4.139.3
But while we are breaking the bridge, this is your opportunity to go and find the Persians, and when you have found them, punish them as they deserve on our behalf and on your own.”
ch. 140
4.140.1
So the Scythians, trusting the Ionians' word once more, turned back to look for the Persians; but they missed the way by which their enemies returned. The Scythians themselves were to blame for this, because they had destroyed the horses' pasturage in that region and blocked the wells.
4.140.2
Had they not done, they could, if they had wished, easily have found the Persians. But as it was, that part of their plan which they had thought the best was the very cause of their going astray.
4.140.3
So the Scythians went searching for their enemies through the parts of their own country where there was forage for the horses and water, supposing that they, too, were heading for such places in their flight; but the Persians kept to their own former tracks, and so with much trouble they found the crossing.
4.140.4
But as they arrived at night and found the bridge broken, they were in great alarm lest the Ionians had abandoned them.
ch. 141
4.141.1
There was an Egyptian with Darius whose voice was the loudest in the world; Darius had this man stand on the bank of the Ister and call to Histiaeus the Milesian. This the Egyptian did; Histiaeus heard and answered the first shout, and sent all the ships to ferry the army over, and repaired the bridge.
ch. 142
4.142.1
Thus the Persians escaped. The Scythians sought the Persians, but missed them again. Their judgment of the Ionians is that if they are regarded as free men they are the basest and most craven in the world; but if they are reckoned as slaves, none love their masters more, or desire less to escape. Thus have the Scythians taunted the Ionians.
ch. 143
4.143.1
Darius marched through Thrace to Sestos on the Chersonesus; from there, he crossed over with his ships to Asia, leaving Megabazus as his commander in Europe, a Persian whom he once honored by saying among the Persians what I note here:
4.143.2
Darius was about to eat pomegranates, and no sooner had he opened the first of them than his brother Artabanus asked him what he would like to have as many of as there were seeds in his pomegranate; then Darius said that he would rather have that many men like Megabazus than make all Hellas subject to him.
4.143.3
By speaking thus among Persians, the king honored Megabazus; and now he left him behind as his commander, at the head of eighty thousand of his army.
ch. 144
4.144.1
This Megabazus is forever remembered by the people of the Hellespont for replying,
4.144.2
when he was told at Byzantium that the people of Calchedon had founded their town seventeen years before the Byzantines had founded theirs, that the Calchedonians must at that time have been blind, for had they not been, they would never have chosen the worse site for their city when they might have had the better.
4.144.3
This Megabazus, left now as commander in the country, subjugated all the people of the Hellespont who did not take the side of the Persians.
ch. 145
4.145.1
At the same time that he was doing this, another great force was sent against Libya, for the reason that I shall give after I finish the story that I am going to tell now.
