After this second appeal the Ionians held a consultation.
“It was the opinion of Miltiades—the Athenian who commanded, and was tyrant of the Hellespontine Chersonesites—that they should listen to the advice of the Scythians and give liberty to Ionia. His views were opposed by Histiæus the Milesian. The argument of the latter was that the tyrants individually owed their position to Darius, and that, if Darius’ power were destroyed, neither would he himself be able to rule in Miletus, nor any of the rest to rule elsewhere, for all the states would prefer a democracy to a tyranny. After this statement of opinion by Histiæus, all of them forthwith went over to it, though they had previously assented to that of Miltiades.”
A list, intended doubtless as a black list, of these tyrants is given.
TALE OF THE ISTER BRIDGE.
To prevent the Scythians seizing the bridge, and to give them the impression that they were going to follow their advice, the northern end of the bridge was removed for the space of a bow shot. The Scythians accordingly withdrew. Some time afterwards Darius and his army returned, and were alarmed to find the bridge apparently removed. They soon discovered their mistake. H. iv. 141, 142. The bridge was restored by Histiæus. “Thus the Persians escaped.” The Scythians’ judgment of the Ionians, as reported by Herodotus, is not without its significance in the story: H. iv. 142. “Their cowardice as free men was only equalled by their fidelity as slaves.”
Herodotus himself would be naturally inclined to seize upon a tale which so strikingly confirmed his own estimate of the Ionians.
But is the story true?
The historian Thirlwall suggested that, in its existing form, it is an excerpt from the defence made by Miltiades in answering the charge of “tyranny” brought against him at Athens about the year 493. Such stories are, however, very rarely pure fabrications from beginning to end; and, in accordance with general probability, it is more likely than unlikely that it contains a considerable element of truth. There are, furthermore, certain considerations deducible from evidence outside the story itself which tend to support the view.
Herodotus regards the expedition as the one great disaster of Darius’ career. Regarded as evidence, this is not of itself very important. The story as he told it was intended to point the great moral which runs throughout his history,—that special phase of the great Hellenic idea of the “tragedy” of life in which he most firmly believed. The career of Darius, without this great disaster, would have formed too startling an exception to that divine and natural law of the incontinuity of human fortune which he had so consciously and conspicuously illustrated in his account of the lives of Cambyses, Crœsus, and Polykrates of Samos.
But there are other reasons for supposing that the expedition was not without disaster, rumours of which,—probably, too, emanating from the Greeks at the Ister,—reached the cities of the Propontis.