodotus does not allow Darius even this space of time. According to his account, the march of Darius to the desert, which separates the land of the Budini and Geloni on the north from the Thyssagetae, to the bank of the Volga, the building of the castles, the return from this point to the borders of the Agathyrsi and the lake from which the Dnieper springs, did not occupy sixty days. It is in this region that the Scythians resolve to retire no farther, but to attack the Persians daily, when they begin to cook their food in a land barren of wood, and they send Scopasis from this point to the Danube. Scopasis reaches the river before the expiration of the sixty days for which Darius has bidden the Ionians wait; indeed, the Scythians of Idanthyrsus occasionally surrender flocks to the army of Darius, in order that the Persians may not think of retiring, i. e. in order to keep them in Scythia till the sixty days are at an end. Impossible as all these marches are, especially in the short space which Herodotus allots to them, the conduct of Darius is more impossible still. He advances beyond the Don as far as the Volga, in order to build fortresses which he does not complete; from this point he marches back again after the Scythians as far as the sources of the Dniester in order to bring on a conflict. At last they draw out for battle; Darius has attained the object he so greatly desired. Then follows the hunting of the hare by the Scythians, and Darius determines to march away rapidly in the same night to the Danube; "because the Scythians held them in contempt." He fortunately reached the bridge by taking the road on which he had come, but the Scythians assume that as the wells had been stopped up and the pastures destroyed, he could not come by that route. But how could the Persians, who when advancing had marched to the north-east to the Don, strike out the same path on their return, upon which they started on the borders of Transylvania, and the sources of the Tyras (Dniester)?

The course of affairs must have been widely different. As Darius allowed the bridge over the Bosphorus to remain, and left the fleet on the Danube, it cannot have been his fixed purpose to coast round the Black Sea. But in any case he must preserve his communications with Asia and Persia and support his army. All the sick, or wounded, or unserviceable men in the army, and all the messengers could only be sent back over the bridge on the Danube. The crews of the fleet were the rear-guard of the army, maintaining and defending its communications. It had also to provide for its own maintenance, i. e. for the needs of more than 100,000 men, and no doubt it likewise collected the provisions for the army by land. However great the stores which the army brought with it, they would soon be consumed in the steppe, unless supplemented. Wherever Darius marched, he could not venture, with the enormous mass of men and animals in his army, to go more than a few days' march at the most from the river-courses. The idea of retiring before the enemy naturally occurred to a people who were without a settled habitation, who wandered in hordes through fixed districts of pasture, living on the backs of their horses, and carrying their women and children with them in waggons drawn by oxen (III. 234). What had they to lose, and what could they fear from the Persians, if the unarmed, the women, children, servants, and herds, had already been sent at the right time under safe convoys far into the interior towards the neighbouring nations? – if all the men – and the Scoloti were not a numerous nation270– collected together, and accustomed as they were to abstinence, and living in continual movement, advancing far more lightly and rapidly on their steppe-horses than their encumbered opponents, hovered round their enemy, stopped up wells and destroyed pastures, without ever engaging in battle? If the Scythians were wise, they would not retire to the east, where Darius could approach the coast, and bring up his fleet with auxiliaries, but away from the sea, i. e. to the north. If the Scythians were not terrified by the enormous power of Darius, and knew how to avoid battles, the army of Darius would soon be ruined by its own numbers in the desert.

As a fact this is the way in which the war beyond the Danube seems to have been carried on. Herodotus tells us that Darius came upon the Scythians three marches beyond the Danube. If he found their forces united, he must have hoped to engage them in a battle which would have decided the campaign at one stroke in his favour. But these mounted opponents could not be captured, Darius sinks deeper and deeper into the desert, till he is compelled by distress to return, and his retreat was made an occasion of heavy losses by the light-armed Scythians.

