CHAPTER XXXVIII.

FROM THE BATTLE OF MARATHON TO THE MARCH OF XERXES AGAINST GREECE.

In the last chapter but one of the preceding volume, I described the

Athenian victory at Marathon, the repulse of the Persian general

Datis, and the return of his armament across the Ægean to the

Asiatic coast. He had been directed to conquer both Eretria and

Athens: an order which he had indeed executed in part with success,

as the string of Eretrian prisoners brought to Susa attested,—but

which remained still unfulfilled in regard to the city principally

obnoxious to Darius. Far from satiating his revenge upon Athens, the

Persian monarch was compelled to listen to the tale of an ignominious

defeat. His wrath against the Athenians rose to a higher pitch

than ever, and he commenced vigorous preparations for a renewed

attack upon them, as well as upon Greece generally. Resolved upon

assembling the entire force of his empire, he directed the various

satraps and sub-governors throughout all Asia to provide troops,

horses, and ships, both of war and burden. For no less than three

years the empire was agitated by this immense levy, which Darius

determined to conduct in person against Greece.[1] Nor was his

determination abated by a revolt of the Egyptians, which broke out

about the time when his preparations were completed. He was on the

point of undertaking simultaneously the two enterprises,—the conquest

of Greece and the reconquest of Egypt,—when he was surprised by

death, after a reign of thirty-six years. As a precaution previous

to this intended march, he had nominated as successor Xerxes, his

son by Atossa; for the ascendency of that queen insured to Xerxes

the preference over his elder brother Artabazanes, son of Darius by

a former wife, and born before the latter became king. The choice

of the reigning monarch passed unquestioned, and Xerxes succeeded

without opposition.[2] It deserves to be remarked, that though we

shall meet with several acts of cruelty and atrocity perpetrated

in the Persian regal family, there is nothing like that systematic

fratricide which has been considered necessary to guarantee

succession in Turkey and other Oriental empires.

[1] Herodot. vii, 3, 4.

[2] Herodot. vii, 1-4. He mentions—simply as a report, and

seemingly without believing it himself—that Demaratus the exiled

king of Sparta was at Susa at the moment when Darius was about

to choose a successor among his sons (this cannot consist with

Ktesias, Persic. c. 23): and that he suggested to Xerxes a

convincing argument by which to determine the mind of his father,

urging the analogy of the law of regal succession at Sparta,

whereby the son of a king, born after his father became king, was

preferred to an elder son born before that event. The existence

of such a custom at Sparta may well be doubted.

Some other anecdotes, not less difficult of belief than this, and

alike calculated to bestow a factitious importance on Demaratus,

will be noticed in the subsequent pages. The latter received from

the Persian king the grant of Pergamus and Teuthrania, with their

land-revenues, which his descendants long afterwards continued to

occupy (Xenoph. Hellen. iii, 1-6): and perhaps these descendants

may have been among the persons from whom Herodotus derived his

information respecting the expedition of Xerxes. See vii, 239.

Plutarch (De Fraterno Amore, p. 488) gives an account in many

respects different concerning the circumstances which determined

the succession of Xerxes to the throne, in preference to his

elder brother.

The intense wrath against Athens, which had become the predominant

sentiment in the mind of Darius, was yet unappeased at the time of

his death, and it was fortunate for the Athenians that his crown

now passed to a prince less obstinately hostile as well as in every

respect inferior. Xerxes, personally the handsomest[3] and most

stately man amid the immense crowd which he led against Greece, was

in character timid and faint-hearted, over and above those defects of

vanity, childish self-conceit, and blindness of appreciation, which

he shared more or less with all the Persian kings. Yet we shall see

that, even under his conduct, the invasion of Greece was very near

proving successful: and it well might have succeeded altogether, had

he been either endued with the courageous temperament, or inflamed

with the fierce animosity, of his father.

[3] Herod. vii, 187. The like personal beauty is ascribed to

Darius Codomannus, the last of the Persian kings (Plutarch,

Alexand. c. 21).

On succeeding to the throne, Xerxes found the forces of the empire in

active preparation, pursuant to the orders of Darius; except Egypt,

which was in a state of revolt. His first necessity was to reconquer

this country; a purpose for which the great military power now in

readiness was found amply sufficient. Egypt was subdued and reduced

to a state of much harder dependence than before: we may presume that

the tribute was increased, as well as the numbers of the Persian

occupying force maintained, by contributions levied on the natives.

Achæmenes, brother of Xerxes, was installed there as satrap.

But Xerxes was not at first equally willing to prosecute the schemes

of his deceased father against Greece. At least such is the statement

of Herodotus; who represents Mardonius as the grand instigator of the

invasion, partly through thirst for warlike enterprise, partly from a

desire to obtain the intended conquest as a satrapy for himself. Nor

were there wanting Grecian counsellors to enforce his recommendation,

both by the promise of help and by the color of religion. The great

family of the Aleuadæ, belonging to Larissa, and perhaps to other

towns in Thessaly, were so eager in the cause, that their principal

members came to Susa to offer an easy occupation of that frontier

territory of Hellas: while the exiled Peisistratids from Athens still

persevered in striving to procure their own restoration at the tail

of a Persian army. On the present occasion, they brought with them

to Susa a new instrument, the holy mystic Onomakritus,—a man who

had acquired much reputation, not by prophesying himself, but by

collecting, arranging, interpreting, and delivering out, prophetic

verses passing under the name of the ancient seer or poet Musæus.

Thirty years before, in the flourishing days of the Peisistratids,

he had lived at Athens, enjoying the confidence of Hipparchus, and

consulted by him as the expositor of these venerated documents. But

having been detected by the poet Lasus of Hermione, in the very act

of interpolating them with new matter of his own, Hipparchus banished

him with indignation. The Peisistratids, however, now in banishment

themselves, forgot or forgave this offence, and carried Onomakritus

with his prophecies to Susa, announcing him as a person of oracular

authority, to assist in working on the mind of Xerxes. To this

purpose his interpolations, or his omissions, were now directed:

for when introduced to the Persian monarch, he recited emphatically

various encouraging predictions wherein the bridging of the

Hellespont and the triumphant march of a barbaric host into Greece,

appeared as predestined; while he carefully kept back all those of a

contrary tenor, which portended calamity and disgrace. So at least

Herodotus,[4] strenuous in upholding the credit of Bakis, Musæus, and

other Grecian prophets whose verses were in circulation, expressly

assures us. The religious encouragements of Onomakritus, and the

political cooperation proffered by the Aleuadæ, enabled Mardonius

effectually to overcome the reluctance of his master. Nor indeed was

it difficult to show, according to the feelings then prevalent, that

a new king of Persia was in honor obliged to enlarge the boundaries

of the empire.[5] The conquering impulse springing from the first

founder was as yet unexhausted; the insults offered by the Athenians

remained still unavenged: and in addition to this double stimulus

to action, Mardonius drew a captivating picture of Europe as an

acquisition;—“it was the finest land in the world, produced every

variety of fruit-bearing trees, and was too good a possession for

any mortal man except the Persian kings.”[6] Fifteen years before,

the Milesian Aristagoras,[7] when entreating the Spartans to assist

the Ionic revolt, had exaggerated the wealth and productiveness of

Asia in contrast with the poverty of Greece,—a contrast less widely

removed from the truth, at that time, than the picture presented by

Mardonius.

[4] Herodot. vii, 6; viii, 20, 96, 77. Ὀνομάκριτος—κατέλεγε τῶν

χρησμῶν· εἰ μέν τι ἐνέοι σφάλμα φέρον τῷ Πέρσῃ, τῶν μὲν ἔλεγε

οὐδέν· ὁ δὲ τὰ εὐτυχέστατα ἐκλεγόμενος, ἔλεγε τόν τε Ἑλλήσποντον

ὡς ζευχθῆναι χρέον εἴη ὑπ’ ἀνδρὸς Πέρσεω, τήν τε ἔλασιν

ἐξηγεόμενος, etc.

An intimation somewhat curious respecting this collection

of prophecies; it was of an extremely varied character, and

contained promises or threats to meet any emergency which might

arise.

[5] Æschylus, Pers. 761.

[6] Herodot. vii, 5. ὡς ἡ Εὐρώπη περικαλλὴς χώρη, καὶ

δένδρεα παντοῖα φέρει τὰ ἥμερα, βασιλέϊ τε μούνῳ θνητῶν ἀξίη

ἐκτῆσθαι—χώρην παμφορωτέρην (vii, 8).

[7] Herodot. v, 49.

Having thus been persuaded to alter his original views, Xerxes

convoked a meeting of the principal Persian counsellors, and

announced to them his resolution to invade Greece, setting forth the

mingled motives of revenge and aggrandizement which impelled him, and

representing the conquest of Greece as carrying with it that of all

Europe, so that the Persian empire would become coextensive with the

æther of Zeus and the limits of the sun’s course. On the occasion

of this invasion, now announced and about to take place, we must

notice especially the historical manner and conception of our capital

informant,—Herodotus. The invasion of Greece by Xerxes, and the final

repulse of his forces, constitute the entire theme of his three

last books, and the principal object of his whole history, towards

which the previous matter is intended to conduct. Amidst those prior

circumstances, there are doubtless many which have a substantive

importance and interest of their own, recounted at so much length

that they appear coördinate and principal, so that the thread of

the history is for a time put out of sight. Yet we shall find, if

we bring together the larger divisions of his history, omitting the

occasional prolixities of detail, that such thread is never lost in

the historian’s own mind: it may be traced by an attentive reader,

from his preface and the statement immediately following it—of

Crœsus, as the first barbaric conqueror of the Ionian Greeks—down

to the full expansion of his theme, “Græcia Barbariæ lento collisa

duello,” in the expedition of Xerxes. That expedition, as forming

the consummation of his historical scheme, is not only related more

copiously and continuously than any events preceding it, but is

also ushered in with an unusual solemnity of religious and poetical

accompaniment, so that the seventh book of Herodotus reminds us

in many points of the second book of the Iliad: probably too, if

the lost Grecian epics had reached us, we should trace many other

cases in which the imagination of the historian has unconsciously

assimilated itself to them. The dream sent by the gods to frighten

Xerxes, when about to recede from his project,—as well as the ample

catalogue of nations and eminent individuals embodied in the Persian

host,—have both of them marked parallels in the Iliad: and Herodotus

seems to delight in representing to himself the enterprise against

Greece as an antithesis to that of the Atreidæ against Troy. He

enters into the internal feelings of Xerxes with as much familiarity

as Homer into those of Agamemnon, and introduces “the counsel of

Zeus” as not less direct, special, and overruling, than it appears in

the Iliad and Odyssey:[8] though the godhead in Herodotus, compared

with Homer, tends to become neuter instead of masculine or feminine,

and retains only the jealous instincts of a ruler, apart from the

appetites, lusts, and caprices of a man: acting, moreover, chiefly as

a centralized, or at least as a homogeneous, force, in place of the

discordant severalty of agents conspicuous in the Homeric theology.

