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relation of his unsuccessful expedition against the Scythians, which, 

 of all those events, has alone any connection with the events of this 

 history, we shall extract an account of the occasion and progress of 

 it from Oriental sources, which, however, will be found widely 

 different, as to the conduct and the result of the campaign, from the 

 melancholy detail given us by Herodotus ; since Darius is by those 

 writers recorded to have returned from it, as might well be expected 

 from so able and experienced a general, crowned with the most 

 brilliant success. Whether, after all, the occasion of the Scythian 

 war be rightly or erroneously stated by Mirkhond, the motive for 

 that expedition was probably different from that assigned by the 

 Greek historian, viz. the irruption of the Tartar hordes one hundred 

 and twenty years before, in the time of Cyaxares; for, since that 

 period, successive inter-marriages had strengthened the bands of 

 connection between the two royal houses ; and Darius himself, we 

 have seen, had married the daughter of the Turanian emperor. 



It originated, according to Mirkhond, in religion ; in the anxious 

 desire of Hystaspes to diffuse, over the continent of Asia, the new 

 faith of Zeratusht. With this important object in view, he wrote an 

 urgent letter to Argiasp, the reigning sovereign of Turan, and his 

 near relation, using every argument which his superior genius and 

 fervid devotion to reformed Sabaism could invent, to induce him to 

 adopt the creed of the Persian theologue. The Turanian monarch, 

 however, was so far from being convinced by the eloquence of 

 the royal tiro, that he returned an answer which at once re- 

 proached Hystaspes for deserting the faith of his ancestors, and 

 was replete with sarcastic reflections on the novel doctrines pro- 

 pagated by the upstart prophet whom he protected. Roused to 

 revenge at this premeditated insult, Hystaspes and his valiant son 

 Asfendiar immediately took the field, with all the forces of the 

 empire, and, entering Turan, advanced to give its sovereign bat- 



