THE INVASION OF SCYTHIA.
B.C. 513
Darius's authority fully established throughout his
dominions.--The Scythians.--Ancient account of them.--Pictures of
savage life.--Their diversity.--Social instincts of man.--Their
universality.--Moral sentiments of mankind.--Religious
depravity.--Advice of Artabanus.--Emissaries sent forward.--The
petition of Oebazus.--Darius's wanton cruelty.--Place of
rendezvous.--The fleet of galleys.--Darius's march through Asia
Minor.--Monuments.--Arrival at the Bosporus.--The bridge of
boats.--Reward of Mandrocles.--The group of statuary.--The Cyanean
Islands.--Darius makes an excursion to them.--The two
monuments.--Inscriptions on them.--The troops cross the
bridge.--Movements of the fleet.--The River Tearus.--Its wonderful
sources.--The cairn.--Primitive mode of census-taking.--Instinctive
feeling of dependence on a supernatural power.--Strange religious
observance.--Arrival at the Danube.--Orders to destroy the
bridge.--Counsel of the Grecian general.--The bridge is
preserved.--Guard left to protect it.--Singular mode of
reckoning.--Probable reason for employing it.--Darius's determination
to return before the knots should be all untied.
In the reigns of ancient monarchs and conquerors, it often happened
that the first great transaction which called forth their energies was
the suppression of a rebellion within their dominions, and the second,
an expedition against some ferocious and half-savage nations beyond
their frontiers. Darius followed this general example. The suppression
of the Babylonian revolt established his authority throughout the
whole interior of his empire. If that vast, and populous, and wealthy
city was found unable to resist his power, no other smaller province
or capital could hope to succeed in the attempt. The whole empire of
Asia, therefore, from the capital at Susa, out to the extreme limits
and bounds to which Cyrus had extended it, yielded without any further
opposition to his sway. He felt strong in his position, and being
young and ardent in temperament, he experienced a desire to exercise
his strength. For some reason or other, he seems to have been not
quite prepared yet to grapple with the Greeks, and he concluded,
accordingly, first to test his powers in respect to foreign invasion
by a war upon the Scythians. This was an undertaking which required
some courage and resolution; for it was while making an incursion into
the country of the Scythians that Cyrus, his renowned predecessor, and
the founder of the Persian empire, had fallen.
The term Scythians seems to have been a generic designation, applied
indiscriminately to vast hordes of half-savage tribes occupying those
wild and inhospitable regions of the north, that extended along the
shores of the Black and Caspian Seas, and the banks of the Danube. The
accounts which are given by the ancient historians of the manners and
customs of these people, are very inconsistent and contradictory; as,
in fact, the accounts of the characters of savages, and of the habits
and usages of savage life, have always been in every age. It is very
little that any one cultivated observer can really know, in respect to
the phases of character, the thoughts and feelings, the sentiments,
the principles and the faith, and even the modes of life, that prevail
among uncivilized aborigines living in forests, or roaming wildly over
uninclosed and trackless plains. Of those who have the opportunity to
observe them, accordingly, some extol, in the highest degree, their
rude but charming simplicity, their truth and faithfulness, the
strength of their filial and conjugal affection, and their superiority
of spirit in rising above the sordid sentiments and gross vices of
civilization. They are not the slaves, these writers say, of appetite
and passion. They have no inordinate love of gain; they are patient in
enduring suffering, grateful for kindness received, and inflexibly
firm in their adherence to the principles of honor and duty. Others,
on the other hand, see in savage life nothing but treachery, cruelty,
brutality, and crime. Man in his native state, as they imagine, is but
a beast, with just intelligence enough to give effect to his
depravity. Without natural affection, without truth, without a sense
of justice, or the means of making law a substitute for it, he lives
in a scene of continual conflict, in which the rights of the weak and
the defenseless are always overborne by brutal and tyrannical power.
