e Scythians,
but those of the Agathyrsians, Neuroi, Androphagoi, Melanchlainoi and
Tauroi returned answer to the Scythians as follows: "If ye had not been
the first to do wrong to the Persians and to begin war, then we should
have surely thought that ye were speaking justly in asking for those
things for which ye now ask, and we should have yielded to your request
and shared your fortunes. As it is however, ye on the one hand made
invasion without us into their land, and bare rule over the Persians for
so long a time as God permitted you; and they in their turn, since
the same God stirs them up, are repaying you with the like. As for us
however, neither at that time did we do any wrong to these men nor now
shall we attempt to do any wrong to them unprovoked: if however the
Persians shall come against our land also, and do wrong first to us, we
also shall refuse to submit 111: but until we shall see this, we shall
remain by ourselves, for we are of opinion that the Persians have come
not against us, but against those who were the authors of the wrong."

120. When the Scythians heard this answer reported, they planned not to
fight a pitched battle openly, since these did not join them as allies,
but to retire before the Persians and to drive away their cattle from
before them, choking up with earth the wells and the springs of water by
which they passed and destroying the grass from off the ground, having
parted themselves for this into two bodies; and they resolved that the
Sauromatai should be added to one of their divisions, namely that over
which Scopasis was king, and that these should move on, if the Persians
turned in that direction, straight towards the river Tanais, retreating
before him by the shore of the Maiotian lake; and when the Persian
marched back again, they should come after and pursue him. This was one
division of their kingdom, appointed to go by the way which has been
said; and the other two of the kingdoms, the large one over which
Idanthyrsos was king, and the third of which Taxakis was king, were to
join together in one, with the Gelonians and the Budinoi added to them,
and they also were to retire before the Persians one day's march in
front of them, going on out of their way and doing that which had been
planned. First they were to move on straight for the countries which had
refused to give their alliance, in order that they might involve these
also in the war, and though these had not voluntari