The religious idea, so often presented elsewhere in Herodotus,—that

the godhead was jealous and hostile to excessive good fortune or

immoderate desires in man,—is worked into his history of Xerxes as

the ever-present moral and as the main cause of its disgraceful

termination: for we shall discover as we proceed, that the historian,

with that honorable frankness which Plutarch calls his “malignity,”

neither ascribes to his countrymen credit greater than they deserve

for personal valor, nor seeks to veil the many chances of defeat

which their mismanagement laid open.[9]

[8] Homer, Iliad, i, 3. Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή. Herodotus is

characterized as Ὁμήρου ζηλωτὴς—Ὁμηρικώτατος (Dionys. Halic. ad

Cn. Pompeium, p. 772, Reiske; Longinus De Sublim. p. 86, ed.

Pearce).

[9] While Plutarch—if indeed the treatise De Herodoti Malignitate

be the work of Plutarch—treats Herodotus as uncandid,

malicious, corrupt, the calumniator of great men and glorious

deeds,—Dionysius of Halikarnassus, on the contrary, with more

reason, treats him as a pattern of excellent dispositions in

an historian, contrasting him in this respect with Thucydides,

to whom he imputes an unfriendly spirit in criticizing Athens,

arising from his long banishment: Ἡ μὲν Ἡροδότου διάθεσις ἐν

ἅπασιν ἐπιεικὴς, καὶ τοῖς μὲν ἀγαθοῖς συνηδομένη, τοῖς δὲ κακοῖς

συναλγοῦσα· ἡ δὲ Θουκυδίδου διάθεσις αὐθέκαστός τις καὶ πικρὰ,

καὶ τῇ πατρίδι τῆς φυγῆς μνησικακοῦσα· τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἁμαρτήματα

ἐπεξέρχεται καὶ μάλα ἀκριβῶς, τῶν δὲ κατὰ νοῦν κεχωρηκότων

καθάπαξ οὐ μέμνηται ἢ ὥσπερ ἠναγκασμένος. (Dionys. Hal. ad. Cn.

Pompeium de Præcip. Historicis Judic. p. 774, Reisk.)

Precisely the same fault which Dionysius here imputes to

Thucydides (though in other places he acquits him, ἀπὸ παντὸς

φθόνου καὶ πάσης κολακείας, p. 824), Plutarch and Dio cast far

more harshly upon Herodotus. In neither case is the reproach

deserved.

Both the moralists and the rhetoricians of ancient times were

very apt to treat history, not as a series of true matters

of fact, exemplifying the laws of human nature and society,

and enlarging our knowledge of them for purposes of future

inference,—but as if it were a branch of fiction, so to be

handled as to please our taste or improve our morality.

Dionysius, blaming Thucydides for the choice of his subject, goes

so far as to say that the Peloponnesian war, a period of ruinous

discord in Greece, ought to have been left in oblivion and never

to have passed into history (σιωπῇ καὶ λήθῃ παραδοθεὶς, ὑπο τῶν

ἐπιγιγνομένων ἠγνοῆσθαι, ibid. p. 768),—and that especially

Thucydides ought never to have thrown the blame of it upon his

own city, since there were many other causes to which it might

have been imputed (ἑτέραις ἔχοντα πολλαῖς ἀφορμαῖς περιάψαι τὰς

αἰτίας, p. 770).

I have already mentioned that Xerxes is described as having

originally been averse to the enterprise, and only stimulated thereto

by the persuasions of Mardonius: this was probably the genuine

Persian belief, for the blame of so great a disaster would naturally

be transferred from the monarch to some evil counsellor.[10] As soon

as Xerxes, yielding to persuasion, has announced to the Persian

chief men whom he had convoked his resolution to bridge over the

Hellespont and march to the conquest of Greece and Europe, Mardonius

is represented as expressing his warm concurrence in the project,

extolling the immense force[11] of Persia and depreciating the

Ionians in Europe—so he denominated them—as so poor and disunited

that success was not only certain but easy. Against the rashness of

this general—the evil genius of Xerxes—we find opposed the prudence

and long experience of Artabanus, brother of the deceased Darius,

and therefore uncle to the monarch. The age and relationship of

this Persian Nestor emboldens him to undertake the dangerous task

of questioning the determination which Xerxes, though professing to

invite the opinions of others, had proclaimed as already settled

in his own mind. The speech which Herodotus puts into the mouth of

Artabanus is that of a thoughtful and religious Greek: it opens with

the Grecian conception of the necessity of hearing and comparing

opposite views, prior to any final decision,—reproves Mardonius

for falsely depreciating the Greeks and seducing his master into

personal danger,—sets forth the probability that the Greeks, if

victorious at sea, would come and destroy the bridge by which Xerxes

had crossed the Hellespont,—reminds the latter of the imminent

hazard which Darius and his army had undergone in Scythia, from

the destruction—averted only by Histiæus and his influence—of the

bridge over the Danube: such prudential suggestions being further

strengthened by adverting to the jealous aversion of the godhead

towards overgrown human power.[12]

[10] Herodot. viii, 99. Μαρδόνιον ἐν αἰτίῃ τιθέντες: compare c.

100.

[11] Herodot. vii, 9.

[12] Herodot. vii, 10.

The impatient monarch silences his uncle in a tone of insult and

menace: nevertheless, in spite of himself, the dissuasions work

upon him so powerfully, that before night they gradually alter

his resolution, and decide him to renounce the scheme. In this

latter disposition he falls asleep, when a dream appears: a tall,

stately man stands over him, denounces his change of opinion, and

peremptorily commands him to persist in the enterprise as announced.

In spite of this dream, Xerxes still adheres to his altered purpose,

assembles his council the next morning, and after apologizing for his

angry language towards Artabanus, acquaints them to their great joy

that he adopts the recommendations of the latter, and abandons his

project against Greece. But in the following night, no sooner has

Xerxes fallen asleep, than the same dream and the same figure again

appear to him, repeating the previous command in language of terrific

menace. The monarch, in a state of great alarm, springs from his

bed and sends for Artabanus, whom he informs of the twice-repeated

vision and divine mandate interdicting his change of resolution.

“If (says he) it be the absolute will of God that this expedition

against Greece should be executed, the same vision will appear to

thee also, provided thou puttest on my attire, sittest in my throne,

and sleepest in my bed.”[13] Not without reluctance, Artabanus obeys

this order (for it was high treason in any Persian to sit upon the

regal throne[14]), but he at length complies, expecting to be able to

prove to Xerxes that the dream deserved no attention. “Many dreams

(he says) are not of divine origin, nor anything better than mere

wandering objects such as we have been thinking upon during the day:

this dream, of whatever nature it may be, will not be foolish enough

to mistake me for the king, even if I be in the royal attire and bed;

but if it shall still continue to appear to thee, I shall myself

confess it to be divine.”[15] Accordingly, Artabanus is placed in the

regal throne and bed, and, as soon as he falls asleep, the very same

figure shows itself to him also, saying, “Art thou he who dissuadest

Xerxes, on the plea of solicitude for his safety, from marching

against Greece? Xerxes has already been forewarned of that which he

will suffer if he disobeys, and thou too shalt not escape, either now

or in future, for seeking to avert that which must and shall be.”

With these words the vision assumes a threatening attitude, as though

preparing to burn out the eyes of Artabanus with hot irons, when the

sleeper awakes in terror, and runs to communicate with Xerxes. “I

have hitherto, O king, recommended to thee to rest contented with

that vast actual empire on account of which all mankind think thee

happy; but since the divine impulsion is now apparent, and since

destruction from on high is prepared for the Greeks, I too alter my

opinion, and advise thee to command the Persians as God directs; so

that nothing may be found wanting on thy part for that which God puts

into thy hands.”[16]

[13] Herodot. vii, 15. Εἰ ὦν θεός ἐστι ὁ ἐπιπέμπων καὶ οἱ πάντως

ἐν ἡδονῇ ἐστι γενέσθαι στρατηλασίην ἐπὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα, ἐπιπτήσεται

καὶ σοὶ τὠυτὸ τοῦτο ὄνειρον, ὁμοίως καὶ ἐμοὶ ἐντελλόμενον.

Εὑρίσκω δὲ ὧδε ἂν γινόμενα ταῦτα, εἰ λάβοις τὴν ἐμὴν σκευὴν

πᾶσαν, καὶ ἐνδὺς, μετὰ τοῦτο ἵζοιο ἐς τὸν ἐμὸν θρόνον, καὶ ἔπειτα

ἐν κοίτῃ τῇ ἐμῇ κατυπνώσειας. Compare vii, 8. θεὸς τε οὕτω ἄγει,

etc.

[14] See Brissonius, De Regno Persarum, lib. i, p. 27.

[15] Herodot. vii, 16. Οὐ γὰρ δὴ ἐς τοσοῦτό γε εὐηθείης ἀνήκει

τοῦτο, ὅτι δή κοτέ ἐστι τὸ ἐπιφαινόμενόν τοι ἐν τῷ ὕπνῳ, ὥστε

δόξει ἐμὲ ὁρῶν σὲ ὁρᾷν, τῇ σῇ ἐσθῆτι τεκμαιρόμενον. ... εἰ γὰρ δὴ

ἐπιφοιτήσειέ γε συνεχέως, φαίην ἂν καὶ αὐτὸς θεῖον εἶναι.

[16] Herodot. vii, 18. Ἐπεὶ δὲ δαιμονίη τις γίγνεται ὁρμὴ, καὶ

Ἕλληνας, ὡς ἔοικε, φθορὴ τις καταλαμβάνει θεήλατος, ἐγὼ μὲν καὶ

αὐτὸς τράπομαι, καὶ τὴν γνώμην μετατίθεμαι. ... Ποίεε δὲ οὕτω

ὅκως, τοῦ θεοῦ παραδίδοντος, τῶν σῶν ἐνδεήσεται μηδέν.

The expression τοῦ θεοῦ παραδίδοντος in this place denotes what

is expressed by τὸ χρέον γίγνεσθαι, c. 17. The dream threatens

Artabanus and Xerxes for trying to turn aside the current of

destiny,—or in other words, to contravene the predetermined will

of the gods.

