“But after this disaster the Carians recovered and fought once more,” says Herodotus. When it is remembered that their first defeat had reduced these Carians to a state bordering on despair, and that their second defeat is expressly said to have been still more serious than their first, this statement is difficult to understand. It may reasonably be suggested that, if the account of the previous operations be the whole truth, it is incomprehensible that the Carians should have had time to recover from such disasters before the Persians followed up their successes. The question may even arise whether Herodotus is relating the events of the same campaign as that in which the two defeats took place. It is impossible to pretend that the available evidence is in any way conclusive on this point. The only detail which tends to throw light upon the question is a geographical one. By the time that the events next recorded took place, the Persians had certainly advanced beyond Labraunda; and this fact would tend to the conclusion that they did actually occur in the same campaign. Herodotus recounts them as follows:— #HELLESPONT AND IONIA.# ◆H. v. 121.◆ “The Carians, on hearing that the Persians were about to march against their cities, laid an ambush on the road in Pedasos, into which the Persians fell by night and were destroyed, both they and their generals, Daurises, Amorges, and Sisimakes. With them perished also Myrsos the son of Gyges. The commander of this ambush was Herakleides, the son of Ibanollis, a Mylassian.” The scene of this terrible defeat is on the road which would be taken by an army advancing from Labraunda southward into Caria. What had really happened can only be a subject for conjecture. The Persians must have suffered so severely in the battles on the Marsyas and at Labraunda, that further advance was delayed until reinforcements could come up. During this delay the Carians rallied, and then inflicted on the invaders the most crushing defeat of the whole war. ◆H. v. 122.◆ In this campaigning season of the year 496, the operations in the Hellespont region which Daurises had left in an all but complete stage, were continued by Hymeës, who had been campaigning in the Mysian district. But little can have remained for him to do. His army accomplished the task, though he himself died before it was actually completed. ◆H. v. 123.◆ A little light is also thrown upon the doings of the army which, under the command of Artaphernes and Otanes, had occupied the attention of the Ionians during the campaign in Caria. It captured the towns of Klazomenæ and Kyme. The outlook towards the close of the summer, before the great Persian defeat in Caria took place, must have been a gloomy one for the insurgents. Cyprus was lost. The prospects of the revolt in Caria seemed desperate. The Hellespont region had been reduced, though that of the Bosphorus was as yet untouched; and even two of the Greek coast towns of the Ægean had fallen.