* The motives imputed to Darius by the ancients for making this expedition are the desire of avenging the disasters of the Scythian invasion, or of performing an exploit which should render him as famous as his predecessors in the eyes of posterity.

** The reconnaissance of Ariaramnes is intimately connected with the expedition itself in Ctesias, and could have preceded it by a few months only.  If we take for the date of the latter the year 514-513, the date given in the Table of the Capitol, that of the former cannot be earlier than 515.  Ariaramnes was not satrap of Cappadocia, for Cappadocia belonged then to the satrapy of Daskylion.

*** The supplementary paragraphs of the Inscription of Behistun speak of an expedition of Darius against the Sako, which is supposed to have had as its objective either the sea of Aral or the Tigris.  Would it not be possible to suppose that the sea mentioned is the Pontus Euxinus, and to take the mutilated text of Behistun to be a description either of the campaign beyond the Danube, or rather of the preliminary reconnaissance of Ariaramnes a year before the expedition itself?

Darius, having learned what he could from these poor wretches, crossed the Bosphorus in 514, with a body of troops which tradition computed at 800,000, conquered the eastern coast of Thrace, and won his way in a series of conflicts as far as the Ister.  The Ionian sailors built for him a bridge of boats, which he entrusted to their care, and he then started forward into the steppes in search of the enemy.  The Scythians refused a pitched battle, but they burnt the pastures before him on every side, filled up the wells, carried off the cattle, and then slowly retreated into the interior, leaving Darius to face the vast extent of the steppes and the terrors of famine.  Later tradition stated that he wandered for two months in these solitudes between the Ister and the Tanais; he had constructed on the banks of this latter river a series of earthworks, the remains of which were shown in the time of Herodotus, and had at length returned to his point of departure with merely the loss of a few sick men.  The barbarians stole a march upon him, and advised the Greeks to destroy the bridge, retire within their cities, and abandon the Persians to their fate.  The tyrant of the Ohersonnesus, Miltiades the Athenian, was inclined to follow their advice; but Histiasus, the governor of Miletus, opposed it, and eventually carried his point.  Darius reached the southern bank without difficulty, and returned to Asia.*

* Ctesias limits the campaign beyond the Danube to a fifteen days’ march; and Strabo places the crossing of the Danube near the mouth of that river, at the island of Peuke, and makes the expedition stop at the Dniester.  Neither the line of direction of the Persian advance nor their farthest point reached is known.  The eight forts which they were said to have