It is thus that Herodotus represents the great expedition of Xerxes

to have originated: partly in the rashness of Mardonius, who reaps

his bitter reward on the field of battle at Platæa,—but still more in

the influence of “mischievous Oneiros,” who is sent by the gods—as

in the second book of the Iliad—to put a cheat upon Xerxes, and even

to overrule by terror both his scruples and those of Artabanus. The

gods having determined—as in the instances of Astyagês, Polykratês,

and others—that the Persian empire shall undergo signal humiliation

and repulse at the hands of the Greeks, constrain the Persian

monarch into a ruinous enterprise against his own better judgment.

Such religious imagination is not to be regarded as peculiar to

Herodotus, but as common to him with his contemporaries generally,

Greeks as well as Persians, though peculiarly stimulated among the

Greeks by the abundance of their epic or quasi-historical poetry:

modified more or less in each individual narrator, it is made to

supply connecting links as well as initiating causes for the great

events of history. As a cause for this expedition, incomparably the

greatest fact and the most fertile in consequences, throughout the

political career both of Greeks and Persians, nothing less than a

special interposition of the gods would have satisfied the feelings

either of one nation or the other. The story of the dream has its

rise, as Herodotus tells us,[17] in Persian fancy, and is in some

sort a consolation for the national vanity; but it is turned and

colored by the Grecian historian, who mentions also a third dream,

which appeared to Xerxes after his resolution to march was finally

taken, and which the mistake of the Magian interpreters falsely

construed[18] into an encouragement, though it really threatened

ruin. How much this religious conception of the sequence of events

belongs to the age, appears by the fact, that it not only appears in

Pindar and the Attic tragedians generally, but pervades especially

the Persæ of Æschylus, exhibited seven years after the battle of

Salamis,—in which we find the premonitory dreams as well as the

jealous enmity of the gods towards vast power and overweening

aspirations in man,[19] though without any of that inclination, which

Herodotus seems to have derived from Persian informants, to exculpate

Xerxes by representing him as disposed himself to sober counsels,

but driven in a contrary direction by the irresistible fiat of the

gods.[20]

[17] Herodot. vii, 12. Καὶ δή κου ἐν τῇ νυκτὶ εἶδε ὄψιν τοιήνδε,

ὡς λέγεται ὑπὸ Περσέων.

Herodotus seems to use ὄνειρον in the neuter gender, not ὄνειρος

in the masculine: for the alteration of Bähr (ad vii, 16) of

ἐῶντα in place of ἐῶντος, is not at all called for. The masculine

gender ὄνειρος is commonly used in Homer; but there are cases of

the neuter ὄνειρον.

Respecting the influence of dreams in determining the enterprises

of the early Turkish Sultans, see Von Hammer, Geschichte des

Osmanischen Reiches, book ii, vol. i, p. 49.

[18] Compare the dream of Darius Codomannus. Plutarch, Alexander,

c. 18. Concerning the punishment inflicted by Astyagês on the

Magians for misinterpreting his dreams, see Herodot. i, 128.

Philochorus, skilled in divination, affirmed that Nikias put

a totally wrong interpretation upon that fatal eclipse of the

moon which induced him to delay his retreat, and proved his ruin

(Plutarch, Nikias, c. 23).

[19] Æschylus, Pers. 96, 104, 181, 220, 368, 745, 825: compare

Sophocl. Ajax, 129, 744, 775, and the end of the Œdipus Tyrannus;

Euripid. Hecub. 58; Pindar, Olymp. viii. 86; Isthm. vi, 39;

Pausanias, ii, 33, 3. Compare the sense of the word δεισιδαίμων

in Xenophon, Agesilaus, c. 11, sect. 8,—“the man who in the midst

of success fears the envious gods,”—opposed to the person who

confides in its continuance; and Klausen, Theologumena Æschyli,

p. 18.

[20] The manner in which Herodotus groups together the facts

of his history, in obedience to certain religious and moral

sentiments in his own mind, is well set forth in Hoffmeister,

Sittlich—religiöse Lebensansicht des Herodotos, Essen, 1832,

especially sects. 21, 22, pp. 112, _seqq._ Hoffmeister traces

the veins of sentiment running through, and often overlaying,

or transforming, the matters of fact through a considerable

portion of the nine books. He does not, perhaps, sufficiently

advert to the circumstance, that the informants from whom

Herodotus collected his facts were for the most part imbued with

sentiments similar to himself; so that the religious and moral

vein pervaded more or less his original materials, and did not

need to be added by himself. There can be little doubt that

the priests, the ministers of temples and oracles, the exegetæ

or interpreting guides around these holy places were among his

chief sources for instructing himself: a stranger, visiting so

many different cities must have been constantly in a situation

to have no other person whom he could consult. The temples were

interesting both in themselves and in the trophies and offerings

which they exhibited, while the persons belonging to them were,

as a general rule, accessible and communicative to strangers,

as we may see both from Pausanias and Plutarch,—both of whom,

however, had books before them also to consult, which Herodotus

hardly had at all. It was not only the priests and ministers of

temples in Egypt, of Hêraklês at Tyre, and of Bêlus at Babylon,

that Herodotus questioned (i, 181; ii, 3, 44, 143), but also

those of Delphi (Δελφῶν οἶδα ἐγὼ οὕτως ἀκούσας γενέσθαι, i, 20:

compare i, 91, 92, 51); Dôdôna (ii, 52); of the Ismenian Apollo

at Thebes (v, 59); of Athênê Alea at Tegea (i, 66); of Dêmêtêr

at Paros (vi, 134—if not the priests, at least persons full of

temple inspirations); of Halus in Achaia Phthiôtis (vii, 197);

of the Kabeiri in Thrace (ii, 51); of persons connected with the

Herôon of Protesilaus in the Chersonese (ix, 116, 120). The facts

which these persons communicated to him were always presented

along with associations referring to their own functions or

religious sentiments, nor did Herodotus introduce anything new

when he incorporated them as such in his history. The treatise of

Plutarch—“Cur Pythia nunc non reddat Oracula Carmine”—affords an

instructive description of the ample and multifarious narratives

given by the expositors at Delphi, respecting the eminent persons

and events of Grecian history, so well fitted to satisfy the

visitors who came full of curiosity—φιλοθεάμονες, φιλόλογοι,

and φιλομαθεῖς (Plutarch, ib. p. 394)—such as Herodotus was

in a high degree. Compare pp. 396, 397, 400, 407, of the same

treatise: also Plutarch, De Defectu Oraculorum, p. 417—οἱ Δελφῶν

θεολόγοι, etc. Plutarch remarks that in his time political life

was extinguished in Greece, and that the questions put to the

Pythian priestess related altogether to private and individual

affairs; whereas, in earlier times, almost all political events

came somehow or other under her cognizance, either by questions

to be answered, or by commemorative public offerings (p. 407).

In the time of Herodotus, the great temples, especially those

of Delphi and Olympia, were interwoven with the whole web of

Grecian political history. See the Dissertation of Preller,

annexed to his edition of Polemonis Fragmenta, c. 3, pp. 157-162;

De Historiâ atque Arte Periegetarum; also K. F. Hermann,

Gottesdienstliche Alterthümer der Griechen, part 1, ch. 12, p. 52.

The religious interpretation of historical phenomena is not

peculiar to Herodotus, but belongs to him in common with his

informants and his age generally, as indeed Hoffmeister remarks

(pp. 31-136): though it is remarkable to notice the frankness

with which he (as well as the contemporary poets: see the

references in Monk ad Euripid. Alcestis, 1154) predicates envy

and jealousy of the gods, in cases where the conduct, which he

supposes them to pursue, is really such as would deserve that

name in a man,—and such as he himself ascribes to the despot

(iii, 80): he does not think himself obliged to _call_ the gods

just and merciful while he is attributing to them acts of envy

and jealousy in their dealing with mankind. But the religious

interpretation does not reign alone throughout the narrative of

Herodotus: it is found side by side with careful sifting of fact

and specification of positive, definite, appreciable causes:

and this latter vein is what really distinguishes the historian

from his age,—forming the preparation for Thucydides, in whom

it appears predominant and almost exclusive. See this point

illustrated in Creuzer, Historische Kunst der Griechen, Abschnitt

iii, pp. 150-159.

Jäger (Disputationes Herodoteæ, p. 16. Göttingen, 1828) professes

to detect evidences of old age (senile ingenium) in the

moralizing color which overspreads the history of Herodotus, but

which I believe to have belonged to his middle and mature age not

less than to his latter years,—if indeed he lived to be very old,

which is noway proved, except upon reasons which I have already

disputed in my preceding volume. See Bähr, Commentatio de Vitâ et

Scriptis Herodoti, in the fourth volume of his edition, c. 6, p.

388.

While we take due notice of those religious conceptions with which

both the poet and the historian surround this vast conflict of Greeks

and barbarians, we need look no farther than ambition and revenge

for the real motives of the invasion: considering that it had been

a proclaimed project in the mind of Darius for three years previous

to his death, there was no probability that his son and successor

would gratuitously renounce it. Shortly after the reconquest of

Egypt, he began to make his preparations, the magnitude of which

attested the strength of his resolve as well as the extent of his

designs. The satraps and subordinate officers, throughout the whole

range of his empire, received orders to furnish the amplest quota

of troops and munitions of war,—horse and foot, ships of war,

horse-transports, provisions, or supplies of various kinds, according

to the circumstances of the territory; while rewards were held out to

those who should execute the orders most efficiently. For four entire

years these preparations were carried on, and as we are told that

similar preparations had been going forward during the three years

preceding the death of Darius, though not brought to any ultimate

result, we cannot doubt that the maximum of force, which the empire

could possibly be made to furnish,[21] was now brought to execute

the schemes of Xerxes. The Persian empire was at this moment more

extensive than ever it will appear at any subsequent period; for it

comprised maritime Thrace and Macedonia as far as the borders of

Thessaly, and nearly all the islands of the Ægean north of Krete and

east of Eubœa, including even the Cyclades. There existed Persian

forts and garrisons at Doriskus, Eion, and other places on the

coast of Thrace, while Abdêra, with the other Grecian settlements

on that coast were numbered among the tributaries of Susa.[22] It

is necessary to bear in mind these boundaries of the empire, at the

time when Xerxes mounted the throne, as compared with its reduced

limits at the later time of the Peloponnesian war,—partly that we

may understand the apparent chances of success to his expedition, as

they presented themselves both to the Persians and to the _medizing_

Greeks,—partly that we may appreciate the after-circumstances

connected with the formation of the Athenian maritime empire.

[21] Herodot. vii, 19. χῶρον πάντα ἐρευνῶν τῆς ἠπείρου.

