By the bridge of boats on the Ister, the tyrants of Ionia held a leather thong. There were sixty knots in it, tied by the Persian king Darius himself.

His instructions were these: from the day you see me set out against the Scythians, untie one knot each day. If the knots are all gone and I have not come back, sail home. Until then, guard this bridge for me.

Then he led his army north. In the land he was heading for there was no city to besiege and no field to burn. Someone had already told him so, to his face, at that very bridge.

I. Advice at Susa

The story starts at Susa. Darius was preparing his campaign there, sending out orders: some lands were to supply infantry, some ships, and some men were sent to bridge the Bosporus.

His own brother Artabanus, son of Hystaspes, wanted nothing to do with this expedition. The Scythians, he told Darius, were very hard to deal with. He gave all the good advice he could; Darius would not listen, and Artabanus stopped advising.

As the army was about to march, a Persian named Oeobazus came with a request. He had three sons, all called up for the campaign, and he asked the king to leave one of them at home. Darius said: you are my friend, and what you ask is reasonable; I will leave you all three.

Oeobazus was overjoyed, thinking his sons were released from service. Darius then told the men in charge to kill all three of Oeobazus' sons. Not one of them marched with the army. Their throats were cut, and they were left where they lay.

II. The Bridge on the Strait

The army marched from Susa to the Bosporus in the territory of Calchedon, and the bridge was already built. Darius did not cross at once. He went aboard a ship and sailed out to the Dark Rocks beyond the northern mouth of the strait, rocks the Greeks say once wandered about the sea. There he sat on a headland and looked out over the Black Sea. Of all seas, to my mind, this one is the most worth seeing.

When he had seen it, he went back to the bridge. Its builder was Mandrocles of Samos. By the bridge Darius set up two pillars of white marble, one cut in Assyrian letters and one in Greek, listing the names of all the nations in his army, every nation he ruled. The number I record is seven hundred thousand men, horsemen included, not counting the fleet, and six hundred ships.

The pillars did not stay there. The Byzantines later carried them into their city and built them into the altar of Orthosian Artemis, all but one stone covered in Assyrian writing, which was left beside the temple of Dionysus at Byzantium.

Darius was so pleased with the bridge that he gave Mandrocles ten of everything. Mandrocles used part of it to have a picture painted: the whole bridge across the strait, Darius seated high on his throne, the army crossing. He dedicated it in the temple of Hera on Samos with a few lines of verse, saying, in short, that he had bridged the fish-filled Bosporus, done the will of King Darius, won a crown for himself and fame for the Samians.

III. A Pillar at the Springs, Stone Heaps by the Road

Darius crossed the bridge into Europe. The Ionian fleet sailed into the Black Sea to the mouth of the Ister, went two days upriver, and bridged the river where its mouths divide, to wait for him there.

The land army marched through Thrace to the springs of the river Tearus and camped there three days. The people who live along it say its water is the best of all for healing, especially for mange in men and horses. It has thirty-eight springs, some cold and some hot, all flowing from the same rock.

Darius liked the place and set up another pillar, inscribed: from the springs of the Tearus flows the best and finest water of all; and to them came, leading an army against the Scythians, the best and finest man of all, Darius son of Hystaspes, king of Persia and all the continent.

Further on, at the river Artescus in the country of the Odrysae, Darius marked out a spot and ordered every man in the army to lay down one stone there as he passed. The army marched on and left great heaps of stones behind it.

Before the Ister, the Thracian tribes along the coast surrendered without a fight. Only the Getae, who claim they never die, held out for a while; they were quickly subdued and marched on with the army.

IV. Advice at the Bridge

At the Ister the whole army crossed. Darius then ordered the Ionians to break up the bridge and follow him overland with the men from the ships.

