Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/283

 UNINTELLIGIBLE MARCH OF DARIUS. 265 (Dniester), Hypanis (Bog), Borysthenes (Dnieper), Hypakyris. Gerrhos, and Tanais. 1 How these rivers could have been passed in the face of enemies by so vast a host, we are left to conjecture, eince it was not winter time, to convert them into ice : nor does the historian even allude to them as having been crossed either in the advance or in the retreat. What is not less remarkable is, that in respect to the Greek settlement of Olbia, or Borysthenes, and the agricultural Scythians and Mix-hellenes between the Hypanis and the Borysthenes, across whose country it would seem that this march of Darius must have carried him, Herod- otus does not say anything ; though we should have expected that he would have had better means of informing himself about this part of the march than about any other, and though the Per- sians could hardly have failed to plunder or put in requisition this, the only productive portion of Scythia. The narrative of Herodotus in regard to the Persian march north of the Ister seems indeed destitute of all the conditions of reality. It is rather an imaginative description, illustrating the desperate and impracticable character of Scythian warfare, and grouping in the same picture, according to that large sweep of the imagination which is admissible in epical treatment, the Scythians, with all their barbarous neighbors from the Carpathian mountains to the river Wolga. The Agathyrsi, the Neuri, the Androphagi, the Melanchlaeni, the Budini, the Geloni, the Sar- matians, and the Tauri, all of them bordering on that vast quad- rangular area of four thousand stadia for each side, called Scythia, as Herodotus conceives it,' 3 are brought into deliberation and action in consequence of the Persian approach. And Herodotus 1 Herodot. iv, 136. are Je rot) HepaiKov TroX/.ov kovrnr ire&v arparov, nal ruf 66ovf OVK EXIST apevov, cjcrre ov TETfirifievuv TUV Mtiv, TOV 6e 2/<vdixov, ImroTEu, KOI TU, avvro/ia TTJG 6 imcTafj-ivov, etc. Compare c. 128. The number and size of the rivers are mentioned by Herodotus as the principal wonder of Scythia, c. 82 Quvfiaaia 6e r] x^Pn avrt) OVK %X EL I XupiC ?i on. iroriifj.ovf re TroAAcj [leyioTovc Kal api&fj.bv nAeiorovf, etc. He ranks the Borysthenes as the largest of all rivers except the Nile and the Danube (c. 53). The Hypanis also (Bog) is norafiof iv bhlyoiai fisyaf (c. 52). But he appears to forget the existence of these rivers when he is describ- ing the Persian march. VOL, JT. 1>
 * Herodot. iv, 101.