Tom Holland

And this is a guy called Artafernes, who is Darius's brother.

And Artafernes means literally the splendor of Arta, the splendor of truth and order.

So it's a very kind of appropriate name.

And Artafernes is the governor, not just of Lydia, but of the Ionian Greeks as well on the Aegean coast.

So Darius is now kind of emerging for the first time into the kind of the Greek area.

Are they in Ukraine?

All the kind of the steppelins north of Persia.

So Darius, by this point, has already attacked them beyond the Caucasus.

He's launched an invasion there.

He's kind of pacified them.

Now he wants to attack the tribes who lurk.

kind of beyond the Black Sea so he's going a very elaborate roundabout route right he's going to go up through the Balkans yes I think he wants to expand into Europe I think he wants to kind of to have a foothold there I think there are all kinds of various strategic considerations but I think he also he hasn't he hasn't really done his homework because if he had studied the careers of

Napoleon or Hitler, he would realize that launching attacks into the steppelins of Ukraine and Russia beyond it is not a sensible thing to do.

No, he hadn't.

So anyway, he's inside.

He marches north up towards the Hellespont, which is the straits between Asia and Europe, crosses them, goes up to the Danube, builds a pontoon bridge across the Danube and vanishes into the Stepplands.

And unsurprisingly, the campaign proves a disaster because the Scythians on their horses adopt a scorched earth policy.

as the Russians and the Ukrainians and so on will do many times in the future.

And Darius finds it impossible to corner them.

He's basically the first imperial invader to discover that it's not actually very easy to conquer the Stepplands.