Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/118

90 instead of the reappearance of the king, a strong body of Scythian horsemen rode up to the bank of the Danube, where the Greek ships formed the end of the bridge. They affirmed that Darius was so completely surrounded that he must perish; and they exhorted the Greeks to unfasten their vessels and sail away. The Greek rulers thereupon held council, and Miltiades, the tyrant of the Thracian Chersonese, who was destined hereafter to be the victor at Marathon, advised that they should do as the Scythians suggested, and thus restore Ionia and the other Greek cities to freedom. But another of the tyrants, Histiaeus of Miletus, argued against this counsel on the ground that they depended for their authority in their several states upon Persian support. This argument prevailed, and thus when Darius returned the ships, which had been loosened from their moorings, were ready to complete the bridge once more, and he crossed in safety.

The king himself hastened to the Thracian Chersonese and crossed to Asia from Lesbos and took up his abode for some time at Sardis. Perhaps the march beyond the Danube had only been meant as a kind of military demonstration. At any rate nothing had been accomplished. Still the expedition was not sterile south of the river. He left Megabazus and a strong force with orders to subdue the Greek towns on the coast of Thrace and the kingdom of Macedonia. The Thracian cities were forced to submit; the flourishing and industrious Paeonians