invasion of the Scythians, who, in revenge for the aggression of Darius, overran the country as far as the Thracian Chersonese, and are even said to have sent envoys to Sparta proposing a simultaneous invasion of Persia from different sides, by Spartans and Scythians. The Athenian Miltiadês, who was despot, or governor, of the Chersonese, was forced to quit it for some time, and Herodotus ascribes his retirement to the incursion of these Nomads. But we may be permitted to suspect that the historian has misconceived the real cause of such retirement. Miltiadês could not remain in the Chersonese after he had incurred the deadly enmity of Darius by exhorting the Ionians to destroy the bridge over the Danube.[509] [505] Herodot. iv, 143, 144, v, 1, 2. [506] Herodot. v, 2. [507] Herodot. v, 11. [508] Herodot. v, 23. [509] Herodot. vi, 40-84. That Miltiadês could have remained in the Chersonese undisturbed, during the interval between the Scythian expedition of Darius and the Ionic revolt,—when the Persians were complete masters of those regions, and when Otanês was punishing other towns in the neighborhood for evasion of service under Darius, after he had declared so pointedly against the Persians on a matter of life and death to the king and army,—appears to me, as it does to Dr. Thirlwall (History of Gr. vol. ii, App. ii, p. 486, ch. xiv, pp. 226-249), eminently improbable. So forcibly does Dr. Thirlwall feel the difficulty, that he suspects the reported conduct and exhortations of Miltiadês at the bridge over the Danube to have been a falsehood, fabricated by Miltiadês himself, twenty years afterwards, for the purpose of acquiring popularity at Athens during the time immediately preceding the battle of Marathon.