The explanation of this diversity is doubtless this, that in savage
life, as well as in every other state of human society, all the
varieties of human conduct and character are exhibited; and the
attention of each observer is attracted to the one or to the other
class of phenomena, according to the circumstances in which he is
placed when he makes his observations, or the mood of mind which
prevails within him when he records them. There must be the usual
virtues of social life, existing in a greater or less degree, in all
human communities; for such principles as a knowledge of the
distinction of right and wrong, the idea of property and of individual
rights, the obligation resting on every one to respect them, the sense
of justice, and of the ill desert of violence and cruelty, are all
_universal instincts of the human soul_, as universal and as essential
to humanity as maternal or filial affection, or the principle of
conjugal love. They were established by the great Author of nature as
constituent elements in the formation of man. Man could not continue
to exist, as a gregarious animal, without them. It would accordingly
be as impossible to find a community of men without these moral
sentiments generally prevalent among them, as to find vultures or
tigers that did not like to pursue and take their prey, or deer
without a propensity to fly from danger. The laws and usages of
civilized society are the expression and the result of these
sentiments, not the origin and foundation of them; and violence,
cruelty, and crime are the exceptions to their operation, very few, in
all communities, savage or civilized, in comparison with the vast
preponderance of cases in which they are obeyed.
This view of the native constitution of the human character, which it
is obvious, on very slight reflection, must be true, is not at all
opposed, as it might at first appear to be, by the doctrine of the
theological writers in the Christian Church in respect to the native
depravity of man; for the depravity here referred to is a religious
depravity, an alienation of the heart from God, and a rebellious and
insubmissive spirit in respect to his law. Neither the Scriptures nor
the theological writers who interpret them ever call in question the
universal existence and prevalence of those instincts that are
essential to the social welfare of man.
But we must return to the Scythians.
The tribes which Darius proposed to attack occupied the countries
north of the Danube. His route, therefore, for the invasion of their
territories would lead him through Asia Minor, thence across the
Hellespont or the Bosporus into Thrace, and from Thrace across the
Danube. It was a distant and dangerous expedition.
Darius had a brother named Artabanus. Artabanus was of opinion that
the enterprise which the king was contemplating was not only distant
and dangerous, but that the country of the Scythians was of so little
value that the end to be obtained by success would be wholly
inadequate to compensate for the exertions, the costs, and the hazards
which he must necessarily incur in the prosecution of it. But Darius
was not to be dissuaded. He thanked his brother for his advice, but
ordered the preparations for the expedition to go on.
He sent emissaries forward, in advance, over the route that his army
was destined to take, transmitting orders to the several provinces
which were situated on the line of his march to prepare the way for
the passage of his troops. Among other preparations, they were to
construct a bridge of boats across the Bosporus at Chalcedon. This
work was intrusted to the charge and superintendence of an engineer of
Samos named Mandrocles. The people of the provinces were also to
furnish bodies of troops, both infantry and cavalry, to join the army
on its march.
The soldiers that were enlisted to go on this remote and dangerous
expedition joined the army, as is usual in such cases, some willingly,
from love of adventure, or the hope of opportunities for plunder, and
for that unbridled indulgence of appetite and passion which soldiers
so often look forward to as a part of their reward; others from hard
compulsion, being required to leave friends and home, and all that
they held dear, under the terror of a stern and despotic edict which
they dared not disobey. It was even dangerous to ask for exemption.
As an instance of this, it is said that there was a Persian named
Oebazus, who had three sons that had been drafted into the army.
Oebazus, desirous of not being left wholly alone in his old age,
made a request to the king that he would allow one of the sons to
remain at home with his father. Darius appeared to receive this
petition favorably. He told Oebazus that the request was so very
modest and considerate that he would grant more than he asked. He
would allow all three of his sons to remain with him. Oebazus
retired from the king's presence overjoyed at the thought that his
family was not to be separated at all. Darius ordered his guards to
kill the three young men, and to send the dead bodies home, with a
message to their father that his sons were restored to him, released
forever from all obligation to serve the king.
The place of general rendezvous for the various forces which were to
join in the expedition, consisting of the army which marched with
Darius from Susa, and also of the troops and ships which the maritime
provinces of Asia Minor were to supply on the way, was on the shores
of the Bosporus, at the point where Mandrocles had constructed the
bridge.[G] The people of Ionia, a region situated in Asia Minor, on
the shores of the AEgean Sea, had been ordered to furnish a fleet of
galleys, which they were to build and equip, and then send to the
bridge. The destination of this fleet was to the Danube. It was to
pass up the Bosporus into the Euxine Sea, now called the Black Sea,
and thence into the mouth of the river. After ascending the Danube to
a certain point, the men were to land and build a bridge across that
river, using, very probably, their galleys for this purpose. In the
mean time, the army was to cross the Bosporus by the bridge which had
been erected there by Mandrocles, and pursue their way toward the
Danube by land, through the kingdom of Thrace. By this arrangement, it
was supposed that the bridge across the Danube would be ready by the
time that the main body of the army arrived on the banks of the river.
