118 HISTORICAL TALES.

Happy was it for Greece that the ambitious
Persian did not then seek its conquest, as Democedes,
his physician, had suggested. The Athenians, then
under the rule of the tyrant Pisistratus, were not
the free and bold people they afterwards became,
and had Darius sought their conquest at that time,
the land of Greece would probably have become a
part of the overgrown Persian empire. Fortunately,
he was bent on conquering the barbarians of the
north, and left Greece to grow in valor and pa-
triotism.

While the army marched from Asia into Europe
across its bridge of boats, the fleet was sent into
the Euxine, or Black Sea, with orders to sail for two
days up the Danube River, which empties into that
sea, and build there also a bridge of boats. When
Darius with his army reached the Danube, he
found the bridge ready, and on its swaying length
crossed what was then believed to be the greatest
river on the earth. Reaching the northern bank,
he marched onward into the unknown country of
the barbarous Scythians, with visions of conquest
and glory in his mind.

What happened to the great Persian army and
its ambitious leader in Scythia we do not very well
know. Two historians tell us the story, but prob-
ably their history is more imagination than fact.
Ctesias tells the fairy-tale that Darius marched
northward for fifteen days, that he then exchanged
bows with the Scythian king, and that, finding the
Scythian bow to be the largest, he fied back in terror
to the bridge, which he hastily crossed, having left