In the excerpt from the narrative of Trogus preserved by Justin, which may have been derived from Deinon's "Persian History," we are told: "The Scythians drove back Darius the king of the Persians in shameful flight. When Iancyrus (i. e. Idanthyrsus), the king of the Scythians, had refused to give his daughter in marriage to Darius, Darius made war upon him, and invaded Scythia with 700,000 soldiers. As the Scythians gave him no opportunity of battle, he retreated in great anxiety lest the bridge over the Danube should be broken in his rear, after losing 80,000 men. Owing to the abundance of men this loss was not considered a disaster."271 In Ctesias the king of the Scythians is called Scytharbes. "Darius collected an army of 800,000 men, bridged the Bosphorus and the Danube, marched into Scythia, and penetrated for a distance of fifteen days. Scytharbes and Darius sent each other the gift of a bow. As the bow of the Scythian was the stronger, Darius retired over the bridge and broke it up, before the whole army had passed over. Those who were left behind, 80,000 men in number, were cut down by Scytharbes. Darius crossed the bridge over the Bosphorus, and burnt the houses and the temples of Chalcedon, because the Chalcedonians had attempted to destroy the bridge, and had thrown down the altar which Darius had set up at the crossing."272 Strabo remarks: "At the mouths of the Danube there is a large island, Peuce. The mouths are seven in number, and the largest is called the sacred mouth; the distance to Peuce by this is 120 stadia; above the lower part of this mouth Darius built the bridge; it might have been bridged on the upper part also. It is the first if you take the left hand when sailing into Pontus; the rest follow in the voyage to Tyras. On the Pontic Sea, from the Danube to the Tyras (Dniester) is the desert of the Getae, a vast waterless plain. When Darius, the son of Hystaspes, crossed the Ister, to march against the Scythians, he was in danger of perishing by thirst with his whole army through being cut off in this desert; but he discovered his danger just in time, and returned.273 For the support of the camel which had best sustained with him the weariness of the journey through the desert of Scythia, and had carried the baggage with the provisions of the king, he apportioned the hamlet of Gaugamela in Assyria," i. e. its income and tribute, or natural products.274 The level desert of Strabo, between the Danube and the Dniester, includes Moldavia as far as the eastern slopes of the mountains of Transylvania, Bessarabia, and Podolia. Herodotus also represents the decisive charge in the campaign as taking place in the neighbourhood of the Agathyrsi, i. e. the inhabitants of Transylvania. Ctesias tells us that Darius had marched fifteen days beyond the Danube. Reckoning a day's march at 25 miles, as Herodotus does, Darius would thus have advanced 75 miles to the north of the Danube, with which the assertion of Herodotus agrees, that the Scoloti retired before Darius to the border of the land of the Agathyrsi, and the lake out of which the Tyras rises, but no further. By the lake out of which the Tyras rises we can hardly understand the lakes at Lemberg, for Darius could scarcely have come so far to the west. The marshes at the source of the Bug are probably meant, which as the crow flies are 325 miles from Reni, on the Danube. If the Scoloti ventured to retire but a little way from the river courses, the Persians retired still less. Hence the retreat of the Scythians and the advance of Darius must have proceeded up the Pruth, through Bessarabia to Podolia as far as the marshes on the upper Dniester in which the Bug rises, where Herodotus represents the two armies as encamping opposite each other, or as far as the marshes of the Prypet. The answer which Herodotus puts in the mouth of Idanthyrsus – that Darius should attack the tombs of the kings (on the rapids of the Dniester) and then the Scythians would fight, has a meaning, if Darius was far from the centre of Scythia, and the message was sent to him when in the neighbourhood of the source of the Bug or the Prypet; it was without meaning if he had already traversed the whole land of Scythia as far as the Don and the Volga. Want of provisions for man and beast far more than the want of water would have compelled him to return. Had the Scythians previously surrounded the army of Darius on all sides, they would have thrown themselves with impunity in full force on his rear when retreating. If everything left behind through weariness and sickness had fallen into their hands, they would now not merely hinder the retreat but greatly endanger it. As soon as the communications with the Danube were completely closed (Strabo tells us that Darius was cut off in the desert of the Getae), Darius must have been in alarm whether the fidelity of the tyrants or their desire to maintain their position in their own cities was strong enough to keep them at the bridge, and if this were the case whether they could induce their crews to remain.

Such in its essential outlines must have been the course of the campaign of Darius beyond the Danube. What Herodotus tells us are legends of the Scythians, which he had heard with some additions from his fellow-countrymen, in Ordessus and Olbia. It was the greatest glory of the Scythians not to have succumbed to this attack; no doubt they placed in the most brilliant light the cunning and endurance of their fathers, which brought about this result. We must remove from the series of events the meeting of the barbarians, the assistance of the Geloni, Budini, and Sarmatians, the entire eastern part of the story, no less than the march through the whole of Scythia. That story has no doubt arisen from the supposed object of it – the assumed eight fortresses of Darius on the Volga, the remains of which were in existence in Herodotus' time. These unfinished citadels were either fortifications of some tribe or another, long since abandoned, or ancient tumuli, such as are still frequently found in the steppes above the Black Sea. Some were said to be trenches of the Cimmerians and others trenches of Darius. It was these which gave the direction to the march of Darius. Besides tradition from Greece and Scythia we have isolated traces of Iranian poetry in the accounts of Herodotus, Justin, and Ctesias. To these belong the suit of Darius for the daughter of the king of the Scythians and his refusal, the sending of the bow, and the enigmatical gifts of the Scythians, of which Gobryas could interpret the meaning. Other Greeks could mention the names of different persons who had guessed this riddle.275

