About 512 B.C. Darius Hystaspis (q.v.) undertook an invasion of Scythia which, according to Herodotus, he traversed as far as the Oarus (probably the Volga). He burned the town of Gelonus and returned to the Ister (Danube) in 6o days. In this march he was much harassed by the nomad tribes, with whom he could not come to close quarters. After losing many men, he found on his return that the Ionian Greeks were still guarding the bridge over the Ister in spite of the attempts of the Scyths to make them desert, and thus he safely re-entered his dominions. Ctesias, the Persian historian, says that the whole campaign only took 15 days and that Darius did not get beyond the Tyras (Dniester). This is also the view of Strabo. Ctesias admits, however, that the great king suffered heavy losses. The whole of Herodotus' account bristles with difficulties. A full discussion of these will be found in G. B. Grundy, The Great Persian War (190I) pp. 48-76. Grundy represents the expedition as a necessary strategical pre liminary to the subjugation of European Greece, undertaken with the object of making sure that no large Greek communities should be left upon Darius' flank (see GRAECO-PERSIAN WARS). We may conclude that Darius made an attempt to secure the Danube fron tier, suffered serious reverses and retired with loss.
The Greeks had been trading with the Scyths ever since their coming, and at Olbia there were many tales of their history. We can make a list of Scythian kings—Spargapeithes, Lycus, Gnurus, Saulius (whose brother, the famous Anacharsis [q.v.], travelled over all the world in search of wisdom, was reckoned a sage among the Greeks and was slain among his own people because they did not like his foreign ways), and Idanthyrsus, the high king at the time of Darius, probably the father of Ariapeithes. This latter had three wives—a Greek woman from Istrus, Opoea, a Scythian, and a Thracian, daughter to the great chief Teres. Scyles, his son by the Greek mother, affected Greek ways, had a house in Olbia, and even took part in Bacchic rites. When this came to the knowl
edge of his subjects he was murdered, and Octamasadas, his son by the third wife, reigned in his stead. Herodotus adduces this to show how much the Scyths hated foreign customs, but with the things found in the graves it rather proves how strong was the attraction exercised upon the nomads by the higher culture of their neighbours. Octamasadas died shortly before the time of Herodotus. We cannot place Ariantas, who made a kind of census of the nation by exacting an arrow-head from each warrior and cast a great cauldron out of the bronze, nor Taxacis and Scopasis, the under-kings in the time of Idanthyrsus. After the retreat of Darius the Scythians made a raid as far as Abydos, and even sent envoys to King Cleomenes I. of Sparta to arrange that they should attack the Persian empire from the Phasis while the Spartans marched up from Ephesus. Henceforward the Scyths appear as a declining power : by the middle of the 4th century their eastern neighbours, the Sarmatae, have crossed the Tanais (Don) and the pressure of the Scyths is felt on the Danube. Here Philip II. of Macedon defeated and slew their king Ateas in 339 B.C., and from this time on the representatives of the old Scythic power are petty chieftains in the weAtern part of the country about Olbia, where they could still be dangerous, and about Tomi. Towards the second half of the 2nd century B.C. this kingdom seems to have become the nucleus of a great state under Scilurus, whose name appears on coins of Olbia, and who at the same time threatened Chersonesus in the Crimea. Here, how ever, he was opposed by the might of Mithridates VI. of Pontus and his power was broken, but some Scyths survived until the migration period. Meanwhile most of Scythia had become the land of the Sarmatae (q.v.). These were definitely Iranian; like the Scyths they were pressed towards the west by yet newer swarms, and with the coming of the Huns, Scythia enters upon a new cycle, though still keeping its old name in the Byzantine his torians.