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.