7.
Our knowledge of the expedition of Darius in the next generation, is more certain. This fortunate monarch, after many successes, even on the European side of the Bosphorus, impelled by that ambition, which holy Daniel had already seen in prophecy to threaten West and North as well as South, towards the end of his life directed his arms against the Scythians who inhabited the country now called the Ukraine. His pretext for this expedition was an incursion which the same barbarians had made into Asia, shortly before the time of Cyrus. They had crossed the Don, just above the sea of Azoff, had entered the country now called Circassia, had threaded the defiles of the Caucasus, and had defeated the Median King Cyaxares, the grandfather of Cyrus. Then they overran Armenia, Cappadocia, Pontus, and part of Lydia, that is, a great portion of Anatolia or Asia Minor; and managed to establish themselves in the country for twenty-eight years, living by plunder and exaction. In the course of this period, they descended into Syria, as far as to the very borders of Egypt. The Egyptians bought them off, and they turned back; however, they possessed themselves of a portion of Palestine, and gave their name to one town, Scythopolis, in the territory of Manasses. This was in the last days of the Jewish monarchy, shortly before the captivity. At length Cyaxares got rid of them by treachery; he invited the greater number of them to a banquet, intoxicated, and massacred them. Nor was this the termination of the troubles, of which they were the authors; and I mention the sequel, because both the office which they undertook and their manner of discharging it, their insubordination and their cruelty, are an anticipation of some passages in the early history of the Turks. The Median King had taken some of them into his pay, made them his huntsmen, and submitted certain noble youths to their training. Justly or unjustly they happened one day to be punished for leaving the royal table without its due supply of game: without more ado, the savages in revenge murdered and served up one of these youths instead of the venison which had been expected of them, and made forthwith for the neighbouring kingdom of Lydia. A war between the two states was the consequence.
But to return to Darius:—it is said to have been in retaliation for these excesses that he resolved on his expedition against the Scythians, who, as I have mentioned, were in occupation of the district between the Danube and the Don. For this purpose he advanced from Susa in the neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf, through Assyria and Asia Minor to the Bosphorus, just opposite to the present site of Constantinople, where he crossed over into Europe. Thence he made his way, with the incredible number of 700,000 men, horse and foot, to the Danube, reducing Thrace, the present Roumelia, in his way. When he had crossed that stream, he was at once in Scythia; but the Scythians had adopted the same sort of strategy, which in the beginning of this century was practised by their successors against Napoleon. They cut and carried off the green crops, stopped up their wells or spoilt their water, and sent off their families and flocks to places of safety. Then they stationed their outposts just a day's journey before the enemy, to entice him on. He pursued them, they retreated; and at length he found himself on the Don, the further boundary of the Scythian territory. They crossed the Don, and he crossed it too, into desolate and unknown wilds; then, eluding him altogether, from their own knowledge of the country, they made a circuit, and got back into their own land again.
Darius found himself outwitted, and came to a halt; how he had victualled his army, whatever deduction we make for its numbers, does not appear; but it is plain that the time must come, when he could not proceed. He gave the order for retreat. Meanwhile, he found an opportunity of sending a message to the Scythian chief, and it was to this effect:—"Perverse man, take your choice; fight me or yield." The Scythians intended to do neither, but contrived, as before, to harass the Persian retreat. At length an answer came; not a message, but an ominous gift; they sent Darius a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows; without a word of explanation. Darius himself at first hailed it as an intimation of submission; in Greece to offer earth and water was the sign of capitulation, as, in a sale of land in our own country, a clod from the soil still passes, or passed lately, from seller to purchaser, as a symbol of the transfer of possession. The Persian king, then, discerned in these singular presents a similar surrender of territorial jurisdiction. But another version, less favourable to his vanity and his hopes, was suggested by one of his courtiers, and it ran thus: "Unless you can fly like a bird, or burrow like a mouse, or swim the marshes like a frog, you cannot escape our arrows." Whichever interpretation was the true one, it needed no message from the enemy to inflict upon Darius the presence of the dilemma suggested in this unpleasant interpretation. He yielded to imperative necessity, and hastened his escape from the formidable situation in which he had placed himself, and through great good fortune succeeded in effecting it. He crossed the sea just in time; for the Scythians came down in pursuit, as far as the coast, and returned home laden with booty.
This is pretty much all that is definitely recorded in history of the ancient Tartars. Alexander, in a later age, came into conflict with them in the region called Sogdiana which lies at the foot of that high plateau of central and eastern Asia, which I have designated as their proper home. But he was too prudent to be entangled in extended expeditions against them, and having made trial of their formidable strength, and made some demonstrations of the superiority of his own, he left them in possession of their wildernesses.