[22] Herodot. vii, 106. Κατέστασαν γὰρ ἔτι πρότερον ταύτης τῆς

ἐξελάσιος (_i. e._ the invasion by Xerxes) ὕπαρχοι ἐν τῇ Θρηΐκῃ

καὶ τοῦ Ἑλλησπόντου πανταχῇ. vii, 108. ἐδεδούλωτο γὰρ, ὡς καὶ

πρότερόν μοι δεδήλωται, ἡ μέχρι Θεσσαλίης πᾶσα, καὶ ἦν ὑπὸ

βασιλῆα δασμοφόρος, Μεγαβάζου τε καταστρεψαμένου καὶ ὕστερον

Μαρδονίου; also vii, 59, and Xenophon, Memorab. iii, 5, 11.

Compare Æschylus Pers. 871-896, and the vision ascribed to Cyrus

in reference to his successor Darius, covering with his wings

both Europe and Asia (Herodot. i, 209).

In the autumn of the year 481 B. C., the vast army thus raised by

Xerxes arrived, from all quarters of the empire, at or near to

Sardis; a large portion of it having been directed to assemble at

Kritala in Kappadokia, on the eastern side of the Halys, where

it was joined by Xerxes himself on the road from Susa.[23] From

thence he crossed the Halys, and marched through Phrygia and Lydia,

passing through the Phrygian towns of Kelænæ, Anaua, and Kolossæ,

and the Lydian town of Kallatêbus, until he reached Sardis, where

winter-quarters were prepared for him. But this land force, vast as

it was (respecting its numbers, I shall speak farther presently),

was not all that the empire had been required to furnish. Xerxes had

determined to attack Greece, not by traversing the Ægean, as Datis

had passed to Eretria and Marathon, but by a land force and fleet

at once: the former crossing the Hellespont, and marching through

Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly; while the latter was intended

to accompany and coöperate. A fleet of one thousand two hundred

and seven ships of war, besides numerous vessels of service and

burden, had been assembled on the Hellespont and on the coasts of

Thrace and Ionia; moreover, Xerxes, with a degree of forethought

much exceeding that which his father Darius had displayed in the

Scythian expedition, had directed the formation of large magazines

of provisions at suitable maritime stations along the line of march,

from the Hellespont to the Strymonic gulf. During the four years of

military preparation, there had been time to bring together great

quantities of flour and other essential articles from Asia and

Egypt.[24]

[23] Herodot. vii, 26-31.

[24] Herodot. vii. 23-25.

If the whole contemporary world were overawed by the vast assemblage

of men and muniments of war which Xerxes thus brought together,

so much transcending all past, we might even say all subsequent,

experience,—they were no less astounded by two enterprises which

entered into his scheme,—the bridging of the Hellespont, and the

cutting of a ship-canal through the isthmus of Mount Athos. For the

first of the two there had indeed been a precedent, since Darius

about thirty-five years before had caused a bridge to be thrown over

the Thracian Bosphorus, and crossed it in his march to Scythia;

but this bridge, though constructed by the Ionians and by a Samian

Greek, having had reference only to distant regions, seems to have

been little known or little thought of among the Greeks generally,

as we may infer from the fact, that the poet Æschylus[25] speaks as

if he had never heard of it, while the bridge of Xerxes was ever

remembered, both by Persians and by Greeks, as a most imposing

display of Asiatic omnipotence. The bridge of boats—or rather, the

two separate bridges not far removed from each other—which Xerxes

caused to be thrown across the Hellespont, stretched from the

neighborhood of Abydos, on the Asiatic side to the coast between

Sestos and Madytus on the European, where the strait is about an

English mile in breadth. The execution of the work was at first

intrusted, not to Greeks, but to Phenicians and Egyptians, who had

received orders long beforehand to prepare cables of extraordinary

strength and size expressly for the purpose; the material used by the

Phenicians was flax, that employed by the Egyptians was the fibre of

the papyrus. Already had the work been completed and announced to

Xerxes as available for transit, when a storm arose, so violent as

altogether to ruin it. The wrath of the monarch, when apprized of

this catastrophe, burst all bounds; it was directed partly against

the chief-engineers, whose heads he caused to be struck off,[26]

but partly also against the Hellespont itself. He commanded that

the strait should be scourged with three hundred lashes, and that a

set of fetters should be let down into it as a farther punishment:

moreover Herodotus had heard, but does not believe, that he even sent

irons for the purpose of branding it. “Thou bitter water (exclaimed

the scourgers while inflicting this punishment), this is the penalty

which our master inflicts upon thee, because thou hast wronged him

though he hath never wronged thee. King Xerxes _will_ cross thee,

whether thou wilt or not; but thou deservest not sacrifice from

any man, because thou art a treacherous river of (useless) salt

water.”[27]

[25] Æschylus, Pers. 731, 754, 873.

[26] Plutarch (De Tranquillitate Animi, p. 470), speaks of them

as having had their noses and ears cut off.

[27] Herodot. vii, 34, 35. ἐνετέλλετο δὴ ὦν ῥαπίζοντας, λέγειν

βάρβαρά τε καὶ ἀτάσθαλα, Ὦ πικρὸν ὕδωρ, δεσπότης τοι δίκην

ἐπιτιθεῖ τήνδε, ὅτι μιν ἠδίκησας, οὐδὲν πρὸς ἐκείνου ἄδικον

παθόν. Καὶ βασιλεὺς μὲν Ξέρξης διαβήσεταί σε, ἤν τε σύ γε βούλῃ,

ἤν τε καὶ μή· σοὶ δὲ κατὰ δίκην ἄρα οὐδεὶς ἀνθρώπων θύει, ὡς

ἐόντι καὶ δολερῷ καὶ ἁλμυρῷ ποταμῷ.

The assertion—that no one was in the habit of sacrificing to

the Hellespont—appears strange, when we look to the subsequent

conduct of Xerxes himself (vii, 53): compare vii, 113, and vi,

76. The epithet _salt_ employed as a reproach, seems to allude to

the undrinkable character of the water.

Such were the insulting terms heaped by order of Xerxes on the

rebellious Hellespont,—Herodotus calls them “non-Hellenic and

blasphemous terms,” which, together with their brevity, leads us to

believe that he gives them as he heard them, and that they are not

of his own invention, like so many other speeches in his work, where

he dramatizes, as it were, a given position. It has been common,

however, to set aside in this case not merely the words, but even

the main incident of punishment inflicted on the Hellespont,[28] as

a mere Greek fable rather than a real fact: the extreme childishness

and absurdity of the proceeding giving to it the air of an enemy’s

calumny. But this reason will not appear sufficient, if we transport

ourselves back to the time and to the party concerned. To transfer to

inanimate objects the sensitive as well as the willing and designing

attributes of human beings, is among the early and wide-spread

instincts of mankind, and one of the primitive forms of religion:

and although the enlargement of reason and experience gradually

displaces this elementary Fetichism, and banishes it from the regions

of reality into those of conventional fictions, yet the force of

momentary passion will often suffice to supersede the acquired

habit, and even an intelligent man[29] may be impelled in a moment

of agonizing pain to kick or beat the lifeless object from which he

has suffered. By the old procedure, never formally abolished, though

gradually disused, at Athens,—an inanimate object which had caused

the death of a man was solemnly tried and cast out of the border: and

the Arcadian youths, when they returned hungry from an unsuccessful

day’s hunting,[30] scourged and pricked the god Pan or his statue

by way of revenge. Much more may we suppose a young Persian monarch,

corrupted by universal subservience around him, to be capable of thus

venting an insane wrath: and the vengeance ascribed by Herodotus to

Cyrus towards the river Gyndês (which he caused to be divided into

three hundred and sixty streamlets, because one of his sacred horses

had been drowned in it), affords a fair parallel to the scourging

of the Hellespont by Xerxes. To offer sacrifice to rivers, and to

testify in this manner gratitude for service rendered by rivers,

was a familiar rite in the ancient religion. While the grounds for

distrusting the narrative are thus materially weakened, the positive

evidence will be found very forcible. The expedition of Xerxes

took place when Herodotus was about four years old, so that he

afterwards enjoyed ample opportunity of conversing with persons who

had witnessed and taken part in it: and the whole of his narrative

shows that he availed himself largely of such access to information.

Besides, the building of the bridge across the Hellespont, and all

the incidents connected with it, were acts essentially public in

their nature,—known to many witnesses, and therefore the more easily

verified,—the decapitation of the unfortunate engineers was an act

fearfully impressive, and even the scourging of the Hellespont,

while essentially public, appears to Herodotus[31] (as well as to

Arrian, afterwards), not childish but impious. The more attentively

we balance, in the case before us, the positive testimony against the

intrinsic negative probabilities, the more shall we be disposed to

admit without diffidence the statement of our original historian.

[28] See Stanley and Blomfield ad Æschyl. Pers. 731, and K.

O. Müller (in his Review of Benjamin Constant’s work Sur la

Religion), Kleine Schriften, vol. ii, p. 59.

[29] See Auguste Comte, Traité de Philosophie Positive, vol. v,

leçon 52, pp. 40, 46.

[30] See vol. ii, part 2, c. i, p. 297 of the present work; and

compare Wachsmuth, Hellenisch. Alterthümer, 2, i, p. 320, and K.

F. Hermann, Griech. Staatsalterthümer, sect. 104.

For the manner in which Cyrus dealt with the river Gyndês,

see Herodot. i, 202. The Persian satrap Pharnuchês was thrown

from his horse at Sardis, and received an injury of which he

afterwards died: he directed his attendants to lead the horse to

the place where the accident had happened, to cut off all his

legs, and leave him to perish there (Herodot. vii, 88). The kings

of Macedonia offered sacrifice even during the time of Herodotus,

to the river which had been the means of preserving the life of

their ancestor Perdikkas; after he had crossed it, the stream

swelled and arrested his pursuers (Herodot. viii, 138): see an

analogous story about the inhabitants of Apollonia and the river

Aöus, Valerius Maxim. i, 5, 2.

After the death of the great boxer, wrestler, etc., Theagenês

of Thasus, a statue was erected to his honor. A personal enemy,

perhaps one of the fourteen hundred defeated competitors, came

every night to gratify his wrath and revenge by flogging the

statue. One night the statue fell down upon this scourger and

killed him; upon which his relatives indicted the statue for

murder: it was found guilty by the Thasians, and thrown into the

sea. The gods, however, were much displeased with the proceeding,

and visited the Thasians with continued famine, until at length a

fisherman by accident fished up the statue, and it was restored

to its place (Pausan. vi, 11. 2). Compare the story of the statue

of Hermês in Babrius, Fabul. 119, edition of Mr. Lewis.

[31] Herodot. vii, 35-54: compare viii, 109. Arrian, Exp. Alex.

vii, 14. 9.

