Hello, χαίρετε, and welcome to Epic Greek History episode 29, which is Part 2 of Epic Persian History. I’m Scott Emmons. 

In a well-known passage, Herodotus makes an interesting observation about the Persian educational tradition. From the age of five to twenty, the Persians teach their sons just three things: to ride horses, to be expert archers, and to tell the truth. That’s a good jumping-off point for us today, because all three of those disciplines have their roles to play in the way this episode will unfold. 

The first part of this series took us up to the death of Cyrus the Great in 530 BCE. Power then passed relatively smoothly, as far as we can tell, to his son Cambyses. The succession seems to have been well planned, since Cambyses already held the title “King of Babylon,” so he was essentially the co-regent with his father in that part of the empire. Cyrus had conquered a vast amount of territory, and he must have dreamed of taking over the immensely wealthy and ancient kingdom of Egypt, but he died before he could make that happen. And so, when Cambyses became king, the conquest of Egypt became his baby. 

But it didn’t happen right away. It took four years of careful planning. For one thing, attacks by both land and sea would greatly increase the chances of success. The Persians had never been a seagoing people, but now they had the Phoenicians under their power, which meant they had a powerful fleet. One of the challenges for Cambyses was that the route from ancient Palestine to Egypt included harsh desert country that was very difficult for an army to cross. As part of his preparations, Cambyses struck an agreement with an Arab chief to provide safe conduct and, crucially, to send a supply train of camels to provide water for the troops.  

During the run-up to the invasion, you may remember that the Egyptian king was Amasis II, who had a long and successful reign. But he died in 526 BCE, leaving his son Psammetichus III to face the Persian forces. His name had more than one Greek form, so if you’re following along in Herodotus, you’ll see that he calls him Psammenitus. It’s hard to say if the Egyptians would have fared better if the very competent and more experienced Amasis had been in charge. But this was the hand Psammetichus was dealt. The Persian army engaged the Egyptians at a place called Pelusium at one of the mouths of the Nile delta. It was a decisive victory for the Persians. Herodotus, who traveled extensively in Egypt, reports that the bones of dead combatants could still be seen there in the dry Egyptian sand. 

The routed Egyptian army fled to the city of Memphis and held out for a while, but soon it fell to the Persians. That was the death knell for Egypt as an independent kingdom, at least in the ancient world. By the end of the year, Cambyses had control of upper and lower Egypt, and he took on the title of Pharaoh. Neighboring territories like Libya and the Greek city of Cyrene saw the writing on the wall, and they surrendered to him without a fight. Up to this point, the Egyptian invasion was a resounding success.

But Cambyses, being an Achaemenid king, wasn’t going to be satisfied with conquering Egypt. His next big project would be to move farther south in Africa and invade what the Greeks called Ethiopia. That doesn’t have much to do with the modern nation state of Ethiopia. What Cambyses was after was the kingdom of Kush, south of Egypt along the Nile. Today that area corresponds roughly to southern Egypt and northern Sudan. Now, up to this point, Herodotus’ account of Cambyses’ Egyptian venture has been pretty reliable. But this is where he and historical fact start to part company. As he tells it, Cambyses rushed into an Ethiopian invasion without even bothering to make sure his army would be properly provisioned. That seems out of character for a king who’d planned his Egyptian invasion so carefully. Herodotus’ explanation is that he was insane, and he completely snapped after some spies he’d sent to Ethiopia came back with reports of arrogant things the king had said about the Persians.  

So, in Herodotus’ narrative, the expedition was a complete disaster. The army quickly ran out of food and resorted to eating the pack animals. A more clear-headed leader might have taken that as a sign that he should turn back, but in the immortal words of Pete Seeger, “the big fool said to push on.” Eventually, the men were so starved that they started drawing lots to decide which of them would be the next meal for the rest. That freaked Cambyses out so much that he finally decided to abort the mission. He retreated to Egyptian Thebes and from there to Memphis with a seriously decimated army.  

On a side note, Herodotus reports that Cambyses also sent an army of 50,000 men to destroy the oracle of Ammon and enslave the people there. More insanity on his part. But a sudden sandstorm came up and buried that entire army, so it was never seen again. That story gave rise to a legend of the Lost Army of Cambyses, which has endured up to the present day. There have been repeated attempts to find the lost army, but nothing conclusive has turned up yet.

