Histories

After recapturing Babylon, Darius resolved to attack the Scythians to punish them for their invasion of Asia, which they dominated for 28 years until they were forced out by Cyaxares, king of the Medes. Book 4 describes Darius’ campaign in Scythia and gives an account of the geography and peoples of northern Europe. In the second half of the Book, Herodotus relates the Persian invasion of Libya and provides a brief description of the Libyan tribes and topography, as well as an account of the founding of the Greek city of Cyrene on the Libyan coast.

The Scythians claim to be the youngest of all nations, tracing their lineage back 1,000 years to their first king, Targitaus. Herodotus believes the Scythians were nomads who originally lived in Asia until they were forced northward by the Cimmerians and came to occupy the territory north of the present-day Crimean Peninsula on the Black Sea. Herodotus describes the variegated geography of the region and the several tribes of its Scythian and other inhabitants. Nothing is known about the areas north and east because a high mountain range blocks access. Reportedly, goat-footed men live on the mountains and beyond them are inhabitants who sleep six months of the year, but Herodotus rejects these stories. Their neighbors, the Issedones, have told the Scythians about a race of one-eyed men and gold-hoarding griffins that live in the northern wasteland. Herodotus notes that winter there lasts eight months and the sea freezes over; the weather is totally different from other climates. The Scythians claim that feathers fill the sky and obstruct traffic in this area; Herodotus interprets this to mean that the air is thick with falling snow year-round.

Herodotus reports a story told by the inhabitants of the Greek island Delos about the race of Hyperboreans who live in the far north (literally, “beyond the North wind”). The Hyperboreans send sacred offerings to Scythia, which are eventually conveyed to Delos. Two virgins at first accompanied the offerings but never returned to their homeland; Delian boys and girls annually cut their hair as a ritual offering in memory of the Hyperborean maidens.

Meditating on the mysterious north, Herodotus ridicules the maps of geographers who portray Asia as the same size as Europe and claim that an ocean encircles the entire world. He corrects this misunderstanding with a description of the major land masses and boundaries of the known world. The sphere of human habitation in the Herodotean geography extends from north of the Black Sea to India in the east, south to the Arabian peninsula and Libya (i.e., Africa), and west to the islands beyond the entrance to the Mediterranean. He reports that Africa had been circumnavigated by Phoenicians who set out from the Red Sea and followed the coast of the continent southward and then northward up to the entrance to the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians claimed that as they sailed westward along the southern coast of Africa, the sun rose in the north—a fact Herodotus dismisses as false, but which suggests the circumnavigation occurred, because having crossed the equator into the southern hemisphere, the sun would appear in the northern sky.

Herodotus credits Darius with discovering the greater part of Asia, by which he means the lands between Persia and the Indian subcontinent. The Persian king dispatched an expedition down the Indus River, which, once it met the Indian Ocean, sailed westward along the southern tip of Arabia and returned up the Red Sea to Egypt. The northern and eastern boundaries of Europe were unknown, but Herodotus asserts that the European continent is twice the length of Asia; at this time the boundary between Europe and Asia was not clearly defined.

Scythia is well-drained with many large rivers; Herodotus describes their size and direction. The Ister (Danube) is the greatest, rivaling the Nile in volume. Apart from its rivers and vast plain, Scythia contains only one other natural marvel—the “footprint of Herakles,” which is three feet long. According to Herodotus, the inhabitants of the region around the Black Sea, other than the Scythians, are the most ignorant in the world. The Scythians, however, made the most important discovery of all time: As nomadic warriors, their mobility gives them an insuperable advantage in warfare; deriving sustenance from their herds, they can evade any invaders and pursue their enemies with great ease.

The Scythians worship only a few gods and have no use for temples, statues, or altars. Their ceremonies are particularly gruesome. Prisoners of war are dismembered and their limbs are tossed in the air. Scythian warriors drink the blood of the first man they kill and turn the skull into a drinking cup. The skin is removed from the skulls of vanquished enemies and fashioned into a sort of handkerchief which is displayed on their horses’ bridles. The Scythians have many soothsayers who divine the future by means of willow sticks; if the king determines a group of soothsayers has lied, they are bound in a cart filled with wooden sticks and burned alive. When a king dies, members of his household are strangled and buried with him in a large mound of earth or kurgan. At the end of the year, another 50 of the late king’s servants are killed, gutted, and stuffed with chaff, then impaled and placed upon horses that have been treated similarly. The Scythians reject all foreign ways; Herodotus recounts the unfortunate fates of two well-travelled Scythians who adopted Greek habits and were murdered by their countrymen as a result.

