The tide then swept on.

Wandering from district to district, plundering everywhere, settling nowhere, the clouds of horse passed over Mesopotamia, the force of the invasion becoming weaker as it spread itself, until in Syria it reached its term through the policy of the Egyptian king, Psammetichus.

This monarch, who was engaged in the siege of Ashdod, no sooner heard of the approach of a great Scythian host, which threatened to overrun Egypt, and had advanced as far as Ascalon, than he sent ambassadors to their leader and prevailed on him by rich gifts to abstain from his enterprise.

From this time the power of the invaders seems to have declined.

Their strength could not but suffer by the long series of battles, sieges, and skirmishes in which they were engaged year after year against enemies in nowise contemptible; it would likewise deteriorate through their excesses; and it may even have received some injury from intestine quarrels.