A peculiar concatenation of circumstances had placed in the hands of the princes of the Greeks of Anatolia the fortune of the Persian army, and with it the fortune of the Persian monarchy and the entire Persian empire. If they left Darius to his fate, removed the bridge, and sailed home with their ships, it would be almost impossible for the Persian king and army to cross the Danube, and the Greek cities would have been free from any foreign dominion. As soon as Darius was at a distance from the bridge, the Scythians must have called upon the Greeks to depart, and they must have repeated their request more urgently when they had cut off Darius's connection with the bridge and intercepted his retreat; they would represent his position to be as desperate as possible. Without doubt Histiaeus of Miletus was commander of the fleet. Not once only, as Herodotus represents, but every day Histiaeus, on whom the greatest responsibility rested, must have discussed with his associates the question of remaining or departing, when it was clear that Darius was in danger, and there could not be a doubt that the Scythians were pressing hard upon him, and perhaps cutting off his return.276 But there was only one among the tyrants of the Greeks who firmly represented the view that they ought to abandon the king. This was Miltiades of Chersonesus, one of the newest vassals of Persia, who had not been raised to the throne by Darius, but only confirmed in his hereditary principality. The opposite view, according to Herodotus, was heard from the mouth of Histiaeus. It showed how correct was the calculation of Cyrus, when, in order to secure the obedience of the Greek states, he had made the elevation of princes in them one of his principles. There is no doubt that the princes could now have put an end to the dominion of the Persians, but at the same time they would have put an end to their own power; they would have annihilated themselves with the king of the Persians. The large majority of the tyrants, so we are told in Nepos, joined in the opinion of Histiaeus. We can with certainty assume that those of the tyrants who subsequently received peculiar marks of distinction from Darius; Histiaeus of Miletus, Hippoclus of Lampsacus, Coes, the leader of the ships of Lesbos, contributed in some essential manner to the retention of the fleet; that it was chiefly they who kept back the others, and above all the crews. But even those tyrants who maintained most strongly that the post entrusted to them should be kept, could not prevent the possibility that the Persians might be detained in the desert; that Darius might not return. In this uncertain and wavering position (Darius remained longer than was expected and thus many people thought him lost), the last decision would be deferred for a certain time, and the crews would be calmed by a promise not to wait for Darius beyond a certain period. The same reply might be made to the demands of the Scythians in order not to ruin their cause with them should they really destroy the army of the Persians. In the other event Darius might be told that the period was merely fixed in order to keep the Scythians away from the bridge. From such a period, which the princes fixed for themselves and their crews, may have arisen the legend of the command of Darius, that they were to wait for sixty days – a story which was afterwards quoted by the Greeks against the tyrants to the effect that they not only faithfully carried out the commands of Darius, but had gone beyond them to rescue him. As a fact Darius must have spent far more than sixty days beyond the Danube if he advanced fifteen full days' marches, according to the reckoning of Herodotus, and penetrated to the sources of the Dniester, the Bug, or the Prypet. For an army like that of Darius could not march more than ten miles a day, and thus the 750 miles of advance and retreat, which in the latter part would have been traversed amid continual encounters, required at least eighty or ninety days. The Ionians had remained, though they had not kept all the contingents with them. The ships of Antandros and Lamponium, and no doubt those of other cities also, had sailed away of their own accord.277