New engineers—perhaps Greek along with, or in place of, Phenicians

and Egyptians—were immediately directed to recommence the work, which

Herodotus now describes in detail, and which was doubtless executed

with increased care and solidity. To form the two bridges, two lines

of ships—triremes and pentekonters blended together—were moored

across the strait breastwise, with their sterns towards the Euxine,

and their heads towards the Ægean, the stream flowing always rapidly

towards the latter.[32] They were moored by anchors head and stern,

and by very long cables. The number of ships placed to carry the

bridge nearest to the Euxine was three hundred and sixty: the number

in the other, three hundred and fourteen. Over or through each of

the two lines of ships, across from shore to shore, were stretched

six vast cables, which discharged the double function of holding the

ships together, and of supporting the bridge-way to be laid upon

them. They were tightened by means of capstans on each shore: in

three different places along that line, a gap was left between the

ships for the purpose of enabling trading vessels, in voyage to or

from the Euxine, to pass and repass beneath the cables.

[32] Herodot. vii, 36. The language in which Herodotus describes

the position of these ships which formed the two bridges, seems

to me to have been erroneously or imperfectly apprehended by most

of the commentators: see the notes of Bähr, Kruse, Wesseling,

Rennell, and especially Larcher: Schweighäuser is the most

satisfactory—τοῦ μὲν Πόντου ἐπικαρσίας, τοῦ δὲ Ἑλλησπόντου κατὰ

ῥόον. The explanation given by Tzetzes of ἐπικαρσίας by the

word πλαγίας seems to me hardly exact: it means, not _oblique_,

but _at right angles with_. The course of the Bosphorus and

Hellespont, flowing out of the Euxine sea, is conceived by the

historian as meeting that sea at right angles; and the ships,

which were moored near together along the current of the strait,

taking the line of each from head to stern, were therefore also

at right angles with the Euxine sea. Moreover, Herodotus does not

mean to distinguish the two bridges hereby, and to say that the

ships of the one bridge were τοῦ Πόντου ἐπικαρσίας, and those of

the other bridge τοῦ Ἑλλησπόντου κατὰ ῥόον, as Bähr and other

commentators suppose: _both_ the predicates apply alike to _both_

the bridges,—as indeed it stands to reason that the arrangement

of ships best for one bridge must also have been best for the

other. Respecting the meaning of ἐπικάρσιος in Herodotus, see iv,

101; i, 180. In the Odyssey (ix, 70: compare Eustath. ad loc.)

ἐπικάρσιαι does not mean oblique, but headlong before the wind:

compare ἐπίκαρ, Iliad, xviii, 392. The circumstance stated by

Herodotus—that in the bridge higher up the stream, or nearest to

the Euxine, there were in all three hundred and sixty vessels,

while in the other bridge there were no more than three hundred

and fourteen—has perplexed the commentators, and induced them to

resort to inconvenient explanations,—as that of saying, that in

the higher bridge the vessels were moored not in a direct line

across, but in a line slanting, so that the extreme vessel on the

European side was lower down the stream than the extreme vessel

on the Asiatic side. This is one of the false explanations given

of ἐπικαρσίας (_slanting_, _schräg_): while the idea of Gronovius

and Larcher, that the vessels in the higher bridge presented

_their broadside_ to the current, is still more inadmissible. But

the difference in the number of ships employed in the one bridge

compared with the other seems to admit of an easier explanation.

We need not suppose, nor does Herodotus say, that the two bridges

were quite close together: considering the multitude which had to

cross them, it would be convenient that they should be placed at

a certain distance from each other. If they were a mile or two

apart, we may well suppose that the breadth of the strait was not

exactly the same in the two places chosen, and that it may have

been broader at the point of the upper bridge,—which, moreover,

might require to be made more secure, as having to meet the first

force of the current. The greater number of vessels in the upper

bridge will thus be accounted for in a simple and satisfactory

manner.

In some of the words used by Herodotus there appears an

obscurity: they run thus,—ἐζεύγνυσαν δὲ ὧδε· Πεντηκοντέρους καὶ

τριήρεας συνθέντες, ὑπὸ μὲν τὴν (these words are misprinted

in Bähr’s edition) πρὸς τοῦ Εὐξείνου Πόντου ἐξήκοντά τε καὶ

τριηκοσίας, ὑπὸ δὲ τὴν ἑτέρην τέσσερες καὶ δέκα καὶ τριηκοσὶας

(τοῦ μὲν Πόντου, ἐπικαρσίας, τοῦ δὲ Ἑλλησπόντου κατὰ ῥόον), ἵνα

ἀνακωχεύῃ τὸν τόνον τῶν ὅπλων· συνθέντες δὲ, ἀγκύρας κατῆκαν

περιμήκεας, etc.

There is a difficulty respecting the words ἵνα ἀνακωχεύῃ τὸν

τόνον τῶν ὅπλων,—what is the nominative case to this verb? Bähr

says in his note, _sc._ ὁ ῥόος, and he construes τῶν ὅπλων to

mean the cables whereby the anchors were held fast. But if

we read farther on, we shall see that τὰ ὅπλα mean, not the

anchor-cables, but the cables which were stretched across from

shore to shore to form the bridge; the very same words τῶν

ὅπλων τοῦ τόνου, applied to these latter cables, occur a few

lines afterwards. I think that the nominative case belonging

to ἀνακωχεύῃ is ἡ γεφύρα (not ὁ ῥόος), and that the words from

τοῦ μὲν Πόντου down to ῥόον are to be read parenthetically,

as I have printed them above: the express object for which

the ships were moored was, “that the bridge might hold up, or

sustain, the tension of its cables stretched across from shore

to shore.” I admit that we should naturally expect ἀνακωχεύωσι

and not ἀνακωχεύῃ, since the proposition would be true of _both_

bridges; but though this makes an awkward construction, it is not

inadmissible, since each bridge had been previously described in

the singular number.

Bredow and others accuse Herodotus of ignorance and incorrectness

in this description of the bridges, but there seems nothing to

bear out this charge.

Herodotus (iv, 85), Strabo (xiii, p. 591), and Pliny (H. N. iv,

12; vi, 1) give seven stadia as the breadth of the Hellespont in

its narrowest part. Dr. Pococke also assigns the same breadth:

Tournefort allows but a mile (vol. ii, lett. 4). Some modern

French measurements give the distance as something considerably

greater,—eleven hundred and thirty or eleven hundred and fifty

toises (see Miot’s note on his translation of Herodotus). The

Duke of Ragusa states it at seven hundred toises (Voyage en

Turquie, vol. ii, p. 164). If we suppose the breadth to be

one mile, or five thousand two hundred and eighty feet, three

hundred and sixty vessels at an average breadth of fourteen and

two thirds feet would exactly fill the space. Rennell says,

“Eleven feet is the breadth of a barge: vessels of the size of

the smallest coasting-craft were adequate to the purpose of the

bridge.” (On the Geography of Herodotus, p. 127.)

The recent measurements or estimates stated by Miot go much

beyond Herodotus: that of the Duke of Ragusa nearly coincides

with him. But we need not suppose that the vessels filled up

entirely the whole breadth, without leaving any gaps between: we

only know, that there were no gaps left large enough for a vessel

in voyage to sail through, except in three specified places.

Out of the six cables assigned to each bridge, two were of flax and

four of papyrus, combined for the sake of increased strength; for it

seems that in the bridges first made, which proved too weak to resist

the winds, the Phenicians had employed cables of flax for one bridge,

the Egyptians those of papyrus for the other.[33] Over these again

were laid planks of wood, sawn to the appropriate width, secured by

ropes to keep them in their places: and lastly, upon this foundation

the causeway itself was formed, out of earth and wood, with a

palisade on each side high enough to prevent the cattle which passed

over from seeing the water.

[33] For the long celebrity of these cables, see the epigram of

Archimêlus, composed two centuries and a half afterwards, in the

time of Hiero the Second, of Syracuse, ap. Athenæum, v, 209.

Herodotus states that in thickness and compact make (παχυτὴς

καὶ καλλονὴ) the cables of flax were equal to those of papyrus;

but that in weight the former were superior; for each cubit in

length of the flaxen cable weighed a talent: we can hardly reason

upon this, because we do not know whether he means an Attic, an

Euboic, or an Æginæan talent: nor, if he means an Attic talent,

whether it be an Attic talent of commerce, or of the monetary

standard.

The cables contained in the Athenian dockyard are distinguished

as σχοίνια ὀκτωδάκτυλα, ἐξδάκτυλα,—in which expressions, however,

M. Boeckh cannot certainly determine whether circumference or

diameter be meant: he thinks probably the former. See his learned

book, Das Seewesen der Athener, ch. x, p. 165.

The other great work which Xerxes caused to be performed, for

facilitating his march, was, the cutting through of the isthmus

which connects the stormy promontory of Mount Athos with the main

land.[34] That isthmus, near the point where it joins the main land,

was about twelve stadia or furlongs across, from the Strymonic to

the Toronaic gulf: and the canal dug by order of Xerxes was broad

and deep enough for two triremes to sail abreast. In this work too,

as well as in the bridge across the Hellespont, the Phenicians

were found the ablest and most efficient among all the subjects

of the Persian monarch; but the other tributaries, especially the

Greeks from the neighboring town of Akanthus, and indeed the entire

maritime forces of the empire,[35] were brought together to assist.

The head-quarters of the fleet were first at Kymê and Phokæa, next

at Elæus in the southern extremity of the Thracian Chersonese,

from which point it could protect and second at once the two

enterprises going forward at the Hellespont and at Mount Athos. The

canal-cutting at the latter was placed under the general directions

of two noble Persians,—Bubarês and Artachæus, and distributed under

their measurement as task-work among the contingents of the various

nations; an ample supply of flour and other provisions being brought

for sale in the neighboring plain from various parts of Asia and

Egypt.

[34] For a specimen of the destructive storms near the promontory

of Athos, see Ephorus, Fragment. 121, ed. Didot; Diodor. xiii, 41.

[35] Herodot. vii, 22, 23, 116; Diodor. xi. 2.

Three circumstances in the narrative of Herodotus, respecting this

work, deserve special notice. First, the superior intelligence of

the Phenicians, who, within sight of that lofty island of Thasos

which had been occupied three centuries before by their free

ancestors, were now laboring as instruments to the ambition of a

foreign conqueror. Amidst all the people engaged, they alone took

the precaution of beginning the excavation at a breadth far greater

than the canal was finally destined to occupy, so as gradually to

narrow it, and leave a convenient slope for the sides: the others

dug straight down, so that the time as well as the toil of their

work was doubled by the continual falling in of the sides,—a

remarkable illustration of the degree of practical intelligence

then prevalent, since the nations assembled were many and diverse.

Secondly, Herodotus remarks that Xerxes must have performed this

laborious work from motives of mere ostentation: “for it would have

cost no trouble at all,” he observes,[36] “to drag all the ships in

the fleet across the isthmus; so that the canal was nowise needed.”

