But to return to Darius:--it is said to have been in retaliation for these excesses that he resolved on his expedition against the Scythians, who, as I have mentioned, were in occupation of the district between the Danube and the Don. For this purpose he advanced from Susa in the neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf, through Assyria and Asia Minor to the Bosphorus, just opposite to the present site of Constantinople, where he crossed over into Europe. Thence he made his way, with the incredible number of 700,000 men, horse and foot, to the Danube, reducing Thrace, the present Roumelia, in his way. When he had crossed that stream, he was at once in Scythia; but the Scythians had adopted the same sort of strategy, which in the beginning of this century was practised by their successors against Napoleon. They cut and carried off the green crops, stopped up their wells or spoilt their water, and sent off their families and flocks to places of safety. Then they stationed their outposts just a day's journey before the enemy, to entice him on. He pursued them, they retreated; and at length he found himself on the Don, the further boundary of the Scythian territory. They crossed the Don, and he crossed it too, into desolate and unknown wilds; then, eluding him altogether, from their own knowledge of the country, they made a circuit, and got back into their own land again. Darius found himself outwitted, and came to a halt; how he had victualled his army, whatever deduction we make for its numbers, does not appear; but it is plain that the time must come, when he could not proceed. He gave the order for retreat. Meanwhile, he found an opportunity of sending a message to the Scythian chief, and it was to this effect:--"Perverse man, take your choice; fight me or yield." The Scythians intended to do neither, but contrived, as before, to harass the Persian retreat. At length an answer came; not a message, but an ominous gift; they sent Darius a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows; without a word of explanation. Darius himself at first hailed it as an intimation of submission; in Greece to offer earth and water was the sign of capitulation, as, in a sale of land in our own country, a clod from the soil still passes, or passed lately, from seller to purchaser, as a symbol of the transfer of possession. The Persian king, then, discerned in these singular presents a similar surrender of territorial jurisdiction. But another version, less favourable to his vanity and his hopes, was suggested by one of his courtiers, and it ran thus: "Unless you can fly like a bird, or burrow like a mouse, or swim the marshes like a frog, you cannot escape our arrows." Whichever interpretation was the true one, it needed no message from the enemy to inflict upon Darius the presence of the dilemma suggested in this unpleasant interpretation. He yielded to imperative necessity, and hastened his escape from the