Well, that’s the Ethiopian expedition as Herodotus tells it. But there’s evidence that it wasn’t quite the unmitigated disaster that he describes. For one thing, there’s not much in Egyptian records to support the idea of a total catastrophe. It’s hard to see how Cambyses could have kept control of Egypt if his army had been so badly weakened. And a few years later, in the reign of the next king, Darius, the people of Kush are listed as subjects of the empire. Reliefs in Persepolis show African people bringing elephant tusks and other gifts to the king. So the kingdom of Kush seems to have been within the Persian sphere of influence, even if it never became a province of the empire. 

So why would Herodotus’ account be so far off the mark? One key thing he tells us is that Cambyses didn’t take his Greek troops on the Ethiopian expedition. Which means Herodotus had to rely mainly on Egyptian sources for his account of it. Many of those sources were priests at the temples he visited, and those priests had a major bone to pick with Cambyses. We know from Egyptian records that he tried to address a problem that had plagued the pharaohs for generations — that the temple priesthoods carried such clout that they could demand an outsized share of state revenues. Cambyses said, “There’s a new pharaoh in town, and some of you temple priests are going to have to make do with a lot less.” So Herodotus seems to have gotten a lot of his information from people who hated Cambyses. 

The result is that his account of Cambyses’ reign in Egypt is in large part a series of stories to illustrate his madness and his cruelty. This part of the Histories reads like one of those salacious Roman biographers detailing the crimes of a particularly odious emperor. And some of those stories can be fact-checked against Egyptian records. The prime example is the story of Cambyses’ extreme sacrilege against the god Apis. From time to time, Apis would come to Memphis and manifest as a sacred bull that was recognizable from certain markings. It was all black, with a white square on its forehead, an image of an eagle on its back, and a few other distinctive signs. Whenever the god appeared in that form, it was cause for a great celebration in Memphis. Well, the story is that this was going on when Cambyses got back from Ethiopia, and he thought the people were celebrating the failure of his campaign. When the priests explained about Apis, he ordered the bull to be brought to him he went after it with his sword. He tried get it in the stomach, but he missed and slashed one of its thighs instead. The blood came gushing out, and Cambyses mocked the Egyptians for having a god who would bleed. The bull died shortly after, and the priests of Apis gave it secret burial honors so Cambyses wouldn’t find out. 

But Egyptian records show that Herodotus’ account is fake news. Inscriptions from Memphis show that the Apis bull died shortly after Cambyses took the city. It received the traditional 70 days of mourning, and Cambyses as pharaoh dedicated the sarcophagus that held its remains. Other official records show that he generally followed the Persian policy of honoring local gods and religious traditions. 

So, when we read about Cambyses’ madness, his impiety and cruelty, a lot of it can be taken with a grain of salt. On the other hand, in his time, he does seem to have been considered a harsh ruler, and many of the Persian nobles passed around negative stories about him. One of those was that he’d ordered the murder of his own brother Bardiya, who’d been left in Persia. That story is part of a convoluted web of events, full of intrigue and deception, that will make up the second part of this episode.  

But now let’s take a short break. This is an especially exciting episode for me, because it marks the one-year anniversary of Epic Greek History. Technically, the anniversary was two days ago, July 13th. It’s been a blast producing this podcast, and I’ve been happy to see slow but steady growth in the listening audience. I started this as a free resource, and I plan to keep it that way. But as always, I’d like to thank those individuals who’ve helped defray the cost of production through paid subscriptions. If you’d like to join that group, the one way to do it is to go to the website at www.epicgreekhistory.com, hit that “Support” button, and select a contribution level starting at just three dollars a month. And with that, we’re off to… 

[SFX: A Moment of Greek!]

Since I started with a quote that mentioned the importance of archery in Persian culture, I’ll take it as my cue to trace a surprising etymology from Greek to English. The Greek word for a bow is “toxon.” And that’s the root of our word “toxic.” How did it come to have such a different meaning? Well, the Greek adjective “toxikos” means “having to do with archery.” One meaning of the neuter form “toxikon” in some contexts was a poison applied to the tips of arrows. That came into English by way of Latin, and so we get words like “toxic” and “toxin.” It’s a curious etymology, because neither the Greeks nor the Persians commonly used poisoned arrows in warfare — although they did associate the practice with some other peoples, like the Scythians. So from a word for “bow,” we get toxic waste, toxic relationships, toxic assets, toxic work environments, toxic masculinity, toxic positivity, and if this is getting to be too much… toxic etymology. And that’s today’s moment of Greek. 