The idea of thus building in Asia Minor a bridge for the Danube, in
the form of a vast fleet of galleys, to be sent round through the
Black Sea to the mouths of the river, and thence up the river to its
place of destination, was original and grand. It strikingly marks the
military genius and skill which gave the Greeks so extended a fame,
for it was by the Greeks that the exploit was to be performed.
[Footnote G: For the track of Darius on this expedition, see the map
at the commencement of this volume.]
Darius marched magnificently through Asia Minor, on his way to the
Bosporus, at the head of an army of seventy thousand men. He moved
slowly, and the engineers and architects that accompanied him built
columns and monuments here and there, as he advanced, to commemorate
his progress. These structures were covered with inscriptions, which
ascribed to Darius, as the leader of the enterprise, the most
extravagant praise. At length the splendid array arrived at the place
of rendezvous on the Bosporus, where there was soon presented to view
a very grand and imposing scene.
The bridge of boats was completed, and the Ionian fleet, consisting of
six hundred galleys, was at anchor near it in the stream. Long lines
of tents were pitched upon the shore, and thousands of horsemen and of
foot soldiers were drawn up in array, their banners flying, and their
armor glittering in the sun, and all eager to see and to welcome the
illustrious sovereign who had come, with so much pomp and splendor, to
take them under his command. The banks of the Bosporus were
picturesque and high, and all the eminences were crowded with
spectators, to witness the imposing magnificence of the spectacle.
Darius encamped his army on the shore, and began to make the
preparations necessary for the final departure of the expedition. He
had been thus far within his own dominions. He was now, however, to
pass into another quarter of the globe, to plunge into new and unknown
dangers, among hostile, savage, and ferocious tribes. It was right
that he should pause until he had considered well his plans, and
secured attention to every point which could influence success.
He first examined the bridge of boats. He was very much pleased with
the construction of it. He commended Mandrocles for his skill and
fidelity in the highest terms, and loaded him with rewards and honors.
Mandrocles used the money which Darius thus gave him in employing an
artist to form a piece of statuary which should at once commemorate
the building of the bridge and give to Darius the glory of it. The
group represented the Bosporus with the bridge thrown over it, and the
king on his throne reviewing his troops as they passed over the
structure. This statuary was placed, when finished, in a temple in
Greece, where it was universally admired. Darius was very much pleased
both with the idea of this sculpture on the part of Mandrocles, and
with the execution of it by the artist. He gave the bridge builder new
rewards; he recompensed the artist, also, with similar munificence. He
was pleased that they had contrived so happy a way of at the same time
commemorating the bridging of the Bosporus and rendering exalted honor
to him.
The bridge was situated about the middle of the Bosporus; and as the
strait itself is about eighteen miles long, it was nine miles from the
bridge to the Euxine Sea. There is a small group of islands near the
mouth of this strait, where it opens into the sea, which were called
in those days the Cyanean Islands. They were famed in the time of
Darius for having once been floating islands, and enchanted. Their
supernatural properties had disappeared, but there was one attraction
which still pertained to them. They were situated beyond the limits of
the strait, and the visitor who landed upon them could take his
station on some picturesque cliff or smiling hill, and extend his view
far and wide over the blue waters of the Euxine Sea.
Darius determined to make an excursion to these islands while the
fleet and the army were completing their preparations at the bridge.
He embarked, accordingly, on board a splendid galley, and, sailing
along the Bosporus till he reached the sea, he landed on one of the
islands. There was a temple there, consecrated to one of the Grecian
deities. Darius, accompanied by his attendants and followers, ascended
to this temple, and, taking a seat which had been provided for him
there, he surveyed the broad expanse of water which extended like an
ocean before him, and contemplated the grandeur of the scene with the
greatest admiration and delight.
