Upon the Reasons of I.Dareious’s Scytian Expedition

Darius I. who was ascended the throne at the end of a coup attempt, was an important Persian King in terms of his manners about extending the lands of empire, modernizing economy and management, and creating laws on all these fields. At the beginning of his reign, Darius mounted expeditions in order to quell the rebellions that came forward in Persian Empire. Afterwards, he in person mounted expedition to Scythian country in the Black Sea at 512 B.C. For this expedition, floating bridges which made up of ships was built on Bosphrous and Istros at his command. Thus there were 700.000 soldier and 600 ships that got through to Scythian country in Persian army as Herodotos stated. Though he had a strong army, he couldn’t succeed against Scythians. The main reasons of this failure are the retreats and the attacks with tip and run raids and also as they approached to the country, Persian army were deprived of water and supply. Why did Darius mount expedition to Scytian country? There are plenty of studies which have different viewpoints, question these reasons. Black Sea must have attracted the attention of Persians because it had abundant raw materials like timber, mine and its commercial potential and its widespread commerce network that founded long before. Also, one of the reasons of this expedition was to strand the Greeks who met their need of wheat from this region and to take the control around Thracian and Dardanelles before an expedition to Greece