Darius marched from the Persian capital Susa to the Bosphorus, where a bridge linking Europe and Asia had been designed for him. The king erected two columns memorializing his campaign against the Scythians, listing the various nations involved in the effort. Herodotus numbers the total Persian force as 700,000 men, excluding those serving in Darius’ navy of 600 ships. Darius ordered the Ionians in his fleet to sail from the Bosphorus up to the mouth of Danube, which empties into the Black Sea, where they were to build a bridge across the river for the Persian army. Meanwhile, the Persian infantry crossed the Bosphorus and marched through Thrace, subduing the Getae. The Getae believe they are immortal and join the god Salmoxis after apparent death. Every five years the Getae send a victim to Salmoxis with their petitions; holding three javelins aloft, they toss the man into the air so that he lands upon the spearheads. If the man dies, they believe the god is in a favorable mood; if he escapes, they ascribe it to his bad character. Herodotus recounts another story about Salmoxis, who in this account was a Thracian associate of Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher. Returning to Thrace, Salmoxis preached a doctrine of immortality and secretly built a chamber beneath his house to which he retired for three years. Reappearing at the end of that period, he convinced his countrymen that he was in fact immortal and his doctrine true.

After crossing the Danube, Darius ordered that the bridge be destroyed but was convinced by an Ionian commander to preserve it for his army’s retreat. The king ordered the Ionians to guard the bridge for 60 days; if he had not returned by then, they were free to sail home. As Darius marched into Scythian territory, the Scythians appealed to the chieftains of the neighboring peoples for aid. Herodotus notes that the Agathyrsi live luxuriously and share their women equally; by this practice they avoid hatred and jealousy. He condemns the Androphagi (literally, “man-eaters”) as the most savage race of men, cannibals with no concept of law or justice. The Sauromatae originated from the interbreeding of Scythians and Amazons, a race of warrior women, whose maidens must first kill an enemy in battle before they can marry.

The Geloni, Budini, and Sauromatae agreed to ally themselves with the Scythians; the other nations refused, blaming the Scythians for incurring the wrath of Darius by their previous invasion of Persian territory. The Scythians and their allies divided their forces into two divisions and settled on a defensive strategy of withdrawal, turning to harass the Persian army if it retreated. They baited the Persians by making camp one day’s march ahead of the advancing Persian forces, then slipped back into the hinterlands to prevent a direct engagement. Repeating this tactic, they drew Darius into the lands of the neighboring nations that had refused the Scythian request for assistance, while continuing to evade the main Persian forces.

Frustrated, Darius sent a messenger to the Scythian king Idanthyrsus, asking why the latter ran away and demanding he stand and fight, or send earth and water as a token of his submission to the Persian king. Idanthyrsus replied that he was merely following the Scythian way of life, and that, because the Scythians possessed no towns or cultivated lands to protect, they would not hastily be drawn into battle. However, if Darius sought bloodshed, let him attack the tombs of the Scythian forefathers, which their descendants would fight to defend.

The Scythians were enraged by Darius’ arrogance and used their superior cavalry to harass the Persians while they were foraging for food, besting the Persian horsemen in small skirmishes. Whenever the Scythians attacked the Persian camps, however, their horses were frightened by the braying of the Persians’ donkeys and mules, as these animals were unknown in Scythia. The Scythians continued to outmaneuver the Persians, vexing Darius. They then sent Darius a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows. Darius interpreted this to mean that the Scythians were submitting to him, thinking the animals represented earth and water, and the arrows symbolized the Scythians’ abandonment of their weapons. His lieutenant disagreed, however, arguing that the Scythian message meant that unless the Persian army could fly, burrow, or swim, it would never escape the country but be slaughtered by the Scythian bowmen.

The Scythians then arrayed their forces against the assembled Persian army, poised for battle, but broke ranks and charged after a hare that ran between the two opposing lines. This inexplicable act amazed Darius; realizing the evident contempt of the Scythians for the Persian forces, he decided to retreat as quickly as possible to the Danube before the Scythians destroyed the bridge that the Ionians were guarding.