[SFX]

I’ve said it before… my standard practice in this podcast is to present history as the ancient authors tell it, unless there are good reasons not to believe them. Sticking to those sources usually gets us as close as possible to a standard view, even though just about everything in ancient history is debated. But we’re now coming to a series of crucial events in Persian history where the ancient writings, both Greek and Persian, are highly suspect. The events I’m talking about are the death of Cambyses and the accession of the next king, Darius. Scholars hold a variety of views, and I certainly can’t claim to have the absolute truth. So I’m going to lay out what I think is most probably what really happened, and then we’ll look at what the ancient sources say and their possible reasons for saying it. 

To start, I need to introduce two new characters. The first is Darius, who — spoiler alert! — will ultimately become king. He first appears in the narrative as a young nobleman in Cambyses’ entourage. He’s distantly related, by marriage, to the line of Cyrus the Great. He holds the position of Cambyses’ lance-bearer or spear-bearer. Which may not sound very impressive to our ears, but it’s a position of high honor in the king’s court. It suggests that he has regular contact with Cambyses, that he’s in the inner circle. The other new character is Cambyses’ brother, Bardiya. Both brothers are sons of Cyrus. Bardiya, the younger one, has been left behind in Persia to manage things while Cambyses is off conquering Egypt. Now, just to make things extra confusing, Herodotus calls Bardiya by the name Smerdis. But for once, I’m going to use the Persian name rather than the Greek one, only because that’s what most modern historians seem to do. 

As we’ve already seen, there was some discontent in the empire because of Cambyses’ harsh rule. Bardiya saw his chance to stir up a rebellion and snatch the throne away from his brother. When I say that, bear in mind that I’m not following an ancient source. This is a reconstruction of events. Bardiya sent out a decree that the provinces should now recognize him as king instead of Cambyses. And to make himself popular with the subject peoples, he decreed that for the next three years, the provinces would be exempt from paying tribute and from military service. So before long, much of the empire was switching allegiance to Bardiya.

When reports of those rebellions reached Cambyses, he had to get his army back to Persia as soon as possible. And at some point during his march through ancient Syria, he died. The story Herodotus gives us is that at one moment, when things were especially alarming, he was in such a hurry to mount his horse that he suffered a freak accident. The sheath fell off his dagger, which then cut a deep gash in his thigh. Within a few days gangrene set in, and he died. Maybe it happened that way. But it seems a little suspicious. Persian nobles were expert horsemen practically from birth. So it seems far-fetched to me that Cambyses would have gravely wounded himself saddling up. This account of his death is also wrapped up in all kinds of legend and traditions about divine justice. Herodotus says the wound in the king’s thigh was in the exact spot where he’d wounded the Apis bull. I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure, but for me, there’s some doubt that his death was an accident. We’ll come back to that point a little later.

Well, soon after the death of Cambyses, his lance-bearer Darius fell in with a group of six other high-ranking noblemen who plotted to overthrow Bardiya. By the rules of succession, Bardiya, as the remaining son of Cyrus, would naturally be next in line for the throne. But since he had rebelled against Cambyses, the conspirators could make him out to be a usurper. According to Herodotus, a man named Otanes was the one who set the plot in motion, but Darius soon took a leading role. On his recommendation, they decided their best chance of success was to move very quickly and take Bardiya by surprise.  

The attack took place at a fortress called Sikayauvatish in the Median region of Nisaea. I’m sure I’m butchering the pronunciation of that, so please bear with me. Sikayauvatish may have been a summer residence for Bardiya, or it may have been temporary quarters on his way back from the Median capital of Ecbatana, where Persian kings often stayed during the summer months. In any case, the conspirators decided that they’d rely on their high rank and boldness to get inside the fortress. They were all men of the highest class, so when they told the guards they had urgent business to discuss with the king, they were easily waved through. Once they were in, they broke into an inner chamber where a battle ensued with Bardiya and his attendants.  