How great soever the losses may have been which the army of Darius suffered in Scythia – the number, 80,000, which Ctesias represents as perishing by the premature destruction of the bridge, and which Justin represents as the entire sum of the losses of the army, appears to have been the official amount of the loss among the Persians – when the Danube was crossed, they found security and provisions, rest and refreshment. The Scythians could not force a passage against the ships of war, which controlled the stream, and the land army of the Persians. Undisturbed by them, Darius could now have made better arrangements for continuing the war beyond the Danube, and preparing for the conduct of it, if unexpected events had not compelled him to complete his retreat in haste. Ctesias told us above that the Chalcedonians, on whose territory lay the Asiatic end of the bridge, had attempted to break it down. Strabo relates that Darius burned the cities round the Propontis and Abydus because he was afraid that they might supply the Scythians with transports to Asia.278 Herodotus tells us, that Darius, on his return from the Danube, marched through Thrace into the land of the Hellespontians; thence he crossed on the ships to Asia, and then repaired himself to Sardis,279 leaving behind Megabyzus as general in the land of the Hellespontians, who reduced by force of arms those who did not "medize."280 With the Persians who remained in Europe he first attacked the Perinthians "who would not submit to Darius;" the Perinthians fought bravely for their freedom, but the numbers of the Persians were overpowering.281 But Otanes, the son of Sisamnes, to whom Darius entrusted the command by sea, took Byzantium, Chalcedon, Antandros, and Lamponium. The reason for enslaving and subjugating these cities, was that he charged some of them with abandoning the army on the march against the Scythians, and others with injuring the army on its return. The latter charge would apply chiefly to Byzantium and Chalcedon.282 It follows further from the narrative of Herodotus, that Darius awaited the result of the action of Megabyzus and Otanes at Sardis, and did not return to Persia till Megabyzus had penetrated to the west into Thracia, and he had established his brother Artaphernes as satrap at Sardis.283 Of the Scythians Herodotus tells us that they pursued Darius with their united forces as far as the Thracian Chersonese; Miltiades did not venture to await their arrival there but fled, till the Scythians had retired and the Doloncians had brought him back. Next, in order to punish Darius for his invasion of their land, the Scythians sent an embassy to Sparta, in order to call upon the Spartans to cross over to Ephesus, while they attacked Media from the Phasis.284

From this we conclude that a serious rebellion of the Greek cities on both shores of the straits and the Propontis broke out in the rear of Darius; that the cities thought Darius lost, or intended to prevent his return. Byzantium rebelled, though the tyrant Ariston was at the river with the fleet of the city; so also Abydus, whose tyrant Daphnis was likewise there with his fleet. Besides these cities, Perinthus, Chalcedon, Antandrus, and Lamponium, on the Ionian coast, are expressly mentioned as rebels. Strabo speaks generally of the cities round the Propontis in this sense. Herodotus tells us that Chalcedon was taken, and Ctesias that it was burnt. According to the latter the Chalcedonians were eager to destroy the bridge; but Darius was nevertheless able to pass it. Herodotus asserts that Darius passed on the ships from Sestus into Asia, and that the Scythians pursued him as far as the Thracian Chersonesus. This definite and double statement on the direction of the return march, and the passage of Darius into Asia, must be maintained against the inexact excerpt from Ctesias. If the bridge lay over the Bosphorus, Darius certainly did not march to the Hellespont.

The course of events was this. When he arrived on the northern side of the Danube Darius perceived that a part of the Greek ships had sailed homeward, that the communications with Asia were interrupted, that the bridge had been broken, that the cities on both shores of the straits were in rebellion. He was compelled to send the fleet at once to the straits in order to reopen communications. As Byzantium and Chalcedon could throw great difficulties in the way of any communication or passage over the Bosphorus, the fleet was bidden to open the Hellespont and keep it open. When the fleet was dismissed it was no longer possible to keep the army on the Danube; and besides it was imperative to bring the rebellious cities to obedience at once, a duty which could not be left merely to their fellow-countrymen who had remained faithful in the fleet. So Darius must have led the army to the Hellespont as soon as he had allowed time for rest on the Danube. The Scythians no doubt crossed the river when they saw the army of Darius leave the bank, and well-mounted hordes followed the retreating army on the south of the Danube in order to make booty, to carry off the baggage, and cut down the stragglers. But there was no serious pursuit. The Scythians could not have undertaken this against the Persians; and if they had undertaken it and threatened danger, Darius would not have sent a part of the army to Asia. He must then have turned his whole force upon the Scythians. Miltiades certainly did not retire before the Scythians but before the Persians. Even if he had gone no farther than expressing his wish, and had not left the Danube with his ships,285– though he had not found means for embarrassing the retreat of the Persians over the Hellespont, yet in the eyes of the Persians he was the author of the revolt, his vote in the council of war at the Danube was obviously treacherous, and the beginning which gave impulse to the mischief. Miltiades then retired to the Thracians. He had married the daughter of Olorus, a Thracian prince. Twelve years later the general revolt of the Greek states gave him the means of returning to his principality. The embassy of the Scythians to Sparta seems no more than a fable of the Spartans, which belongs to the obscure side of the history of Cleomenes.