DARIUS' CONQUEST OF INDIA, &c.
About the same time, which was in the 13th year of Darius' reign, this prince, having an ambition to extend his dominion eastward, first resolved, in order to facilitate his conquests, to get a proper knowledge of the country. To this end, he caused a fleet to be built and fitted out at Caspatyra, a city upon the Indus, and did the same at several other places on the same river, as far as the frontiers of Scythia. The command of this fleet was given to Scylax, a Grecian of Caryandia, a town of Caria, who was perfectly well versed in maritime affairs. His orders were to sail down the river, and get all the knowledge he possibly could of the country on both sides, quite down to its mouth; to pass from thence into the southern ocean, and to steer his course afterwards to the west, and so return back that way to Persia. Scylax, having exactly observed his instructions, and sailed quite down the river Indus, entered the Red Sea by the straits of Babelmandel; and after a voyage of thirty months from the time of his setting out from Caspatyra, he arrived in Egypt at the same port, from whence Nechao, king of Egypt, had formerly sent the
Phœnicians, who were in his service, with orders to sail round the coasts of Africa. Very probably this was the same port where now stands the town of Suez, at the farther end of the Red Sea. From thence Scylax returned to Susa, where he gave Darius an account of all his discoveries. Darius afterwards entered India with an army, and subjected all that vast country. The reader will naturally expect to be informed of the particulars of so important a war. But Herodotus says not one word about it; he only tells us that India made the twentieth province, or government of the Persian empire, and that the annual revenue of it was worth three hundred and sixty talents of gold to Darius, which amounts to near eleven millions of livres, French money, something less than five hundred thousand pounds sterling.
Darius, after his return to Susa from his Scythian expedition, had given his brother Artaphernes the government of Sardis, and made Otanes commander in Thrace, and the adjacent countries along the sea coast, in the room of Megabysus.
