As far as the point now attained, our narrative runs smoothly and intelligibly: we know that Darius marched his army into Scythia, and that he came back with ignominy and severe loss. But as to all which happened between his crossing and recrossing the Danube, we find nothing approaching to authentic statement,—nothing even which we can set forth as the probable basis of truth on which exaggerating fancy has been at work. All is inexplicable mystery. Ktêsias indeed says that Darius marched for fifteen days into the Scythian territory,—that he then exchanged bows with the king of Scythia, and discovered the Scythian bow to be the largest,—and that, being intimidated by such discovery, he fled back to the bridge by which he had crossed the Danube, and recrossed the river with the loss of one-tenth part of his army,[486] being compelled to break down the bridge before all had passed. The length of march is here the only thing distinctly stated; about the direction nothing is said. But the narrative of Ktêsias, defective as it is, is much less perplexing than that of Herodotus, who conducts the immense host of Darius as it were through fairy-land,—heedless of distance, large intervening rivers, want of all cultivation or supplies, destruction of the country—in so far as it could be destroyed—by the retreating Scythians, etc. He tells us that the Persian army consisted chiefly of foot,—that there were no roads nor agriculture; yet his narrative carries it over about twelve degrees of longitude from the Danube to the country east of the Tanais, across the rivers Tyras (Dniester), Hypanis (Bog), Borysthenês (Dnieper), Hypakyris. Gerrhos, and Tanais.[487] How these rivers could have been passed in the face of enemies by so vast a host, we are left to conjecture, since it was not winter time, to convert them into ice: nor does the historian even allude to them as having been crossed either in the advance or in the retreat. What is not less remarkable is, that in respect to the Greek settlement of Olbia, or Borysthenês, and the agricultural Scythians and Mix-hellenes between the Hypanis and the Borysthenês, across whose country it would seem that this march of Darius must have carried him,—Herodotus does not say anything; though we should have expected that he would have had better means of informing himself about this part of the march than about any other, and though the Persians could hardly have failed to plunder or put in requisition this, the only productive portion of Scythia. [486] Ktêsias, Persica. c. 17. Justin (ii, 5—compare also xxxviii, 7) seems to follow the narrative of Ktêsias.