Ancient historians loved to include colorful details when they narrated dramatic events like this one. In Herodotus’ version, one of the conspirators, a man named Gobryas, wrestled Bardiya to the ground and Darius drew his dagger but hesitated to strike because it was so dark he couldn’t tell which one he’d be stabbing. Gobryas yelled, “Then run us both through!” Darius attacked, and as luck would have it, he got the right guy. There must have been dozens of variations of the story floating around. In the version by Ctesias, the conspirators found Bardiya in his bedroom, where he was with a concubine. And when he was attacked, he tried to defend himself with a broken chair leg. Some Greek authors even report that it was Darius’ brother Artaphernes who did the actual killing. We’ll never know all the specifics. But however it went down, that was the end of Bardiya. 

After the deed was done, the conspirators staged a ritual to decide which one of them would be the next king. It may be significant that this all happened in Nisaea, which was the breeding ground for those prized Median horses. Because the ritual was that the group would ride out at dawn, and the first time one of the horses whinnied, that would be a divine sign that its owner should be the king. The story that’s come down to us, again from Herodotus, is that Darius fixed it by having his groom lead his horse out to the plain the night before and let him mate with a mare. So the next morning, when he reached that spot, the horse whinnied. My guess is that it was predetermined, that the conspirators had already cut their deals, and the ritual was a way of getting the divine stamp of approval. But the upshot is that Darius became the new king of the Persian Empire.  

Now, the central fact in the account I’ve just given — that Darius and his fellow conspirators assassinated Bardiya — is not what the ancient sources tell us. This is a very unusual case, because, in addition to Herodotus and other Greek authors, we actually have Darius’ own words telling his side of the story. Later in his reign, he had an enormous monument carved into a cliff face at a place called Bisitun, or alternatively Behistun, near where the attack took place. It includes a huge relief carving of Darius with his vanquished enemies, accompanied by extensive inscriptions chronicling his deeds. In this Bisitun inscription, as it’s called, Darius tells us that he didn’t kill Bardiya at all. Bardiya had been killed years before on the orders of Cambyses. But his death had been kept secret. And since no one knew that Bardiya was dead, a Magian by the name of Gaumata stole his identity and ruled as a false king. This imposter was the man Darius killed. Far from assassinating the king, he had saved the Persian monarchy from a pretender. 

Now, I’m guessing most listeners would agree with me that, at the very least, this story smells very fishy. But Darius insists that it’s the truth. I’ll quote a few key lines from the inscription. The translation is from a book called A History of Ancient Persia by Maria Brosius. Quote: 

When Cambyses had set out for Egypt, the people became disloyal. The Lie grew greatly in the land, in Persia, Media, and the other countries. Unquote 

A few lines later, he introduces the imposter Gaumata and tells how he deceived the people. Quote: 

He lied to the people thus: “I am Bardiya, the son of Cyrus, the brother of Cambyses.” Afterwards, all the people rebelled against Cambyses and went over to him, both Persia and Media, and the other countries. He seized the kingship. Unquote 

Notice how emphatic Darius is about the reign of Gaumata being founded on lies. “The Lie grew greatly in the land.” Gaumata “lied to the people,” claiming to be Bardiya. At this point, you might recall the lines from Herodotus that I quoted at the start of the episode. Persians were taught from childhood to ride horses, to draw the bow, and to tell the truth. In Persian culture, truth telling was much more than a human virtue. It had deep religious and cosmic implications. The Old Persian word that’s usually translated as “truth” is “Arta.” It means truth in the sense of what exists, what’s real. But it also has the connotation of “right” or “good order.” It’s a principle that holds the cosmos together and keeps it operating as it should. In Zoroastrian religion, the great god Ahura Mazda imbued the universe with Arta, truth, to give it order. Its opposite was Drauga, the Lie, which was in constant conflict with Arta. So when Darius talks about putting down the Lie, he’s talking about something the Persians took very seriously. 

The Bisitun inscription went up years after Darius took the throne. It records how he had to put down multiple rebellions in the year after his accession. The relief carving on the cliff side shows Darius trampling his enemy Gaumata under foot, while triumphantly facing nine captives in chains, the so-called “liar kings” who opposed him. Darius proclaims his “truth” so often and so emphatically, it starts to sound like he’s overcompensating. This is a familiar pattern. In the heyday of the Soviet Union, the official newspaper of the Communist Party was called Pravda, the Russian word for truth. Publications pushing a particular political agenda routinely position themselves as the purveyors of truth, as opposed to all those others that are lying to you. Ironically, when you see an outlet called Pravda or Truthout or, Truth Social, it’s a good indication that there’s some serious lying going on.  

