Herodotus regards the expedition as the one great disaster of Darius’ career. Regarded as evidence, this is not of itself very important. The story as he told it was intended to point the great moral which runs throughout his history,—that special phase of the great Hellenic idea of the “tragedy” of life in which he most firmly believed. The career of Darius, without this great disaster, would have formed too startling an exception to that divine and natural law of the incontinuity of human fortune which he had so consciously and conspicuously illustrated in his account of the lives of Cambyses, Crœsus, and Polykrates of Samos. But there are other reasons for supposing that the expedition was not without disaster, rumours of which,—probably, too, emanating from the Greeks at the Ister,—reached the cities of the Propontis. ◆Ktes. Pers. 16 (Justin, ii. 5).◆ Ktesias states Darius’ losses to have been 80,000 men. Even if the actual number stated be untrustworthy, it shows that this historian, who would be naturally inclined to minimize them, had reason to regard them as serious. But, furthermore, it is evident that during Darius’ absence north of the Danube, ◆Cf. H. v. 26.◆ a large number of the Hellespontine cities had seized the opportunity for revolt. Byzantion, Kalchedon, Antandros, and Lamponion were among the number. This caused Darius to return to Asia by way of Sestos. It is inconceivable that these towns should have chosen this time of all others, when a large portion of the levy of the Empire was actually under arms, for insurrection, had they not some reason to believe that it had gone whence it could never return their way. They must have received, either from the Greek colonies on the North Euxine, or, more probably, from the Greeks on the Ister, some tidings of a great disaster. Even if the Greeks on the Ister were not the authors of such tidings, it is unlikely that reports which came to the towns of the Propontis failed to reach them. May it not then be that the fictitious element in the report of the discussion on the desertion of Darius, in so far as the general details of the lines which the discussion itself followed are concerned, is confined to the part which Miltiades is alleged to have played in it? It is not necessary on this assumption to further assume the veracity of the tale of the orders given by Darius to the guardians of the bridge. That tale simply served to heighten the colouring of the picture of the treason of those Asiatic Hellenes to Hellenic freedom, in that it robbed them of the excuse of fidelity to a trust imposed upon them.