Darius’s Scythian Campaign

Around 513 BCE Darius I led a large army across the Bosporus into Europe, bridged the Danube and marched into the steppes north of the Black Sea against the nomadic Scythians. The Scythians refused battle and retreated, burning grass and filling wells, until Darius had to withdraw. The campaign failed to conquer Scythia, but it brought Thrace and, soon after, Macedon under Persian control and made Persia a European power.

Who were the Scythians?

The Persians called the Iranian-speaking nomads of the steppes Saka, and the Greeks called those north of the Black Sea Scythians. They were horse archers who lived in wagons, moved with their herds and buried their leaders in rich mounds. Herodotus gives the whole of Book 4 to them, and his account of Darius’s invasion is the only detailed one we have.

This European campaign is different from Darius’s earlier war against the Saka “with pointed caps” in Central Asia around 519 BCE, whose leader Skunkha appears on the Behistun relief (see the Behistun Inscription). Darius’s later inscriptions list several Saka peoples, including the “Saka beyond the sea”, usually identified with the European Scythians.

Why Darius went

Herodotus gives a single reason: revenge for a Scythian invasion of Media more than a century earlier. Modern historians look for practical aims. Possible motives include securing the Black Sea grain and timber trade, taking control of Thrace with its gold and silver mines, protecting the northern flank of the empire, or making a show of power to the Greek world. Herodotus also says Darius’s brother Artabanus warned him against the expedition.

Bridges over two continents

The army crossed into Europe on a bridge of boats over the Bosporus, designed by Mandrocles of Samos. Herodotus says Mandrocles was so proud of it that he dedicated a painting of the crossing in the temple of Hera on Samos, showing Darius watching from a throne. Darius set up two marble pillars on the shore listing the peoples in his army, one in “Assyrian” letters, meaning cuneiform, and one in Greek.

Marching through Thrace, the army subdued the Getae, who resisted, and reached the Danube, where the Ionian Greek fleet had sailed up the river and built a second bridge of boats. Herodotus says Darius gave the Ionian commanders a leather strap tied with sixty knots and told them to untie one each day; if he had not returned when the knots were gone, they were to sail home.

The war without battles

The Scythians knew they could not face the Persian army in the open. In Herodotus’s account they sent their families and wagons north, split into groups, and retreated always a day’s march ahead of the Persians, destroying grass and wells as they went. They drew Darius east across the Don and back again through the lands of neighbouring peoples.

Darius sent a message to the Scythian king Idanthyrsus: stand and fight, or send earth and water and submit. Idanthyrsus replied that the Scythians had no towns or fields to fear for. They would fight only if the Persians found and attacked the tombs of their fathers.

The riddle of the gifts

Finally, Herodotus says, the Scythians sent Darius a strange gift: a bird, a mouse, a frog and five arrows. Darius took it as surrender, since a mouse lives in the earth, a frog in water, a bird is like a horse and arrows are the Scythians’ strength. Gobryas, one of the seven conspirators of 522, read it differently: unless the Persians became birds and flew away, or mice and hid underground, or frogs and leapt into the lakes, they would never return home but be shot down by these arrows. The story is a classic piece of Greek storytelling, but it captures the problem Darius faced.

Retreat to the Danube

With supplies running out, Darius withdrew at night, leaving the sick and the army’s donkeys in camp with the fires burning so that the braying would make the Scythians think the army was still there. The Scythians, being horsemen, reached the Danube first and urged the Ionians to break the bridge and leave the Persians to die.

Herodotus says Miltiades, the Athenian ruler of the Chersonese and later the victor of Marathon, wanted to agree. Histiaeus, the tyrant of Miletus, persuaded the others that their own power depended on Darius. The Ionians took apart only the northern end of the bridge, and Darius crossed back. Some historians suspect the story of Miltiades was told later in Athens to make him look like an early opponent of Persia.

Gains in Europe

Darius returned to Sardis, but he left the general Megabazus in Europe with a large army, which Herodotus puts at 80,000. Megabazus conquered the Greek cities along the Hellespont and the Thracian coast, subdued the Paeonians and sent envoys to Macedon, whose king Amyntas I gave earth and water. A Persian province, often called Skudra in Persian lists, now existed in Europe. Histiaeus was rewarded with land at Myrcinus in Thrace, a reward that would later bring him to Susa and play a part in the Ionian Revolt.

A defeat or a limited success?

Greek writers presented the campaign as a humiliation, and in Scythia itself it was a failure. But many historians argue that Herodotus exaggerated the depth of the march; no Persian forts have been found on the steppe, and his route is hard to follow. Seen from Persia, the expedition secured Thrace and the straits, showed Persian power in Europe and prepared the ground for the first Persian expedition to Greece in 492 BCE.