Leaving the donkeys and weakest men behind in camp, under cover of night Darius’ main force abandoned its position. At daybreak, the Scythians raced on horseback to the bridge by a different route than the Persians. They advised the Ionians to dismantle the bridge and return to Ionia, because the 60 days Darius allotted were now up. The Ionians, however, were advised by Histiaeus of Miletus not to abandon their allegiance to Darius, because each of the Ionian leaders owed his position to the Persian king. Misleading the Scythians, they said they would comply with the request and encouraged them to locate and destroy the Persian army; meanwhile they demolished a small section of the bridge to convince the Scythians of their goodwill. The Scythians left in search of the Persian army, which they never found, keeping to the pastureland. The Persians, retracing their original route through the country, arrived at the bridge at night. The Ionians ferried the army across the Danube and restored the bridge, and the Persians safely evacuated Scythia.

Darius left his lieutenant Megabazus behind in Europe in charge of a large contingent of the Persian army and returned to Asia. Megabazus proceeded to subjugate the tribes surrounding the Hellespont to Persian rule. Meanwhile, the Persian governor of Egypt, Aryandes, launched a campaign against the Greek city of Barca in Libya at the request of Pheretima, whose son Arcesilaus had been killed by the townspeople of the city.

Arcesilaus had attempted to overturn the popular reforms of his late father in Cyrene, a Greek city on the Libyan coast, and seize power for himself as ruler. He was defeated during a civil struggle and fled to Samos where he recruited an army to retake Cyrene. On the way back to the city, he stopped at Delphi to seek the advice of the oracle. Apollo’s priestess told Arcesilaus to be gentle when he returned to Cyrene, and, if he found the oven full of jars, not to bake them. With his Samian troops, Arcesilaus regained power in the city and began to oppress his political enemies, some of whom took refuge in a tower, which Arcesilaus burned to the ground. Remembering the oracle, he realized he had disobeyed Apollo’s command and decided to flee Cyrene where he feared death awaited him. He took refuge in Barca, a Greek city to south of Cyrene, where his father-in-law lived. He and his father-in-law were spotted by some exiles from Cyrene, and both were killed.

Arcesilaus’ mother, Pheretima, fled to Egypt from Cyrene when she heard her son had been killed and appealed to Aryandes for help in exacting revenge. The Persian governor put the entire Egyptian army and fleet at her disposal and ordered them to march on Barca. Herodotus notes that the woman’s vengeance was the pretext for the expedition, though he believes that Aryandes, in fact, sought to extend Persian dominance over the Libyan tribes and cities, which, until now, had escaped Persian rule. The troops laid siege to the town and demanded that the inhabitants identify the murderer of Arcesilaus. The Barcaeans refused, claiming that every one of them was responsible. Finally, Amasis, commander of the Persian infantry, devised a ruse to take the town. He secretly dug a trench at night in front of the city walls and covered it with planks and soil. In the morning he invited the Barcaeans to a conference and struck a solemn covenant. If they paid a tribute to Darius, the Persians swore to do no further harm to the town, so long as the earth beneath their feet remained firm. The Barcaeans agreed and invited the Persians inside the gates. As they entered the town, the Persians broke open the hidden trench. Thus, their sacred oath to the Barcaeans no longer held, and they massacred those responsible for the murder of Arcesilaus and enslaved the rest. Pheretima had the killers of her son impaled on stakes around the city walls and cut off their wives’ breasts.

The Persians passed through Cyrene on their return march and considered seizing it, but Aryandes ordered them to continue to Egypt without further aggression against Libyan settlements. The Libyans, however, harassed the Persians all the way to the border, cutting down the stragglers. Pheretima, Herodotus notes, died a horrible death after returning to Egypt, her body seething with worms: “Thus this daughter of Battus, by the nature and severity of her punishment of the Barcaeans, showed how true it is that all excess in revenge draws down upon men the anger of the gods” (280).

Herodotus concludes the Book with a description of Libya, by which he means Africa, west and northwest of Egypt. He recounts the founding of Cyrene, a Greek city on the Libyan coast, by colonists from the Greek island of Thera, which itself had been settled by Spartans. The Libyan tribes, as far west as Lake Tritonis (presumably in modern-day Tunisia) are nomadic and drink milk; to the west of the lake the inhabitants live in settlements and practice agriculture. Herodotus describes a great band of sand, punctuated by oases 10 days’ journey apart, that extends along the continent south of the seaboard as far as the Pillars of Hercules in the west. The entirety of Libya is inhabited by only four nations, as far as he knows: the indigenous Libyans and Ethiopians (the latter of whom dwell south of Egypt), the immigrant Phoenicians who founded Carthage, and the Greeks, who occupy Cyrene, Barca, and a few other settlements on the Libyan coastal strip.