ruin their cause with them should they really destroy the army of the Persians. In the other event Darius might be told that the period was merely fixed in order to keep the Scythians away from the bridge. From such a period, which the princes fixed for themselves and their crews, may have arisen the legend of the command of Darius, that they were to wait for sixty days--a story which was afterwards quoted by the Greeks against the tyrants to the effect that they not only faithfully carried out the commands of Darius, but had gone beyond them to rescue him. As a fact Darius must have spent far more than sixty days beyond the Danube if he advanced fifteen full days' marches, according to the reckoning of Herodotus, and penetrated to the sources of the Dniester, the Bug, or the Prypet. For an army like that of Darius could not march more than ten miles a day, and thus the 750 miles of advance and retreat, which in the latter part would have been traversed amid continual encounters, required at least eighty or ninety days. The Ionians had remained, though they had not kept all the contingents with them. The ships of Antandros and Lamponium, and no doubt those of other cities also, had sailed away of their own accord.[278] How great soever the losses may have been which the army of Darius suffered in Scythia--the number, 80,000, which Ctesias represents as perishing by the premature destruction of the bridge, and which Justin represents as the entire sum of the losses of the army, appears to have been the official amount of the loss among the Persians--when the Danube was crossed, they found security and provisions, rest and refreshment. The Scythians could not force a passage against the ships of war, which controlled the stream, and the land army of the Persians. Undisturbed by them, Darius could now have made better arrangements for continuing the war beyond the Danube, and preparing for the conduct of it, if unexpected events had not compelled him to complete his retreat in haste. Ctesias told us above that the Chalcedonians, on whose territory lay the Asiatic end of the bridge, had attempted to break it down. Strabo relates that Darius burned the cities round the Propontis and Abydus because he was afraid that they might supply the Scythians with transports to Asia.[279] Herodotus tells us, that Darius, on his return from the Danube, marched through Thrace into the land of the Hellespontians; thence he crossed on the ships to Asia, and then repaired himself to Sardis,[280] leaving behind Megabyzus as general in the land of the Hellespontians, who reduced by force of arms those who did not "medize."[281] With the Persians who remained in Europe he first attacked the Perinthians "who would not submit to Darius;" the Perinthians fought bravely for their freedom, but the numbers of the Persians were overpowering.[282] But Otanes, the son of Sisamnes, to whom Darius entrusted the command by sea, took Byzantium, Chalcedon, Antandros, and Lamponium.