So I have to imagine there was some real cognitive dissonance among the Persian nobility, who’d been taught all their lives that truth was sacred, when they had to swallow this story that the man they’d known as Bardiya was not the son of Cyrus but a Magian imposter. As for Darius, his only option was to hammer his talking points relentlessly. If he’d left any hint that his story was anything less than Ahura Mazda’s own truth, that would cast him as an agent of evil. The sense I get is that he was saying, “This is the truth… and you’d better believe it if you know what’s good for you.” He made sure that his official version was known far and wide. The Bisitun inscription was written in three languages: Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian. In one paragraph, he says he’s sent out copies of the text to all parts of the empire. And that part we know is true, because pieces of it have been found on clay from Babylon and papyrus from Egypt. 

Since that official version of events was distributed throughout the empire, it’s no wonder that the broad outlines of Herodotus’ narrative agree with it. There are some discrepancies. Herodotus doesn’t know the name of Gaumata, the imposter. His name for Bardiya is Smerdis, and he tells us that, coincidentally, the Magian imposter was also named Smerdis — and looked exactly like the real one. In his telling, the false Smerdis has a brother who helps him seize power and maintain it through deception. Although it’s never stated explicitly, I think there’s an implication that the imposter was playing what you could call “Magi mind tricks” so that even his closest friends and family were fooled. 

In addition to pushing this narrative of slaying the liar king, Darius did everything he could to secure his position. He had the obvious problem that he wasn’t in line to inherit the throne. So in the first paragraph of the Bisitun inscription, he fudged his ancestry, making himself out to be the ninth in a succession of Achaemenid kings. Beyond that, he made some strategic choices in marriage. Neither Cambyses nor his brother Bardiya had sons. But they had two sisters, Atossa and Arystone, both daughters of Cyrus. If they married other Persian noblemen, their sons would be direct descendants of Cyrus and could have a stronger claim to the throne than Darius. He solved that problem by marrying both of them. And he did the same with a few other highborn women who might pose the same threat. When it came to securing his position as the king, Darius covered all the bases. 

That will take us to our second break. When we pick up again, we’ll look at how Darius governed and how his story begins to dovetail with Greek history. But first…

[SFX: Random Facts!] 

Today’s random fact isn’t really random, because I’m going back to look at one more detail from the Bisitun inscription. For that matter, it’s more of a suspicion than a fact. But when Darius says Cambyses died, he adds a phrase that means something like “by his own death.” I don’t read Old Persian or Elamite or Akkadian, so I have to rely on translations by scholars who hopefully know what they’re doing. To us, “by his own death” may sound like suicide, but the general consensus is that it means he died a natural death — or a death that no one else brought about. Why would Darius include that unless he was countering rumors that Cambyses had been murdered? My guess is that Darius, who was in Cambyses’ inner circle, engineered his death. But there’s no proof. All I can say is I think it’s likely. And that’s today’s random… speculation.

[SFX] 

Up to this point, Darius has come across as an extremely ambitious and daring individual who’d stop at nothing to gain power and hold onto it. And he must have been an exceptional military leader to have put down all the rebellions he faced on multiple fronts in the year after his accession. But once his position was secure and the rebellions had been stamped out, he turned his attention to what looks like more mundane administrative work. He became more of a wonk than any of his predecessors had been. He divided the empire into 20 regional units called satrapies and fixed the amount of tribute that each one had to pay. He established standard weights and measures throughout the empire. He introduced Persian coinage, most famously a gold coin called a daric, which may have been named for Darius himself. All of that would help to facilitate trade and put the economy on more of a monetary footing.

In connection with this, a short passage in Herodotus gives us a glimpse of how the Persians of his time thought about their past kings. According to him, they regarded Cyrus as a father, Cambyses as a master, and Darius as a shopkeeper. The Greek word is κάπηλος, which different translators render as “retailer,” “tradesman,” and the like. It’s a fairly accurate metaphor, I think, for the way Darius organized tribute payments. Before him, there was no fixed tribute, and the kings were paid in gifts. Now the satrapies were expected to pay in money. But a “shopkeeper” was not a very flattering thing to call him. The Persian aristocracy took a very dim view of trade for profit. They thought it was undignified and maybe even borderline impious, because it often involved deception. In the last episode, I mentioned the Spartan embassy that supposedly warned Cyrus not to attack the Asiatic Greek cities. That may be just a story, but Herodotus’ narrative illustrates the elite Persian distaste for commerce as the Greeks practiced it. Quote:

