The image of the bridge is germane to the spirit of a volume that seeks to identify and explain connections between different logoi in Herodotus' Histories. The bridges in Herodotus' work have the potential to reveal the constructedness of the narrative and the transitions between different sections within this narrative. Bridging can also represent the historical operation that twenty-first-century readers are obliged to perform as we attempt to read historically and to make connections with the work's implied audiences.

The transition between Books 4 and 5 of the Histories coincides, neatly, with the interstitial space of the Hellespont and marks a shift in subject matter as Herodotus links the acts of conquest undertaken by foreign rulers in distant lands (narrated in Books 1–4) with the extension of conquest into the Greek arena (narrated in Books 6–9). In the following discussion of chapters 23–7, I will examine how the geographical gulf of the Hellespont serves to highlight cultural gaps and differences and, as a marker that features in several significant campaigns, highlights gaps in understanding on the part of different agents in the Histories. As a symbolic space between two continents that has geographical, ethnographical, and historical significance, the Hellespont represents the kinds of repeated crossings that the reader of Herodotus has to make in order to comprehend the significance of the different dimensions of the narrative.