In the reigns of ancient monarchs and conquerors, it often happened that the first great transaction which called forth their energies was the suppression of a rebellion within their dominions, and the second, an expedition against some ferocious and half-savage nations beyond their frontiers. Darius followed this general example. The suppression of the Babylonian revolt established his authority throughout the whole interior of his empire. If that vast, and populous, and wealthy city was found unable to resist his power, no other smaller province or capital could hope to succeed in the attempt. The whole empire of Asia, therefore, from the capital at Susa, out to the extreme limits and bounds to which Cyrus had extended it, yielded without any further opposition to his sway. He felt strong in his position, and being young and ardent in temperament, he experienced a desire to exercise his strength. For some reason or other, he seems to have been not quite prepared yet to grapple with the Greeks, and he concluded, accordingly, first to test his powers in respect to foreign invasion by a war upon the Scythians. This was an undertaking which required some courage and resolution; for it was while making an incursion into the country of the Scythians that Cyrus, his renowned predecessor, and the founder of the Persian empire, had fallen.
The term Scythians seems to have been a generic designation, applied indiscriminately to vast hordes of half-savage tribes occupying those wild and inhospitable regions of the north, that extended along the shores of the Black and Caspian Seas, and the banks of the Danube. The accounts which are given by the ancient historians of the manners and customs of these people, are very inconsistent and contradictory; as, in fact, the accounts of the characters of savages, and of the habits and usages of savage life, have always been in every age. It is very little that any one cultivated observer can really know, in respect to the phases of character, the thoughts and feelings, the sentiments, the principles and the faith, and even the modes of life, that prevail among uncivilized aborigines living in forests, or roaming wildly over uninclosed and trackless plains. Of those who have the opportunity to observe them, accordingly, some extol, in the highest degree, their rude but charming simplicity, their truth and faithfulness, the strength of their filial and conjugal affection, and their superiority of spirit in rising above the sordid sentiments and gross vices of civilization. They are not the slaves, these writers say, of appetite and passion. They have no inordinate love of gain; they are patient in enduring suffering, grateful for kindness received, and inflexibly firm in their adherence to the principles of honor and duty. Others, on the other hand, see in savage life nothing but treachery, cruelty, brutality, and crime. Man in his native state, as they imagine, is but a beast, with just intelligence enough to give effect to his depravity. Without natural affection, without truth, without a sense of justice, or the means of making law a substitute for it, he lives in a scene of continual conflict, in which the rights of the weak and the defenseless are always overborne by brutal and tyrannical power.
The explanation of this diversity is doubtless this, that in savage life, as well as in every other state of human society, all the varieties of human conduct and character are exhibited; and the attention of each observer is attracted to the one or to the other class of phenomena, according to the circumstances in which he is placed when he makes his observations, or the mood of mind which prevails within him when he records them. There must be the usual virtues of social life, existing in a greater or less degree, in all human communities; for such principles as a knowledge of the distinction of right and wrong, the idea of property and of individual rights, the obligation resting on every one to respect them, the sense of justice, and of the ill desert of violence and cruelty, are all universal instincts of the human soul, as universal and as essential to humanity as maternal or filial affection, or the principle of conjugal love. They were established by the great Author of nature as constituent elements in the formation of man. Man could not continue to exist, as a gregarious animal, without them. It would accordingly be as impossible to find a community of men without these moral sentiments generally prevalent among them, as to find vultures or tigers that did not like to pursue and take their prey, or deer without a propensity to fly from danger. The laws and usages of civilized society are the expression and the result of these sentiments, not the origin and foundation of them; and violence, cruelty, and crime are the exceptions to their operation, very few, in all communities, savage or civilized, in comparison with the vast preponderance of cases in which they are obeyed.
This view of the native constitution of the human character, which it is obvious, on very slight reflection, must be true, is not at all opposed, as it might at first appear to be, by the doctrine of the theological writers in the Christian Church in respect to the native depravity of man; for the depravity here referred to is a religious depravity, an alienation of the heart from God, and a rebellious and insubmissive spirit in respect to his law. Neither the Scriptures nor the theological writers who interpret them ever call in question the universal existence and prevalence of those instincts that are essential to the social welfare of man.
But we must return to the Scythians.
The tribes which Darius proposed to attack occupied the countries north of the Danube. His route, therefore, for the invasion of their territories would lead him through Asia Minor, thence across the Hellespont or the Bosporus into Thrace, and from Thrace across the Danube. It was a distant and dangerous expedition.
Darius had a brother named Artabanus. Artabanus was of opinion that the enterprise which the king was contemplating was not only distant and dangerous, but that the country of the Scythians was of so little value that the end to be obtained by success would be wholly inadequate to compensate for the exertions, the costs, and the hazards which he must necessarily incur in the prosecution of it. But Darius was not to be dissuaded. He thanked his brother for his advice, but ordered the preparations for the expedition to go on.
He sent emissaries forward, in advance, over the route that his army was destined to take, transmitting orders to the several provinces which were situated on the line of his march to prepare the way for the passage of his troops. Among other preparations, they were to construct a bridge of boats across the Bosporus at Chalcedon. This work was intrusted to the charge and superintendence of an engineer of Samos named Mandrocles. The people of the provinces were also to furnish bodies of troops, both infantry and cavalry, to join the army on its march.
The soldiers that were enlisted to go on this remote and dangerous expedition joined the army, as is usual in such cases, some willingly, from love of adventure, or the hope of opportunities for plunder, and for that unbridled indulgence of appetite and passion which soldiers so often look forward to as a part of their reward; others from hard compulsion, being required to leave friends and home, and all that they held dear, under the terror of a stern and despotic edict which they dared not disobey. It was even dangerous to ask for exemption.
As an instance of this, it is said that there was a Persian named Oebazus, who had three sons that had been drafted into the army. Oebazus, desirous of not being left wholly alone in his old age, made a request to the king that he would allow one of the sons to remain at home with his father. Darius appeared to receive this petition favorably. He told Oebazus that the request was so very modest and considerate that he would grant more than he asked. He would allow all three of his sons to remain with him. Oebazus retired from the king's presence overjoyed at the thought that his family was not to be separated at all. Darius ordered his guards to kill the three young men, and to send the dead bodies home, with a message to their father that his sons were restored to him, released forever from all obligation to serve the king.