Cyrus said to the Spartan heralds, “I have never yet feared any men who have a place in the center of the city set aside for meeting together, swearing false oaths, and cheating one another… Cyrus thus insulted the Hellenes because of their custom of setting up agoras in their cities for the purpose of buying and selling, which is unknown among Persians, who do not use markets and, indeed, have no such place as an agora in any of their cities. Unquote  

So Persian nobility might look at Darius and think, “Why is he tallying up tribute payments and messing with coinage when he should be out riding horses, shooting arrows, and telling the truth?” Well, one obvious reason was that it created a much more efficient system for bringing money out of the provinces and into the king’s coffers. And with that steady influx of cash, Darius pursued an ambitious building program and established some of the great Persian palace centers. He built a great palace at Susa in ancient Elamite territory that had been absorbed into the empire. Susa became the most important administrative center. He also built a grand new palace at Persepolis, which was especially important for ceremonial purposes. The great annual New Year celebration was held there, where subject peoples from all over the empire would bring gifts to the king. 

It was probably also Darius who established the great highway known as the Royal Road, which stretched from Sardis near the Mediterranean coast all the way to Susa, a total of about 1700 miles or 2700 kilometers. Darius didn’t have to build it from scratch. There were existing roads that previous kingdoms and empires had use for centuries, but now it was greatly improved, and regular stopping points were established all along the route. If you made the whole journey on foot, it would take about three months. But a relay system of mounted couriers could deliver a message over that distance in seven to nine days. Herodotus’ description of the Persian mail system became the unofficial motto for the U.S. postal service: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” 

But building roads and palaces wasn’t enough. Any self-respecting Achaemenid king would want to expand the empire through wars of conquest. Darius earned considerable bragging rights when he invaded the Indus valley and pushed the eastern frontier of the empire as far as modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan. But the operation I’m going to focus on as we approach the end of this episode is his notorious Scythian campaign, because it involves the Greeks in ways that will have ripple effects down the line. 

The Scythians were a group of nomadic tribes who inhabited much of the territory on the north coast of the Black Sea. To get there, Darius had to invade and establish control over parts of eastern Europe, then cross the Danube into Scythian territory. Herodotus gives us a long account of the campaign, which is mostly a mix of legend and hearsay. He portrays it as a failure and a humiliation for the Persians, although he doesn’t make it out to be a complete disaster like Cambyses’ Ethiopian campaign. For Herodotus, there’s an implied element of hybris in Darius’ actions. There’s a sense that leading armies across geographical dividing lines like major waterways is a violation of the natural order, that expanding the empire into Europe may be literally “over the line.” So in Herodotus’ telling, the Scythian campaign is a flop. But Darius left behind inscriptions that list the Scythians among subject peoples, so he seems to have asserted Persian power in at least parts of Scythia. 

The campaign was mainly a land operation, but Darius needed sea power to get his army over into Europe, and that sea power came from Greeks of Ionia, Aeolia, and the Black Sea. The king had these Greeks build a pontoon bridge out of boats stretching across the Bosphorus, the narrow waterway that to this day is considered the dividing line between Europe and Asia. It’s totally arbitrary, since it’s all one Eurasian landmass, but the Bosphorus has historical significance as the conventional border. This bridge of boats was an impressive feat, and Darius had hired a Greek engineer named Mandrocles of Samos to be in charge of its construction. And he was so pleased with the results that he rewarded Mandrocles with a nice cash bonus. Mandrocles used some of that money to dedicate a painting in the Samian temple of Hera, showing the bridging of the Bosphorus. Unfortunately, like so many monuments we hear about in ancient literature, that painting is long gone. 

While the Bosphorus bridge was under construction, Darius sent the Ionian fleet up along the Black Sea coast to the mouth of the Danube with orders to construct another pontoon bridge about two days’ sail upriver. When everything was ready, he marched his army across the Bosphorus into Europe. He encountered relatively little resistance from the Thracian tribes there, although one group called the Getae put up a good fight. By the time he reached the Danube, the bridge was ready for him. And when he led his army across, he left the Greeks there to guard it while he was fighting the Scythians. He told them to wait sixty days, and if he wasn’t back by then, they could assume he’d been killed and they could all go home. Herodotus gives us the detail that he gave them a leather strap with sixty knots in it and told them to keep track of the time by untying one knot every day.  