So familiar a process was it, in the mind of a Greek of the fifth

century B. C., to transport ships by mechanical force across an

isthmus; a special groove, or slip, being seemingly prepared for

them: such was the case at the Diolkus across the isthmus of Corinth.

Thirdly, it is to be noted, that the men who excavated the canal at

Mount Athos worked under the lash; and these, be it borne in mind,

were not bought slaves, but freemen, except in so far as they were

tributaries of the Persian monarch; and that the father of Herodotus,

a native of Halikarnassus, and a subject of the brave queen

Artemisia, may perhaps have been among them. We shall find other

examples as we proceed, of this indiscriminate use of the whip, and

full conviction of its indispensable necessity, on the part of the

Persians,[37]—even to drive the troops of their subject-contingents

on to the charge in battle. To employ the scourge in this way

towards freemen, and especially towards freemen engaged in military

service, was altogether repugnant both to Hellenic practice and to

Hellenic feeling: the Asiatic and insular Greeks were relieved from

it, as from various other hardships, when they passed out of Persian

dominion to become, first allies, afterwards subjects, of Athens: and

we shall be called upon hereafter to take note of this fact, when we

appreciate the complaints preferred against the hegemony of Athens.

[36] Herodot. vii, 24: ὡς μὲν ἐμὲ συμβαλλεόμενον εὑρίσκειν,

μεγαλοφροσύνης εἵνεκα αὐτὸ Ξέρξης ὀρύσσειν ἐκέλευε, ἐθέλων τε

δύναμιν ἀποδείκνυσθαι, καὶ μνημόσυνα λιπέσθαι· παρεὸν γὰρ,

~μηδένα πόνον λαβόντας~, τὸν ἰσθμὸν τὰς νέας διειρύσαι, ὀρύσσειν

ἐκέλευε διώρυχα τῇ θαλάσσῃ, εὖρος ὡς δύο τριήρεας πλέειν ὁμοῦ

ἐλαστρευμένας.

According to the manner in which Herodotus represents this

excavation to have been performed, the earth dug out was handed

up from man to man from the bottom of the canal to the top—the

whole performed by hand, without any aid of cranes or barrows.

The pretended work of turning the course of the river Halys,

which Grecian report ascribed to Crœsus on the advice of Thales,

was a far greater work than the cutting at Athos (Herodot. i, 75).

As this ship-canal across the isthmus of Athos has been treated

often as a fable both by ancients (Juvenal, Sat. x) and by

moderns (Cousinéry, Voyage en Macédoine), I transcribe the

observations of Colonel Leake. That excellent observer points

out evident traces of its past existence: but in my judgment,

even if no such traces now remained, the testimony of Herodotus

and Thucydides (iv, 109) would alone be sufficient to prove

that it _had_ existed really. The observations of Colonel Leake

illustrate at the same time the motives in which the canal

originated: “The canal (he says) seems to have been not more

than sixty feet wide. As history does not mention that it was

ever kept in repair after the time of Xerxes, the waters from

the heights around have naturally filled it in part with soil,

in the course of ages. It might, however, without much labor, be

renewed: and there can be no doubt that it would be useful to

the navigation of the Ægean: for such is the fear entertained by

the Greek boatmen, of the strength and uncertain direction of

the currents around Mount Athos, and of the gales and high seas

to which the vicinity of the mountain is subject during half the

year, and which are rendered more formidable by the deficiency

of harbors in the gulf of Orfaná, that I could not, as long as I

was on the peninsula, and though offering a high price, prevail

upon any boat to carry me from the eastern side of the peninsula

to the western. Xerxes, therefore, was perfectly justified in

cutting this canal, as well from the security which it afforded

to his fleet, as from the facility of the work and the advantages

of the ground, which seems made expressly to tempt such an

undertaking. The experience of the losses which the former

expedition under Mardonius had suffered suggested the idea. The

circumnavigation of the capes Ampelus and Canastræum was much

less dangerous, as the gulfs afford some good harbors, and it

was the object of Xerxes to collect forces from the Greek cities

in those gulfs as he passed. If there be any difficulty arising

from the narrative of Herodotus, it is in comprehending how the

operation should have required so long a time as three years,

when the king of Persia had such multitudes at his disposal, and

among them Egyptians and Babylonians, accustomed to the making of

canals.” (Leake, Travels in Northern Greece, vol. iii, ch. 24, p.

145.)

These remarks upon the enterprise are more judicious than those

of Major Rennell (Geogr. of Herodot. p. 116). I may remark that

Herodotus does not affirm that the actual cutting of the canal

occupied three years,—he assigns that time to the cutting with

all its preliminary arrangements included,—προετοιμάζετο ἐκ τρίων

ἐτέων κου μάλιστα τὰ ἐς τὸν Ἄθων (vii, 22).

[37] Herodot. vii, 22: ὤρυσσον ὑπὸ μαστίγων παντοδαποὶ τῆς

στρατιῆς· διάδοχοι δ’ ἐφοίτων.—vii, 56: Ξέρξης δὲ, ἐπεί

τε διέβη ἐς τὴν Εὐρώπην, ἐθηεῖτο τὸν στρατὸν ὑπὸ μαστίγων

διαβαίνοντα:—compare vii, 103, and Xenophon, Anabasis, iii, 4-25.

The essential necessity, and plentiful use, of the whip, towards

subject-tributaries, as conceived by the ancient Persians, finds

its parallel in the modern Turks. See the Mémoires du Baron de

Tott, vol. i, p. 256, _seqq._, and his dialogue on this subject

with his Turkish conductor Ali-Aga.

At the same time that the subject-contingents of Xerxes excavated

this canal, which was fortified against the sea at its two

extremities by compact earthen walls, or embankments, they also

threw bridges of boats over the river Strymon: and these two works,

together with the renovated double bridge across the Hellespont,

were both announced to Xerxes as completed and ready for passage,

on his arrival at Sardis at the beginning of winter, 481-480 B. C.

Whether the whole of his vast army arrived at Sardis at the same time

as himself, and wintered there, may reasonably be doubted; but the

whole was united at Sardis and ready to march against Greece, at the

beginning of spring, 480 B. C.

While wintering at Sardis, the Persian monarch despatched heralds

to all the cities of Greece, except Sparta and Athens, to demand

the received tokens of submission, earth and water: for news of

his prodigious armament was well calculated to spread terror even

among the most resolute of them. And he at the same time sent

orders to the maritime cities in Thrace and Macedonia to prepare

“dinner” for himself and his vast suite as he passed on his march.

That march was commenced at the first beginning of spring, and

continued in spite of several threatening portents during the course

of it,—one of which Xerxes was blind enough not to comprehend,

though, according to Herodotus, nothing could be more obvious than

its signification,[38]—while another was misinterpreted into a

favorable omen by the compliant answer of the Magian priests. On

quitting Sardis, the vast host was divided into two nearly equal

columns: a spacious interval being left between the two for the king

himself, with his guards and select Persians. First of all[39] came

the baggage, carried by beasts of burden, immediately followed by

one half of the entire body of infantry, without any distinction

of nations: next, the select troops, one thousand Persian cavalry,

with one thousand Persian spearmen, the latter being distinguished

by carrying their spears with the point downwards, as well as by

the spear itself, which had a golden pomegranate at its other

extremity, in place of the ordinary spike or point whereby the

weapon was planted in the ground when the soldier was not on duty.

Behind these troops walked ten sacred horses, of vast power and

splendidly caparisoned, bred on the Nisæan plains in Media: next,

the sacred chariot of Zeus, drawn by eight white horses,—wherein no

man was ever allowed to mount, not even the charioteer, who walked

on foot behind with the reins in his hand. Next after the sacred

chariot came that of Xerxes himself, drawn by Nisæan horses; the

charioteer, a noble Persian, named Patiramphês, being seated in it

by the side of the monarch,—who was often accustomed to alight from

the chariot and to enter a litter. Immediately about his person were

a chosen body of one thousand horse-guards, the best troops and of

the highest breed among the Persians, having golden apples at the

reverse extremity of their spears, and followed by other detachments

of one thousand horse, ten thousand foot, and ten thousand horse,

all native Persians. Of these ten thousand Persian infantry, called

the Immortals, because their number was always exactly maintained,

nine thousand carried spears with pomegranates of silver at the

reverse extremity, while the remaining one thousand distributed in

front, rear, and on each side of this detachment, were marked by

pomegranates of gold on their spears. With them ended what we may

call the household troops: after whom, with an interval of two

furlongs, the remaining host followed pell-mell.[40] Respecting its

numbers and constituent portions I shall speak presently, on occasion

of the great review at Doriskus.

[38] Herodot. vii, 57. Τέρας σφι ἐφάνη μέγα, τὸ Ξέρξης ἐν οὐδενὶ

λόγῳ ἐποιήσατο, καίπερ εὐσύμβλητον ἐόν· ἵππος γὰρ ἔτεκε λαγόν.

Εὐσύμβλητον ὦν τῇδε ἐγένετο, ὅτι ἔμελλε μὲν ἐλᾶν στρατιὴν ἐπὶ

τὴν Ἑλλάδα Ξέρξης ἀγαυρότατα καὶ μεγαλοπρεπέστατα, ὀπίσω δὲ περὶ

ἑωϋτοῦ τρέχων ἥξειν ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν χῶρον.

The prodigy was, that a mare brought forth a hare, which

signified that Xerxes would set forth on his expedition to Greece

with strength and splendor, but that he would come back in timid

and disgraceful flight.

The implicit faith of Herodotus, first in the reality of the

fact,—next, in the certainty of his interpretation,—deserves

notice, as illustrating his canon of belief, and that of his

age. The interpretation is doubtless here the generating cause

of the story interpreted: an ingenious man, after the expedition

has terminated, imagines an appropriate simile for its proud

commencement and inglorious termination (Parturiunt montes,

nascetur ridiculus mus), and the simile is recounted, either

by himself or by some hearer who is struck with it, as if it

had been a real antecedent fact. The aptness of this supposed

antecedent fact to foreshadow the great Persian invasion (τὸ

εὐσύμβλητον of Herodotus) serves as presumptive evidence to

bear out the witness asserting it; while departure from the

established analogies of nature affords no motive for disbelief

to a man who admits that the gods occasionally send special signs

and warnings.

[39] Compare the description of the processional march of Cyrus,

as given in the Cyropædia of Xenophon, viii, 2, 1-20.

[40] Herodot. vii, 41. Μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἵππον διελέλειπτο καὶ δύο

σταδίους, καὶ ἔπειτα ὁ λοιπὸς ὅμιλος ἤϊε ἀναμίξ.

