DAREIOS I.: THIRD PERIOD: FOREIGN WARS.

I. THAT Dareios, after several years of peaceable and useful work, should have deliberately set out on a series of foreign wars, instead of staying at home to enjoy and let his people enjoy their hard-earned prosperity, really seems sheer perversity; unless, as has been suggested, "he felt that for a nation like the Persians war and conquest were a necessity, in order to preserve their energy and escape the danger of becoming effeminate in the enjoyment of wealth."* His thoughts turned quite naturally to the west and north. All that was to be reached in Asia being already under the Persian domination, Europe was now to be brought under it, and of course there was no lack of good reasons, commercial and political, for such a course. In the first place the Black Sea was to be converted into a Persian lake; the nations on its eastern and southern shore obeyed the rule of Susa and Persepolis, and those on the western and northern shores-the Thracians and the Scythiansshould close the circle. Moreover, they were strong, independent, half-barbarous, and might become dangerous neighbors. So Dareios determined, in a vague sort of way, to go over and conquer Scythia. * Justi, "Geschichte des alten Persiens."

He knew the way was long; so it was to Egypt or to Bactria; he knew there were some unusual obstacles-a sea arm and a great wild river: they should be bridged; as for the country and the people, he knew nothing about them, indeed,—but others had submitted, why should not they?

2. In this latter respect the Greeks had greatly the advantage of him.; they did know a good deal about the Scythians and their country. The double line of their colonies which gradually extended along the shores of Thracia and Asia Minor had reached, from river to river, the mouths of the great Thracian river, the ISTER (DANUBE), and those of the numerous Scythian (now Russian) ones, along the northern shore of the Black Sea. These rivers flowed through vast and fertile lands, of which they brought the products straight into Greek hands, enlarging and enriching the Greek storehouses and commercial stations. One of these, OLBIA, at the mouth of the HYPANIS (BUG), grew into a large and luxurious city by nothing but its corn-trade and its fisheries. From all accounts, it must have held very much the place that Odessa now holds, from the same causes and in the same conditions. As Southern Russia now supplies half the world with wheat, so it did then, as far as the "world" went at the time, and the entire export trade was centred in Olbia as it now is in Odessa. The next great station was BYZANTIUM, another Greek colony, situated on the Bosporus, where Constantinople now stands. The ships that had taken their lading of corn at Olbia had to carry them out through the Bosporus, so

Byzantium held then, as it does now, the key of the entire Black-Sea trade. Some seventy years after the time of Herodotus we find from contemporary evidence that 600,000 bushels of Scythian corn went to Athens alone every year, and when Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander, wished to starve Athens, he tried to gain possession of Byzantium. It is probably owing to the importance which the people of the vast region answering to Southern Russia had for the Greeks, both of the colonies and at home, that they took some pains to explore it, and their knowledge of it, as imparted to us by Herodotus, who himself visited Olbia and a portion of the surrounding country, is far less defective than on many much less remote places. Indeed, the descriptions of Herodotus have become more and more the base of all geographical and archæological research on the subject of ancient Russia, and where they bear on climate and the outer features of the country, they are still found amusingly correct.

Then

3. Nothing can be truer than the general remark he makes: "The country has no marvels except its rivers, which are larger and more numerous than those of any other land. These and the vastness of the great plain are worthy of note. again: "The land is level, well-watered, and abounding in pasture; while the rivers which traverse it are almost equal in number to the canals of Egypt. Of these I shall only mention the most famous and such as are navigable to some distance from the sea." He proceeds to describe the five chief rivers of that part of the world—the ISTER (DANUBE), the TYRAS

(DNIESTR), the HYPANIS (BUG), the BORYSTHENES (DNIEPR), the TANAÏS (DON), and a few more which it is not so easy to identify. The Danube he calls "of all the rivers with which we are acquainted the mightiest," and admires its volume of water swelled by so many tributaries, each itself a great river. But of the Dniepr (Borythenes). he speaks with the enthusiasm which that most beautiful and bountiful of streams has never ceased to excite in travellers or its own country people:

"Next to the Ister," he says, it is the greatest of them all, and in my judgment it is the most productive river, not merely in Scythia, excepting only the Nile, with which no stream can possibly compare. It has upon its banks the loveliest and most excellent pasturages for cattle; it contains abundance of the most delicious fish; its water is most pleasant to the taste; its stream is limpid, while all the other rivers near it are muddy; the richest harvests spring up along its course, and, where the ground is not sown, the heaviest crops of grass; while salt forms in great plenty at the mouth without human aid, and large fish are taken in it of the sort called antacai (sturgeon), without any prickly bones, and good for pickling.”

Every word of this applies now, even to that last touch about the sturgeon, which is to our day a favorite fish for pickling. He is not less correct when he speaks of the "Woodland" which stretches by the lower course of the Dniepr, where the river divides into many arms, and which, though not to be compared in thickness with the forests of a more northern tract, presents a refreshing contrast to the absolute barrenness of the surrounding steppes; or when he places the most fertile lands higher up along the course of the river, and describes them as being settled with a nation which he calls "Husbandmen,"

or "Agricultural Scythians," whose pursuit was farming, and who raised most of the corn that was sold at Olbia and exported. Beyond these he places a desert region or steppe-land, ranged over by nomadic Scythians, and there, at no great distance from the river, he tells us the tombs of the Scythian kings were situated. Modern research has proved this particular also to be correct, by discovering and exploring the largest of the innumerable barrows or mounds which there cover the plain, varying its flatness with some undulation, and leading us to think that those steppes served as a burying-ground, not to the kings alone, but to the nation at large.

4. As he gets farther away from the sea-shore and the Greek settlements, his descriptions naturally become less distinct, less accurate, and at last grow quite vague and fabulous in their details. But even then a good many traits remain which are easy to recognize or, at least, to interpret. So his account of the climate, as far as his personal observation goes, is perfectly true to nature as well as amusing with the quaintness of the impression produced on a Greek by the to him unfamiliar phenomenon of a frozen ground:

"has

"The whole district whereof we have discoursed," he says, winters of exceeding rigor. . The frost is so intense, that

water poured upon the ground does not form mud, but if a fire be lighted on it, mud is produced. The sea freezes

At that

season the Scythians make warlike expeditions upon the ice. For winter there is scarcely any rain worth mentioning, while in summer it never gives over raining and thunder comes only in summer, when it is very heavy. winter well, cold as it is

Horses bear the