herodotus

destroyed the pastures for horses in that region and had choked upwith earth the springs of water; for if they had not done this, itwould have been possible for them easily, if they desired it, todiscover the Persians: but as it was, by those things wherein theythought they had taken their measures best, they failed of success.The Scythians then on their part were passing through those regions oftheir own land where there was grass for the horses and springs ofwater, and were seeking for the enemy there, thinking that they toowere taking a course in their retreat through such country as this;while the Persians in fact marched keeping carefully to the trackwhich they had made before, and so they found the passage of theriver, though with difficulty:[125] and as they arrived by night andfound the bridge broken up, they were brought to the extreme of fear,lest the Ionians should have deserted them. 141. Now there was withDareios an Egyptian who had a voice louder than that of any other manon earth, and this man Dareios ordered to take his stand upon the bankof the Ister and to call Histiaios of Miletos. He accordinglyproceeded to do so; and Histiaios, hearing the first hail, producedall the ships to carry the army over and also put together the bridge.142. Thus the Persians escaped, and the Scythians in their searchmissed the Persians the second time also: and their judgment of theIonians is that on the one hand, if they be regarded as free men, theyare the most worthless and cowardly of all men, but on the other hand,if regarded as slaves, they are the most attached to their master andthe least disposed to run away of all slaves. This is the reproachwhich is cast against the Ionians by the Scythians.143. Dareios then marching through Thrace arrived at Sestos in theChersonese; and from that place, he passed over himself in his shipsto Asia, but to command his army in Europe he left Megabazos aPersian, to whom Dareios once gave honour by uttering in the land ofPersia[126] this saying:--Dareios was beginning to eat pomegranates,and at once when he opened the first of them, Artabanos his brotherasked him of what he would desire to have as many as there were seedsin the pomegranate: and Dareios said that he would desire to have menlike Megabazos as many as that in number, rather than to have Hellassubject to him. In Persia, I say, he honoured him by saying thesewords, and at this time he left him in command with eight myriads[127]of his army. 144. This Megabazos uttered one saying whereby he left ofhimself an imperishable memory with the peoples of Hellespont: forbeing once at Byzantion he heard that the men of Calchedon had settledin that region seventeen years before the Byzantians, and having heardit he said that those of Calchedon at that time chanced to be blind;for assuredly they would not have chosen the worse place, when theymight have settled in that which was better, if they had not beenblind. This Megabazos it was who was left in command at that time in