Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

44 HISTORY OF PERSIA,
Arrived at this great river, Darius crossed it by means
of a bridge of boats, also built for him by the
Greeks, and advanced into Scythia, leaving the de-
fence of the bridge to his faithful Greeks. How far
northward he actually penetrated is hard to say, but
Herodotus tells us that he burnt the staple of Gelo-
nus, a place Professor Rawlinson supposes to be near
Voronej. Thence he fell back on his bridge, re-crossed
the Danube and the Dardanelles, and returned to Sar-
dis, leaving his general Megabyzus to complete the
subjugation of Thrace itself. During the execution of
this duty, Megabyzus compelled Alexander the son
of Amyntas, king of Macedon, to pay tribute, under
the usual Persian symbols of earth and water; and
the principal of the Greek cities in the neighbourhood,
Byzantium, Chalcedon, &c., were subsequently reduced
about B.C. 505 by Otanes, the successor in this command
to Megabyzus. From Sardis, Darius retired
to Susa, where he built a great palace, the ruins of
which have been recently explored by Mr. Loftus.
It is, perhaps, as well to notice here two curious
matters in connection with Susa; the first, that in
the Koyunjik Gallery, at the British Museum, there is a
ground plan or map of a town, in the centre of which
"
City of Ma-
is a Cuneiform inscription, reading
daktu ;" a map older by more than two centuries
than the famous bronze one of Hecataeus, which
Aristagoras laid before the Spartan king Cleomenes.
This curious monument represents, according to Mr.
Loftus, with minute accuracy, the ground plan of the
ancient capital of Susa, as laid open by his excavations.
" The large mound," says he, " on the left of the