The Ionians were about to do it when Coes, general of the Mytilenaeans, spoke up. He first asked whether the king cared to hear advice, and then said:

O King, the land you are about to march into will show you no ploughed field and no inhabited city. Let this bridge stand where it is, and leave the men who built it to guard it. If we find the Scythians and things go our way, we have a road home; and even if we cannot find them, our retreat is safe. I have never been afraid that the Scythians will beat us in battle. What I fear is that we will not be able to find them, and will come to harm wandering about. Someone may say I am saying this for my own sake, so that I can stay behind. I am not. I am only putting before you the plan I think best for you. I will follow you myself; I will not be left behind.

Darius was delighted, and answered: my friend from Lesbos, when I am safely home again, be sure to come and see me, so that I can repay good advice with good deeds.

V. Sixty Knots

When he had said this, Darius tied sixty knots in a leather thong and summoned the tyrants of the Ionian cities.

He said: men of Ionia, I take back my earlier order about the bridge. Take this thong and do as follows. From the moment you see me set out against the Scythians, untie one knot each day. If the knots are all untied and the days are all gone and I have not returned, sail away to your own homes. Until then, since my mind is changed, guard the bridge, and give it all your care to keep it safe. Do this, and you will please me greatly. With that, Darius hurried on.

A king leading hundreds of thousands of men counted the days with knots in a strip of leather, a method anyone could follow without a calendar. Whether he had reckoned on finishing the war in sixty days, I have not heard, and I will not guess for him.

VI. What the Scythians Planned

The Scythians knew they could not stop Darius alone. They sent to the kings of their neighbors for help; of eight kings only three agreed, and the rest said: you were the ones who wronged the Persians first, this war is no business of ours.

With that, the Scythians made up their minds not to meet the Persians in a pitched battle. They would fall back, driving off their herds, stopping up the wells and springs along the way and destroying the grass. The wagons in which their wives and children lived they sent on ahead with most of the flocks, ordered to keep moving north, keeping back only what animals they needed for food.

The fighting men split into two forces. One, led by Scopasis, had the Sauromatae with it; if the Persians came their way, they were to fall back along the Maeetian lake toward the river Tanais, and if the Persians turned back, they were to turn and attack. The other, the combined divisions of the kings Idanthyrsus and Taxakis, with the Geloni and Budini, was likewise to withdraw as the Persians came on, always a day's march ahead, never engaging. They also meant to retreat deliberately into the lands of the peoples who had refused to help, so that if those peoples would not join the war of their own accord, the war would be brought to their doors.

VII. Into the Empty Land

The Scythians sent their best horsemen ahead. This advance guard found the Persians about three days' march from the Ister, camped a day's march in front of them, and set about destroying everything that grew.

When the Persians saw the Scythian cavalry, they followed its track, and the horsemen kept withdrawing ahead of them. Fixing on one of the Scythian divisions, the Persians pursued it east to the river Tanais. The horsemen crossed, the Persians crossed after them, and the chase went on through the land of the Sauromatae into the country of the Budini.

In Scythian and Sauromatian country there was nothing for the Persians to destroy; the land was dry and barren. In the land of the Budini they finally saw a city with wooden walls. This was Gelonus: each side of its wall thirty stades long, high and built entirely of wood, its houses and temples wooden too. But its people had all gone and left nothing behind. The Persians set it on fire and burned it. In all that pursuit, it was the only city they came to, and it was empty.

After the burning, still following the horsemen's track, the Persians passed through the Budini's land into a desert where no one lived, seven days' march across.

VIII. Eight Forts on the Oarus

In the desert Darius stopped the pursuit, camped his army on the river Oarus, and began building eight great forts, about sixty stades apart. Their ruins were still standing in my day.

While he was busy with them, the Scythians he had been chasing circled round to the north and went back into Scythia. When they had vanished entirely, Darius abandoned the forts half-built and turned west himself, believing that these Scythians were the whole army and were fleeing west.

The eight forts were left unfinished. Whatever they were meant to hold, not a shadow of it remained there.

IX. Running Through the Neighbors

Darius marched hard back into Scythia, met the other two Scythian divisions, and went after them. As before, they stayed a day's march ahead.