On each side of the army, as it marched out of Sardis, was seen

suspended one half of the body of a slaughtered man, placed there

expressly for the purpose of impressing a lesson on the subjects of

Persia. It was the body of the eldest son of the wealthy Pythius,

a Phrygian old man resident at Kelænæ, who had entertained Xerxes

in the course of his march from Kappadokia to Sardis, and who had

previously recommended himself by rich gifts to the preceding king

Darius. So abundant was his hospitality to Xerxes, and so pressing

his offers of pecuniary contribution for the Grecian expedition, that

the monarch asked him what was the amount of his wealth. “I possess

(replied Pythius) besides lands and slaves, two thousand talents of

silver, and three million nine hundred and ninety-three thousand of

golden darics, wanting only seven thousand of being four million.

All this gold and silver do I present to thee, retaining only my

lands and slaves, which will be quite enough.” Xerxes replied by the

strongest expressions of praise and gratitude for his liberality;

at the same time refusing his offer, and even giving to Pythius out

of his own treasure the sum of seven thousand darics, which was

wanting to make up the exact sum of four million. The latter was

so elated with this mark of favor, that when the army was about to

depart from Sardis, he ventured, under the influence of terror from

the various menacing portents, to prefer a prayer to the Persian

monarch. His five sons were all about to serve in the invading army

against Greece: his prayer to Xerxes was, that the eldest of them

might be left behind, as a stay to his own declining years, and that

the service of the remaining four with the army might be considered

as sufficient. But the unhappy father knew not what he asked.

“Wretch! (replied Xerxes) dost thou dare to talk to me about _thy_

son, when I am myself on the march against Greece, with my sons,

brothers, relatives, and friends? thou who art my slave, and whose

duty it is to follow me, with thy wife and thy entire family? Know

that the sensitive soul of man dwells in his ears: on hearing good

things, it fills the body with delight, but boils with wrath when it

hears the contrary. As, when thou didst good deeds and madest good

offers to me, thou canst not boast of having surpassed the king in

generosity,—so now, when thou hast turned round and become impudent,

the punishment inflicted on thee shall not be the full measure of thy

deserts, but something less. For thyself and for thy four sons, the

hospitality which I received from thee shall serve as protection; but

for that one son whom thou especially wishest to keep in safety, the

forfeit of his life shall be thy penalty.” He forthwith directed that

the son of Pythius should be put to death, and his body severed in

twain: of which one half was to be fixed on the right-hand, the other

on the left-hand, of the road along which the army was to pass.[41]

[41] The incident respecting Pythius is in Herodot. vii, 27, 28,

38, 39. I place no confidence in the estimate of the wealth of

Pythius; but in other respects, the story seems well entitled to

credit.

A tale essentially similar, yet rather less revolting, has been

already recounted respecting Darius, when undertaking his expedition

against Scythia. Both tales illustrate the intense force of sentiment

with which the Persian kings regarded the obligation of universal

personal service, when they were themselves in the field. They seem

to have measured their strength by the number of men whom they

collected around them, with little or no reference to quality: and

the very mention of exemption—the idea that a subject and a slave

should seek to withdraw himself from a risk which the monarch was

about to encounter—was an offence not to be pardoned. In this as in

the other acts of Oriental kings, whether grateful, munificent, or

ferocious, we trace nothing but the despotic force of personal will,

translating itself into act without any thought of consequences, and

treating subjects with less consideration than an ordinary Greek

master would have shown towards his slaves.

From Sardis, the host of Xerxes directed its march to Abydos, first

across Mysia and the river Kaïkus,—then through Atarneus, Karinê,

and the plain of Thêbê: they passed Adramyttium and Antandrus, and

crossed the range of Ida, most part of which was on their left hand,

not without some loss from stormy weather and thunder.[42] From hence

they reached Ilium and the river Skamander, the stream of which was

drunk up, or probably in part trampled and rendered undrinkable, by

the vast host of men and animals: in spite of the immortal interest

which the Skamander derives from the Homeric poems, its magnitude is

not such as to make this fact surprising. To the poems themselves,

even Xerxes did not disdain to pay tribute: he ascended the holy

hill of Ilium,—reviewed the Pergamus where Priam was said to have

lived and reigned,—sacrificed one thousand oxen to the patron

goddess Athênê,—and caused the Magian priests to make libations

in honor of the heroes who had fallen on that venerated spot. He

even condescended to inquire into the local details,[43] abundantly

supplied to visitors by the inhabitants of Ilium, of that great real

or mythical war to which Grecian chronologers had hardly yet learned

to assign a precise date: and doubtless when he contemplated the

narrow area of that Troy which all the Greeks confederated under

Agamemnon had been unable for ten years to overcome, he could not

but fancy that these same Greeks would fall an easy prey before his

innumerable host. Another day’s march between Rhœteium, Ophryneium,

and Dardanus on the left-hand, and the Teukrians of Gergis on the

right-hand, brought him to Abydos, where his two newly-constructed

bridges over the Hellespont awaited him.

[42] Herodot. vii, 42.

[43] Herodot. vii, 43. θεησάμενος δὲ, καὶ πυθόμενος κείνων

ἕκαστα, etc.

On this transit from Asia into Europe Herodotus dwells with peculiar

emphasis,—and well he might do so, since when we consider the

bridges, the invading number, the unmeasured hopes succeeded by

no less unmeasured calamity,—it will appear not only to have been

the most imposing event of his century, but to rank among the most

imposing events of all history. He surrounds it with much dramatic

circumstance, not only mentioning the marble throne erected for

Xerxes on a hill near Abydos, from whence he surveyed both his masses

of land-force covering the shore, and his ships sailing and racing

in the strait (a race in which the Phenicians of Sidon surpassed

the Greeks and all the other contingents), but also superadding to

this real fact a dialogue with Artabanus, intended to set forth

the internal mind of Xerxes. He farther quotes certain supposed

exclamations of the Abydenes at the sight of his superhuman power.

“Why (said one of these terror-stricken spectators[44]), why dost

thou, O Zeus, under the shape of a Persian man and the name of

Xerxes, thus bring together the whole human race for the ruin of

Greece? It would have been easy for thee to accomplish _that_ without

so much ado.” Such emphatic ejaculations exhibit the strong feeling

which Herodotus or his informants throw into the scene, though we

cannot venture to apply to them the scrutiny of historical criticism.

[44] Herodot. vii, 45, 53, 56. Ὦ Ζεῦ, τί δὴ ἀνδρὶ εἰδόμενος

Πέρσῃ, καὶ οὔνομα ἀντὶ Διὸς Ξέρξην θέμενος, ἀνάστατον τὴν Ἑλλάδα

ἐθέλεις ποιῆσαι, ἄγων πάντας ἀνθρώπους; καὶ γὰρ ἄνευ τουτέων ἐξῆν

τοι ποιέειν ταῦτα.

At the first moment of sunrise, so sacred in the mind of

Orientals,[45] the passage was ordered to begin: the bridges being

perfumed with frankincense and strewed with myrtle boughs, while

Xerxes himself made libations into the sea with a golden censer, and

offered up prayers to Helios, that he might effect without hindrance

his design of conquering Europe even to its farthest extremity.

Along with his libation he cast into the Hellespont the censer

itself, with a golden bowl and a Persian scimitar;—“I do not exactly

know[46] (adds the historian) whether he threw them in as a gift to

Helios, or as a mark of repentance and atonement to the Hellespont

for the stripes which he had inflicted upon it.” Of the two bridges,

that nearest to the Euxine was devoted to the military force,—the

other, to the attendants, the baggage, and the beasts of burden.

The ten thousand Persians, called Immortals, all wearing garlands

on their heads, were the first to pass over, and Xerxes himself,

with the remaining army, followed next, though in an order somewhat

different from that which had been observed in quitting Sardis: the

monarch having reached the European shore, saw his troops crossing

the bridges after him “under the lash.” But in spite of the use of

this sharp stimulus to accelerate progress, so vast were the numbers

of his host, that they occupied no less than seven days and seven

nights, without a moment of intermission, in the business of crossing

over,—a fact to be borne in mind presently, when we come to discuss

the totals computed by Herodotus.[47]

[45] Tacitus, Histor. iii, 24. “Undique clamor, et orientem

solem, ita in Syriâ mos est, consalutavêre,”—in his striking

description of the night battle near Cremona, between the Roman

troops of Vitellius and Vespasian, and the rise of the sun while

the combat was yet unfinished: compare also Quintus Curtius (iii,

3, 8, p. 41, ed. Mützel).

[46] Herodot. vii, 54. ταῦτα οὐκ ἔχω ἀτρεκέως διακρῖναι, οὔτε εἰ

τῷ Ἡλίῳ ἀνατιθεὶς κατῆκε ἐς τὸ πέλαγος, οὔτε εἰ μετεμέλησέ οἱ τὸν

Ἑλλήσποντον μαστιγώσαντι, καὶ ἀντὶ τούτων τὴν θάλασσαν ἐδωρέετο.

[47] Herodot. vii, 55, 56. Διέβη δὲ ὁ στρατὸς αὐτοῦ ἐν ἑπτὰ

ἡμέρῃσι καὶ ἐν ἑπτὰ εὐφρόνῃσι, ἐλινύσας οὐδένα χρόνον.

Having thus cleared the strait, Xerxes directed his march along the

Thracian Chersonese, to the isthmus whereby it is joined with Thrace,

between the town of Kardia on his left hand and the tomb of Hellê on

his right,—the eponymous heroine of the strait. After passing this

isthmus, he turned westward along the coast of the gulf of Melas and

the Ægean sea,—crossing the river from which that gulf derived its

name, and even drinking its waters up—according to Herodotus—with

the men and animals of his army. Having passed by the Æolic city of

Ænus and the harbor called Stentoris, he reached the sea-coast and

plain called Doriskus, covering the rich delta near the mouth of the

Hebrus: a fort had been built there and garrisoned by Darius. The

spacious plain called by this same name reached far along the shore

to Cape Serreium, and comprised in it the towns of Salê and Zonê,

possessions of the Samothracian Greeks planted on the territory

once possessed by the Thracian Kikones on the mainland. Having been

here joined by his fleet, which had doubled[48] the southernmost

promontory of the Thracian Chersonese, he thought the situation

convenient for a general review and enumeration both of his land and

his naval force.

[48] Herodot. vii, 58-59; Pliny, H. N. iv, 11. See some valuable

remarks on the topography of Doriskus and the neighborhood of

the town still called Enos, in Grisebach, Reise durch Rumelien

und nach Brussa, ch. vi, vol. i, pp. 157-159 (Göttingen, 1841).

He shows reason for believing that the indentation of the coast,

marked on the map as the gulf of Ænos, did not exist in ancient

times, any more than it exists now.

