In the excerpt from the narrative of Trogus preserved by Justin, which may have been derived from Deinon's "Persian History," we are told: "The Scythians drove back Darius the king of the Persians in shameful flight. When Iancyrus (_i.e._ Idanthyrsus), the king of the Scythians, had refused to give his daughter in marriage to Darius, Darius made war upon him, and invaded Scythia with 700,000 soldiers. As the Scythians gave him no opportunity of battle, he retreated in great anxiety lest the bridge over the Danube should be broken in his rear, after losing 80,000 men. Owing to the abundance of men this loss was not considered a disaster."[272] In Ctesias the king of the Scythians is called Scytharbes. "Darius collected an army of 800,000 men, bridged the Bosphorus and the Danube, marched into Scythia, and penetrated for a distance of fifteen days. Scytharbes and Darius sent each other the gift of a bow. As the bow of the Scythian was the stronger, Darius retired over the bridge and broke it up, before the whole army had passed over. Those who were left behind, 80,000 men in number, were cut down by Scytharbes. Darius crossed the bridge over the Bosphorus, and burnt the houses and the temples of Chalcedon, because the Chalcedonians had attempted to destroy the bridge, and had thrown down the altar which Darius had set up at the crossing."[273] Strabo remarks: "At the mouths of the Danube there is a large island, Peuce. The mouths are seven in number, and the largest is called the sacred mouth; the distance to Peuce by this is 120 stadia; above the lower part of this mouth Darius built the bridge; it might have been bridged on the upper part also. It is the first if you take the left hand when sailing into Pontus; the rest follow in the voyage to Tyras. On the Pontic Sea, from the Danube to the Tyras (Dniester) is the desert of the Getae, a vast waterless plain. When Darius, the son of Hystaspes, crossed the Ister, to march against the Scythians, he was in danger of perishing by thirst with his whole army through being cut off in this desert; but he discovered his danger just in time, and returned.[274] For the support of the camel which had best sustained with him the weariness of the journey through the desert of Scythia, and had carried the baggage with the provisions of the king, he apportioned the hamlet of Gaugamela in Assyria," _i.e._ its income and tribute, or natural products.[275] The level desert of Strabo, between the Danube and the Dniester, includes Moldavia as far as the eastern slopes of the mountains of Transylvania, Bessarabia, and Podolia. Herodotus also represents the decisive charge in the campaign as taking place in the neighbourhood of the Agathyrsi, _i.e._ the inhabitants of Transylvania. Ctesias tells us that Darius had marched fifteen days beyond the Danube. Reckoning a day's march at 25 miles, as Herodotus does, Darius would thus have advanced 75 miles to the north of