Since he would not stop pursuing, the Scythians did as they had planned and drew him into the lands of the peoples who had refused the alliance: first the Black-cloaks, then the Man-eaters, then the Neuri. Scythians and Persians burst in one after the other and threw each people into turmoil. The Black-cloaks, the Man-eaters and the Neuri forgot all their bold words, fought no battle, and fled north into the desert.

Last of all, the Scythians tried to fall back into the land of the Agathyrsi. But the Agathyrsi, seeing their neighbors fleeing in panic, sent a herald before the Scythians could enter, forbidding them to set foot across the border; if they tried, they would have to fight the Agathyrsi first. They marched out to the border, ready to stop them. The Scythians did not try again. They turned and led the Persians from the land of the Neuri back into Scythia.

X. "Why Do You Always Run?"

This went on a long time, with no end in sight. Darius sent a horseman to Idanthyrsus, king of the Scythians, with this message:

Strange man, why do you always run, when you could do one of two other things? If you think you are strong enough to stand against my power, stop wandering, stand and fight. If you know you are the weaker, then stop running anyway, and come to talk with your master, bringing him gifts of earth and water.

Idanthyrsus answered:

This is how it is with me, Persian. I have never yet run from any man out of fear, not before and not from you now. What I am doing now is nothing new; it is what I do in peacetime too. And why I do not fight you at once, I will tell you as well. We Scythians have no towns and no planted land, so we have no fear of a town being taken or land laid waste that would make us hurry into battle with you. If you must come to a fight quickly, we have the graves of our fathers. Go on, find them, and try to destroy them, and then you will know whether we will fight you for those graves or not. Until then, unless we see good reason, we will not engage you. So much for fighting. As for masters, I acknowledge only Zeus my ancestor and Hestia, queen of the Scythians. Instead of gifts of earth and water, I will send you the gifts you deserve. And for saying you are my master, I tell you: go weep.

This is what people call "the Scythian way of speaking." What Coes had said at the Ister bridge, the Scythian king now said again in his own words: there are no cities here, and no fields.

XI. The Braying of Asses

The horseman rode back with the answer. When the Scythian kings heard the word "master," they were furious.

They sent Scopasis' division, the one with the Sauromatae in it, to the bridge on the Ister to talk with the Ionians guarding it. The Scythians who stayed behind stopped merely leading the Persians on. Instead they struck whenever Darius' men went out foraging, by day and by night.

It always went the same way. The Scythian horse routed the Persian horse; the Persian horsemen fled back to their infantry; the infantry came up in support; and when the Scythians saw the infantry, they turned back.

What helped the Persians most, strange to tell, was the braying of their asses and the look of their mules. Scythia is cold, and breeds neither asses nor mules; across almost the whole country there is not one. When the asses brayed, the Scythian horses panicked. Again and again, in the middle of a charge, the horses heard the braying and shied and wheeled, or stood still with their ears pricked straight up. They had never heard such a sound or seen such a creature.

XII. The Flocks Left Behind

The braying could only do so much. Seeing that the Persians were rattled, the Scythians thought of a way to keep them in Scythia longer and wear them down with want.

They left some of their flocks behind with only the shepherds to watch them, and moved off somewhere else. The Persians would come and take the sheep, and every time they did, they felt they had won a victory and took heart. This happened again and again.

XIII. The Thong at the Bridge

All the while Darius was chasing back and forth across the Scythian plains, the Ionians at the Ister bridge were untying one knot a day. How many knots were left by now, I cannot say; no one told me. I know only that Scopasis' horsemen were already on the road to that bridge, to have a word with the men guarding it.

All along his march Darius had left his marks: pillars by the strait, an inscription at the springs, heaps of stones by the river. In Scythia he found no city to take, no field to burn, no army that would stand still. What counted his days for him now was the thong at the bridge, with fewer knots on it each day.