At length he returned to the bridge, where he found the preparations
for the movement of the fleet and of the army nearly completed. He
determined, before leaving the Asiatic shores, to erect a monument to
commemorate his expedition, on the spot from which he was to take his
final departure. He accordingly directed two columns of white marble
to be reared, and inscriptions to be cut upon them, giving such
particulars in respect to the expedition as it was desirable thus to
preserve. These inscriptions contained his own name in very
conspicuous characters as the leader of the enterprise; also an
enumeration of the various nations that had contributed to form his
army, with the numbers which each had furnished. There was a record of
corresponding particulars, too, in respect to the fleet. The
inscriptions were the same upon the two columns, except that upon the
one it was written in the Assyrian tongue, which was the general
language of the Persian empire, and upon the other in the Greek. Thus
the two monuments were intended, the one for the Asiatic, and the
other for the European world.
At length the day of departure arrived. The fleet set sail, and the
immense train of the army put itself in motion to cross the
bridge.[H] The fleet went on through the Bosporus to the Euxine, and
thence along the western coast of that sea till it reached the mouths
of the Danube. The ships entered the river by one of the branches
which form the delta of the stream, and ascended for two days. This
carried them above the ramifications into which the river divides
itself at its mouth, to a spot where the current was confined to a
single channel, and where the banks were firm. Here they landed, and
while one part of the force which they had brought were occupied in
organizing guards and providing defenses to protect the ground, the
remainder commenced the work of arranging the vessels of the fleet,
side by side, across the stream, to form the bridge.
[Footnote H: See Frontispiece.]
In the mean time, Darius, leading the great body of the army, advanced
from the Bosporus by land. The country which the troops thus traversed
was Thrace. They met with various adventures as they proceeded, and
saw, as the accounts of the expedition state, many strange and
marvelous phenomena. They came, for example, to the sources of a very
wonderful river, which flows west and south toward the AEgean Sea. The
name of the river was the Tearus. It came from thirty-eight springs,
all issuing from the same rock, some hot and some cold. The waters of
the stream which was produced by the mingling of these fountains were
pure, limpid, and delicious, and were possessed of remarkable
medicinal properties, being efficacious for the cure of various
diseases. Darius was so much pleased with this river, that his army
halted to refresh themselves with its waters, and he caused one of his
monuments to be erected on the spot, the inscription of which
contained not only the usual memorials of the march, but also a
tribute to the salubrity of the waters of this magical stream.
At one point in the course of the march through Thrace, Darius
conceived the idea of varying the construction of his line of
monuments by building a cairn. A cairn is a heap of stones, such as is
reared in the mountains of Scotland and of Switzerland by the
voluntary additions of every passer by, to commemorate a spot marked
as the scene of some accident or disaster. As each guide finishes the
story of the incident in the hearing of the party which he conducts,
each tourist who has listened to it adds his stone to the heap, until
the rude structure attains sometimes to a very considerable size.
Darius, fixing upon a suitable spot near one of his encampments,
commanded every soldier in the army to bring a stone and place it on
the pile. A vast mound rose rapidly from these contributions, which,
when completed, not only commemorated the march of the army, but
denoted, also, by the immense number of the stones entering into the
composition of the pile, the countless multitude of soldiers that
formed the expedition.
There was a story told to Darius, as he was traversing these regions,
of a certain king, reigning over some one of the nations that occupied
them, who wished to make an enumeration of the inhabitants of his
realm. The mode which he adopted was to require every man in his
dominions to send him an arrow head. When all the arrow heads were in,
the vast collection was counted by the official arithmeticians, and
the total of the population was thus attained. The arrow heads were
then laid together in a sort of monumental pile. It was, perhaps, this
primitive mode of census-taking which suggested to Darius the idea of
his cairn.
There was a tribe of barbarians through whose dominions Darius passed
on his way from the Bosporus to the Danube, that observed a custom in
their religious worship, which, though in itself of a shocking
character, suggests reflections of salutary influence for our own
minds. There is a universal instinct in the human heart, leading it
strongly to feel the need of help from an unseen and supernatural
world in its sorrows and trials; and it is almost always the case that
rude and savage nations, in their attempts to obtain this spiritual
aid, connect the idea of personal privation and suffering on their
part, self inflicted if necessary, as a means of seeking it. It seems
as if the instinctive conviction of personal guilt, which associates
itself so naturally and so strongly in the minds of men with all
conceptions of the unseen world and of divine power, demands something
like an expiation as an essential prerequisite to obtaining audience
and acceptance with the King of Heaven. The tribe of savages above
referred to manifested this feeling by a dreadful observance. Once in
every five years they were accustomed to choose by lot, with solemn
ceremonies, one of their number, to be sent as a legate or embassador
to their god. The victim, when chosen, was laid down upon the ground
in the midst of the vast assembly convened to witness the rite, while
officers designated for the purpose stood by, armed with javelins.