After making those arrangements, Darius and his army marched inland. But there was one big flaw in his plan. He was leading a big land army, whose function was to fight battles against other armies. Or, failing that, to besiege cities and ravage the crops in the countryside. But the Scythians were nomadic people who didn’t have cities or farms. Their strategy was to keep retreating, to keep the Persians chasing them, and never offer a pitched battle. They had all the time in the world to let the Persian army slowly wear itself out.

So, week after week, Darius kept pursuing the Scythians and getting more and more frustrated. Meanwhile, a detachment of Scythians went to the Danube bridge and made a proposal to the Greeks who were guarding it. They said, “Why don’t you just break down the bridge now? Darius and his army will be trapped in Scythia, where they’ll be destroyed, and then you’ll be freed from your Persian masters.” One of the Greek leaders there was an Athenian by the name of Miltiades, who held a position as a sort of tyrant in the Thracian Chersonese, known today as the Gallipoli Peninsula. Miltiades listened to the Scythian proposal and thought it was a great idea. He urged his fellow Greeks to break down the bridge and leave the Persians to their fate. 

A lot of them thought it was a good plan at first. But then another Greek leader, Histiaeus of Miletus, voiced the opposite opinion. He reminded the others, “We rule as tyrants in our cities because we’re part of the Persian system. We owe our positions of power to the Great King. If the Persian power goes away, we’re going to see revolutions in our cities, and that will be no good for us.” I’m paraphrasing, of course, but that was the gist of it. Histiaeus convinced the rest, and they decided not to dismantle the bridge. But they did destroy the northernmost part of it to fool the Scythians into thinking they were leaving Darius in the lurch. The Scythian detachment fell for it and left the area.  

Well, it eventually became clear to Darius that he wasn’t getting anywhere. His troops were exhausted, he couldn’t get the Scythians to come out and fight the kind of battle he could win, and so he turned around and led his army back to the Danube. The Persians started to panic when they didn’t see the bridge there, but the Greeks rushed in to rebuild the part they’d destroyed, and the army got safely across. 

Now, the story I’ve just told is essentially a condensed version of what Herodotus tells us. And I think the main point, that the massive Persian army wasn’t very effective against nomadic tribes, is probably solid. But Herodotus’ emphasis on the invasion of Scythian territory may be misplaced. Because the real accomplishment of this whole operation was the annexation of territory in Europe. And that didn’t stop with the retreat from Scythia. When Darius returned to Asia, he left a big army — 80,000 men, according to Herodotus — under the command of a general called Megabazus, to continue conquests in Thrace, along the north coast of the Aegean. That army pushed westward and established Persian control of Thracian lands all the way to Macedonia. So from that perspective, the whole European-slash-Scythian campaign was a great success.

After delegating those conquests to Megabazus, Darius took up temporary residence at the old Lydian capital of Sardis and directed affairs from there. One of his first orders of business was to reward Histiaeus of Miletus for his loyalty in convincing the other Greeks not to leave him stranded. He invited Histiaeus to Sardis and asked if there was anything he wanted as a reward. Histiaeus said, “Now that you mention it, you have all that newly acquired territory in Thrace. Maybe I could have a little patch of that land.” Darius granted his wish and gave him a place called Myrcinus — which was a nice piece of real estate, because it had silver mines and good forests for timber. 

That’s where we’ll leave the story for now. Darius has returned safely from Scythia. Megabazus has established Persian domination in Thrace. The Greek tyrants are still in power in their cities. Histiaeus has been rewarded with great wealth and a prized piece of land. But being a bold and ambitious Greek, he’s not going to stay quiet for long. 

And that concludes episode 29. I hope you’ve enjoyed this two-part excursion into the Persian Empire. When we pick up again, we’ll see the first skirmishes leading to the Persian Wars. In the meantime, if you have questions, comments, corrections, or anything to add, please reach out! You can send an email to scott@epicgreekhistory.com or leave a comment on Facebook or Instagram. I’m Scott Emmons. The music for my theme song was composed and produced by Parry Gripp. My logo and other artwork are by Chris Harding. Until next time, εὐτυχεῖτε! Be well.