Sources, versions, and editorial boundaries

1. Core narrative: Herodotus, Histories 4.83-130. 4.83 (Darius prepares the Scythian campaign, orders infantry, ships and a bridge over the Thracian Bosporus; his brother Artabanus son of Hystaspes advises against it, saying the Scythians are hard to deal with, and gives up when the king will not listen; Darius leads the army from Susa); 4.84 (Oeobazus asks that one of his three sons be left behind; Darius says he will leave all three, and has them killed); 4.85 (Darius sails to the Dark Rocks and views the Black Sea from a headland; Herodotus calls it the most wonderful of seas); 4.87 (Mandrocles of Samos as the bridge's builder; two white marble pillars in Assyrian and Greek listing the nations; 700,000 men including cavalry, not counting the fleet, and 600 ships; the pillars later used by the Byzantines for the altar of Orthosian Artemis, one stone left by the temple of Dionysus); 4.88 ("ten of everything" for Mandrocles; his painting and verse dedication in the Heraion); 4.89 (the fleet bridges the Ister two days upstream where the mouths divide; Darius camps three days at the springs of the Tearus); 4.90-91 (the healing springs, thirty-eight in number, and Darius' inscription); 4.92 (the stone heaps at the Artescus); 4.93 (Thracian surrender, the Getae subdued); 4.97 (Coes' advice and Darius' reply); 4.98 (the thong with sixty knots); 4.102, 4.118-119 (the appeal to the neighboring kings; three agree, five refuse); 4.120-121 (the Scythian plan of retreat, the wagons and herds sent north); 4.122-123 (the chase east across the Tanais to the Budini; the empty wooden city burned; the seven-day desert); 4.108 (Gelonus' wooden wall, thirty stades on each side); 4.124 (the eight forts on the Oarus, about sixty stades apart, ruins standing in Herodotus' day; abandoned half-built); 4.125 (the Black-cloaks, Man-eaters and Neuri flee; the Agathyrsi forbid entry); 4.126-127 (Darius' message and Idanthyrsus' reply); 4.128 (the kings' anger; Scopasis' division sent to the Ister bridge; attacks on foragers); 4.129 (asses and mules frighten the Scythian horses); 4.130 (flocks left behind as bait). Read in A. D. Godley's public-domain translation (1920; PerseusDL canonical-greekLit, tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-eng2), with 4.84, 4.97, 4.98, 4.124, 4.126, 4.127 and 4.129 checked against the Greek (tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2).

2. Levels of evidence: Herodotus did not march with Darius and does not say who told him this story; the text therefore treats it as his record and claims no eyewitness. Of the forts he says "τῶν ἔτι ἐς ἐμὲ τὰ ἐρείπια σόα ἦν" ("their ruins were still intact in my day"), stating that they existed, not that he visited them. The figures of 700,000 men and 600 ships are Herodotus' and are reported without judgment. The speeches of Coes, Darius and Idanthyrsus are direct speech recorded by Herodotus, retold from the translation and the Greek without additions.

3. Key Greek: Coes, "ἐπὶ γῆν γὰρ μέλλεις στρατεύεσθαι τῆς οὔτε ἀρηρομένον φανήσεται οὐδὲν οὔτε πόλις οἰκεομένη" (4.97); the thong, "ἀπάψας ἅμματα ἑξήκοντα ἐν ἱμάντι," "λύετε ἅμμα ἓν ἑκάστης ἡμέρης" (4.98); the forts, "ὀκτὼ τείχεα ἐτείχεε μεγάλα ... σταδίους ὡς ἑξήκοντα," "τείχεα μὲν ἐκεῖνα ἡμίεργα μετῆκε" (4.124); Darius, "δαιμόνιε ἀνδρῶν, τί φεύγεις αἰεί" (4.126); Idanthyrsus, "ἡμῖν οὔτε ἄστεα οὔτε γῆ πεφυτευμένη ἐστί," "τυγχάνουσι ἡμῖν ἐόντες τάφοι πατρώιοι," "κλαίειν λέγω," "τοῦτο ἐστὶ ἡ ἀπὸ Σκυθέων ῥῆσις" (4.127); the horses, "ὀρθὰ ἱστάντες τὰ ὦτα" (4.129).