Other men, selected for their great personal strength, then took the
man from the ground by the hands and feet, and swinging him to and fro
three times to gain momentum, they threw him with all their force into
the air, and the armed men, when he came down, caught him on the
points of their javelins. If he was killed by this dreadful
impalement, all was right. He would bear the message of the wants and
necessities of the tribe to their god, and they might reasonably
expect a favorable reception. If, on the other hand, he did not die,
he was thought to be rejected by the god as a wicked man and an
unsuitable messenger. The unfortunate convalescent was, in such cases,
dismissed in disgrace, and another messenger chosen.
The army of Darius reached the banks of the Danube at last, and they
found that the fleet of the Ionians had attained the point agreed upon
before them, and were awaiting their arrival. The vessels were soon
arranged in the form of a bridge across the stream, and as there was
no enemy at hand to embarrass them, the army soon accomplished the
passage. They were now fairly in the Scythian country, and
immediately began their preparations to advance and meet the foe.
Darius gave orders to have the bridge broken up, and the galleys
abandoned and destroyed, as he chose rather to take with him the whole
of his force, than to leave a guard behind sufficient to protect this
shipping. These orders were about to be executed, when a Grecian
general, who was attached to one of the bodies of troops which were
furnished from the provinces of Asia Minor, asked leave to speak to
the king. The king granted him an audience, when he expressed his
opinion as follows:
"It seems to me to be more prudent, sire, to leave the bridge as it
is, under the care of those who have constructed it, as it may be that
we shall have occasion to use it on our return. I do not recommend the
preservation of it as a means of securing a retreat, for, in case we
meet the Scythians at all, I am confident of victory; but our enemy
consists of wandering hordes who have no fixed habitation, and their
country is entirely without cities or posts of any kind which they
will feel any strong interest in defending, and thus it is possible
that we may not be able to find any enemy to combat. Besides, if we
succeed in our enterprise as completely as we can desire, it will be
important, on many accounts, to preserve an open and free
communication with the countries behind us."
The king approved of this counsel, and countermanded his orders for
the destruction of the bridge. He directed that the Ionian forces that
had accompanied the fleet should remain at the river to guard the
bridge. They were to remain thus on guard for two months, and then, if
Darius did not return, and if they heard no tidings of him, they were
at liberty to leave their post, and to go back, with their galleys, to
their own land again.
Two months would seem to be a very short time to await the return of
an army going on such an expedition into boundless and trackless
wilds. There can, however, scarcely be any accidental error in the
statement of the time, as the mode which Darius adopted to enable the
guard thus left at the bridge to keep their reckoning was a very
singular one, and it is very particularly described. He took a cord,
it is said, and tied sixty knots in it. This cord he delivered to the
Ionian chiefs who were to be left in charge of the bridge, directing
them to untie one of the knots every day. When the cord should
become, by this process, wholly free, the detachment were also at
liberty. They might thereafter, at any time, abandon the post
intrusted to them, and return to their homes.
We can not suppose that military men, capable of organizing a force of
seventy thousand troops for so distant an expedition, and possessed of
sufficient science and skill to bridge the Bosporus and the Danube,
could have been under any necessity of adopting so childish a method
as this as a real reliance in regulating their operations. It must be
recollected, however, that, though the commanders in these ancient
days were intelligent and strong-minded men, the common soldiers were
but children both in intellect and in ideas; and it was the custom of
all great commanders to employ outward and visible symbols to
influence and govern them. The sense of loneliness and desertion which
such soldiers would naturally feel in being left in solitude on the
banks of the river, would be much diminished by seeing before them a
marked and definite termination to the period of their stay, and to
have, in the cord hanging up in their camp, a visible token that the
remnant of time that remained was steadily diminishing day by day;
while, in the mean time, Darius was fully determined that, long before
the knots should be all untied, he would return to the river.