damage, inasmuch as the country was barren;” it is therefore not easy to see what they could find to live upon. It is in the territory of the Budini, at this easternmost terminus on the borders of the desert, that the Persians perform the only positive acts which are ascribed to them throughout the whole expedition. They burn the wooden wall before occupied, but now deserted, by the Gelôni, and they build, or begin to build, eight large fortresses near the river Oarus. For what purpose these fortresses could have been intended, Herodotus gives no intimation; but he says that the unfinished work was yet to be seen even in his day.[491] [488] Herodot. iv, 101. [489] Herodot. iv, 118, 119. [490] Herodot. iv, 120-122. [491] Herodot. iv, 123. Ὅσον μὲν δὴ χρόνον οἱ Πέρσαι ἤϊσαν διὰ τῆς Σκυθικῆς καὶ τῆς Σαυρομάτιδος χώρης, οἳ δὲ εἶχον οὐδὲν σίνεσθαι, ἅτε τῆς χώρης ἐούσης χέρσου· ἐπεὶ δὲ τε ἐς τὴν τῶν Βουδίνων χώρην ἐσέβαλον, etc. See Rennell, Geograph. System of Herodotus, p. 114, about the Oarus. The erections, whatever they were, which were supposed to mark the extreme point of the march of Darius, may be compared to those evidences of the extreme advance of Dionysus, which the Macedonian army saw on the north of the Jaxartês—“Liberi patris terminos.” Quintus Curtius, vii, 9, 15, (vii, 37, 16, Zumpt.) Having thus been carried all across Scythia and the other territories above mentioned in a north-easterly direction, Darius and his army are next marched back a prodigious distance in a north-westerly direction, through the territories of the Melanchlæni, the Androphagi, and the Neuri, all of whom flee affrighted into the northern desert, having been thus compelled against their will to share in the consequences of the war. The Agathyrsi peremptorily require the Scythians to abstain from drawing the Persians into _their_ territory, on pain of being themselves treated as enemies:[492] the Scythians in consequence respect the boundaries of the Agathyrsi, and direct their retreat in such a manner as to draw the Persians again southward into Scythia. During all this long march backwards and forwards, there are partial skirmishes and combats of horse, but the Scythians steadily refuse any general engagement. And though Darius challenges them formally, by means of a herald, with taunts of cowardice, the Scythian king Idanthyrsus not only refuses battle, but explains and defends his policy, and defies the Persian to come and destroy the tombs of their fathers,—it will then, he adds, be seen whether the Scythians are cowards or not.[493] The difficulties of Darius have by this time become serious, when Idanthyrsus sends to him the menacing presents of a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows: the Persians are obliged to commence a rapid retreat towards the Danube, leaving, in order to check and slacken the Scythian pursuit, the least effective and the sick part of their