4. Names and wording: "ἱμάς" is rendered "leather thong." "δαιμόνιε ἀνδρῶν," which Godley gives as "You crazy man," is an address of surprise or reproach, here "Strange man." "κλαίειν λέγω" (Godley: "I say 'Weep!'") is rendered "go weep." In 4.128 the kings are angered by the word "δουλοσύνη" (slavery); the story says "master," since Darius' message calls himself Idanthyrsus' master (δεσπότῃ τῷ σῷ). "δέκα πᾶσι," which Godley notes as a proverbial expression for abundance, is "ten of everything." The verse of 4.88 and the inscription of 4.91 are paraphrased. A stade is roughly 180-190 meters; the distances are left in stades.

5. Date: Herodotus gives no year. Godley's note on 4.83 calls the date uncertain, citing Grote. Livius ("Herodotus, bk 4, logos 11") places the campaign after 515 and before 510 BCE, with 514 or 513 plausible and 513 likelier; English Wikipedia ("Scythian campaign of Darius I") gives 513 BCE. The map time is therefore "c. 513 BCE." The ruins "still standing in my day" correspond to the 5th century BCE.

6. Geography: Susa from English Wikipedia "Susa" (32.1906 N, 48.2578 E). For the Bosporus bridge, which Herodotus reckons lay midway between Byzantium and the temple at the mouth (4.87), only the strait's coordinates from English Wikipedia "Bosporus" are used (41.1194 N, 29.0753 E), at region precision. The Ister bridge lay two days upstream where the mouths divide (4.89); its exact site is unknown, and the map point uses Tulcea at the head of the Danube Delta (English Wikipedia "Tulcea," 45.1775 N, 28.8036 E) as a low-confidence regional marker. The springs of the Tearus, the Artescus, Gelonus, the Oarus and the eight forts are not mapped because their identifications are disputed (the Perseus gazetteer tags the Oarus as the Volga, and the Wikipedia article says Darius halted at the Volga, but that is one identification among several). Many modern historians doubt Herodotus' route; the Wikipedia article cites Fol and Hammond for the view that Darius kept the initiative in the farmlands of Ukraine and was supplied by his fleet. This story retells Herodotus' account and does not judge the actual route.

7. History and literary boundaries: the opening paragraphs summarize 4.98 and 4.97; "Someone had already told him so" refers to Coes. At the end of Section I, "Not one of them marched with the army ... left where they lay" points out the double meaning of Darius' words; the Greek says the sons, "ἀποσφαγέντες αὐτοῦ ταύτῃ ἐλείποντο" (throats cut, were left right there; the Greek text places this sentence at the start of 4.85), without naming the place, so the story does not call it Susa. In Section II, "Of all seas, to my mind, this one is the most worth seeing" follows 4.85 "πελαγέων γὰρ ἁπάντων πέφυκε θωμασιώτατος." The closing comment of Section V ("a method anyone could follow without a calendar," "I will not guess for him") is the narrator's; Herodotus does not explain the knots. "It was the only city they came to, and it was empty" (Section VII) summarizes 4.123. The last lines of Section VIII are the narrator's comment. Idanthyrsus' reply in Section X retells the whole of 4.127 without cuts; the link to Coes at the end of Section X is the narrator's. "This happened again and again" (Section XII) follows the opening of 4.131. Section XIII is a literary close: the daily untying is Darius' order (4.98); Herodotus records neither the actual untying nor how many knots were left, as the text says; Scopasis' ride to the bridge follows 4.128.

8. Not covered here: the Getae and Salmoxis (4.94-96), the geography of Scythia (4.99-101), the customs of the neighboring peoples (4.103-117; the Sauromatae appear in no. 31 of this series), and, from 4.131 on, the Scythian gifts, the debate at the Ister bridge and Darius' retreat, left for later stories.

9. Rights: the ancient text and Godley's 1920 translation are public domain; the Greek was checked in short passages against PerseusDL's open TEI. The Chinese and English stories are original contemporary retellings by Clio Walker. Wikipedia and Livius were used only for dating and coordinates.