Never probably in the history of mankind has there been brought

together a body of men from regions so remote and so widely diverse,

for one purpose and under one command, as those which were now

assembled in Thrace near the mouth of the Hebrus. About the numerical

total we cannot pretend to form any definite idea; about the variety

of contingents there is no room for doubt. “What Asiatic nation was

there (asks Herodotus,[49] whose conceptions of this expedition

seem to outstrip his powers of language) that Xerxes did not bring

against Greece?” Nor was it Asiatic nations alone, comprised within

the Oxus, the Indus, the Persian gulf, the Red Sea, the Levant, the

Ægean and the Euxine: we must add to these also the Egyptians, the

Ethiopians on the Nile south of Egypt, and the Libyans from the

desert near Kyrênê. Not all the expeditions, fabulous or historical,

of which Herodotus had ever heard, appeared to him comparable to this

of Xerxes, even for total number; much more in respect of variety

of component elements. Forty-six different nations,[50] each with

its distinct national costume, mode of arming, and local leaders,

formed the vast land-force; eight other nations furnished the fleet,

on board of which Persians, Medes, and Sakæ served as armed soldiers

or marines; and the real leaders, both of the entire army and of

all its various divisions, were native Persians of noble blood,

who distributed the various native contingents into companies of

thousands, hundreds, and tens. The forty-six nations composing the

land-force were as follows: Persians, Medes, Kissians, Hyrkanians,

Assyrians, Baktrians, Sakæ, Indians, Arians, Parthians, Chorasmians,

Sogdians, Gandarians, Dadikæ, Kaspians, Sarangæ, Paktyes, Utii, Myki,

Parikanii, Arabians, Ethiopians in Asia and Ethiopians south of

Egypt, Libyans, Paphlagonians, Ligyes, Matieni, Mariandyni, Syrians,

Phrygians, Armenians, Lydians, Mysians, Thracians, Kabêlians, Mares,

Kolchians, Alarodians, Saspeires, Sagartii. The eight nations who

furnished the fleet were: Phenicians, three hundred ships of war;

Egyptians, two hundred; Cypriots, one hundred and fifty; Kilikians,

one hundred; Pamphylians, thirty; Lykians, fifty; Karians, seventy;

Ionic Greeks, one hundred; Doric Greeks, thirty; Æolic Greeks, sixty;

Hellespontic Greeks, one hundred; Greeks from the islands in the

Ægean, seventeen; in all one thousand two hundred and seven triremes,

or ships of war, with three banks of oars. The descriptions of

costume and arms which we find in Herodotus are curious and varied;

but it is important to mention that no nation except the Lydians,

Pamphylians, Cypriots and Karians (partially also the Egyptian

marines on shipboard) bore arms analogous to those of the Greeks

(_i. e._ arms fit for steady conflict and sustained charge,[51]—for

hand combat in line as well as for defence of the person,—but

inconveniently heavy either in pursuit or in flight); while the other

nations were armed with missile weapons,—light shields of wicker or

leather, or no shields at all,—turbans or leather caps instead of

helmets,—swords, and scythes. They were not properly equipped either

for fighting in regular order or for resisting the line of spears and

shields which the Grecian hoplites brought to bear upon them; their

persons too were much less protected against wounds than those of the

latter; some of them indeed, as the Mysians and Libyans, did not even

carry spears, but only staves with the end hardened in the fire.[52]

A nomadic tribe of Persians, called Sagartii, to the number of eight

thousand horsemen, came armed only with a dagger and with the rope

known in South America as the lasso, which they cast in the fight to

entangle an antagonist. The Æthiopians from the Upper Nile had their

bodies painted half red and half white, wore the skins of lions and

panthers, and carried, besides the javelin, a long bow with arrows of

reed, tipped with a point of sharp stone.

[49] Herodot. vii, 20-21.

[50] See the enumeration in Herodotus, vii, 61-96. In chapter 76,

one name has dropped out of the text (see the note of Wesseling

and Schweighäuser), which, in addition to those specified under

the head of the land-force, makes up exactly forty-six. It is

from this source that Herodotus derives the boast which he puts

into the mouth of the Athenians (ix, 27) respecting the battle

of Marathon, in which they pretend to have vanquished forty-six

nations,—ἐνικήσαμεν ἔθνεα ἓξ καὶ τεσσαράκοντα: though there is no

reason for believing that so great a number of contingents were

engaged with Datis at Marathon.

Compare the boasts of Antiochus king of Syria. (B. C. 192) about

his immense Asiatic host brought across into Greece, as well as

the contemptuous comments of the Roman consul Quinctius (Livy,

xxxv, 48-49). “Varia enim genera armorum, et multa nomina gentium

inauditarum, Dahas, et Medos, et Cadusios, et Elymæos—Syros omnes

esse: haud paulo mancipiorum melius, propter servilia ingenia,

quam militum genus:” and the sharp remark of the Arcadian envoy

Antiochus (Xenophon, Hellen. vii, 1, 33). Quintus Curtius also

has some rhetorical turns about the number of nations, whose

names even were hardly known, tributary to the Persian empire

(iii, 4, 29; iv, 45, 9), “ignota etiam ipsi Dario gentium

nomina,” etc.

[51] Herodot. vii, 89-93.

[52] Herodot. vii, 61-81.

It was at Doriskus that the fighting men of the entire land-army

were first numbered; for Herodotus expressly informs us that the

various contingents had never been numbered separately, and avows

his own ignorance of the amount of each. The means employed for

numeration were remarkable. Ten thousand men were counted,[53] and

packed together as closely as possible: a line was drawn, and a

wall of inclosure built around the space which they had occupied,

into which all the army was directed to enter successively, so that

the aggregate number of divisions, comprising ten thousand each,

was thus ascertained. One hundred and seventy of these divisions

were affirmed by the informants of Herodotus to have been thus

numbered, constituting a total of one million seven hundred thousand

foot, besides eighty thousand horse, many war-chariots from Libya

and camels from Arabia, with a presumed total of twenty thousand

additional men.[54] Such was the vast land-force of the Persian

monarch: his naval equipments were of corresponding magnitude,

comprising not only the twelve hundred and seven triremes,[55] or

war-ships, of three banks of oars, but also three thousand smaller

vessels of war and transports. The crew of each trireme comprised two

hundred rowers, and thirty fighting-men, Persians or Sakæ; that of

each of the accompanying vessels included eighty men, according to an

average which Herodotus supposes not far from the truth. If we sum

up these items, the total numbers brought by Xerxes from Asia to the

plain and to the coast of Doriskus would reach the astounding figure

of two million three hundred and seventeen thousand men. Nor is this

all. In the farther march from Doriskus to Thermopylæ, Xerxes pressed

into his service men and ships from all the people whose territory

he traversed: deriving from hence a reinforcement of one hundred and

twenty triremes with aggregate crews of twenty-four thousand men, and

of three hundred thousand new land troops, so that the aggregate of

his force when he appeared at Thermopylæ was two million six hundred

and forty thousand men. To this we are to add, according to the

conjecture of Herodotus, a number not at all inferior, as attendants,

slaves, sutlers, crews of the provision-craft and ships of burden,

etc., so that the male persons accompanying the Persian king when

he reached his first point of Grecian resistance amounted to five

million two hundred and eighty-three thousand two hundred and twenty!

So stands the prodigious estimate of this army, the whole strength

of the Eastern world, in clear and express figures of Herodotus,[56]

who himself evidently supposes the number to have been even greater;

for he conceives the number of “camp followers” as not only equal to,

but considerably larger than, that of fighting-men. We are to reckon,

besides, the eunuchs, concubines, and female cooks, at whose number

Herodotus does not pretend to guess: together with cattle, beasts

of burden, and Indian dogs, in indefinite multitude, increasing the

consumption of the regular army.

[53] The army which Darius had conducted against Scythia is said

to have been counted by divisions of ten thousand each, but the

process is not described in detail (Herodot. iv, 87).

[54] Herodot. vii, 60, 87, 184. This same rude mode of

enumeration was employed by Darius Codomannus a century and a

half afterwards, before he marched his army to the field of Issus

(Quintus Curtius, iii, 2, 3, p. 24, Mutzel).

[55] Herodot. vii, 89-97.

[56] Herodot. vii, 185-186. ἐπάγων πάντα τὸν ἠῷον στρατὸν ἐκ τῆς

Ἀσίης (vii, 157). “Vires Orientis et ultima secum Bactra ferens,”

to use the language of Virgil about Antony at Actium.

To admit this overwhelming total, or anything near to it, is

obviously impossible: yet the disparaging remarks which it has

drawn down upon Herodotus are noway merited.[57] He takes pains

to distinguish that which informants told him, from that which he

merely guessed. His description of the review at Doriskus is so

detailed, that he had evidently conversed with persons who were

present at it, and had learned the separate totals promulgated by the

enumerators,—infantry, cavalry, and ships of war, great and small. As

to the number of triremes, his statement seems beneath the truth, as

we may judge from the contemporary authority of Æschylus, who in the

“Persæ” gives the exact number of twelve hundred and seven Persian

ships as having fought at Salamis: but between Doriskus and Salamis,

Herodotus[58] has himself enumerated six hundred and forty-seven

ships as lost or destroyed, and only one hundred and twenty as added.

No exaggeration, therefore, can well be suspected in this statement,

which would imply about two hundred and seventy-six thousand as the

number of the crews, though there is here a confusion or omission in

the narrative which we cannot clear up. But the aggregate of three

thousand smaller ships, and still more, that of one million seven

hundred thousand infantry, are far less trustworthy. There would

be little or no motive for the enumerators to be exact, and every

motive for them to exaggerate,—an immense nominal total would be no

less pleasing to the army than to the monarch himself,—so that the

military total of land-force and ships’ crews, which Herodotus gives

as two million six hundred and forty-one thousand on the arrival

at Thermopylæ, may be dismissed as unwarranted and incredible. And

the computation whereby he determines the amount of non-military

persons present, as equal or more than equal to the military, is

founded upon suppositions noway admissible; for though in a Grecian

well-appointed army it was customary to reckon one light-armed

soldier, or attendant, for every hoplite, no such estimate can be

applied to the Persian host. A few grandees and leaders might be

richly provided with attendants of various kinds, but the great

mass of the army would have none at all. Indeed, it appears that

the only way in which we can render the military total, which must

at all events have been very great, consistent with the conditions

of possible subsistence, is by supposing a comparative absence of

attendants, and by adverting to the fact of the small consumption,

and habitual patience as to hardship of Orientals in all ages. An

Asiatic soldier will at this day make his campaign upon scanty fare,

and under privations which would be intolerable to an European.[59]

And while we thus diminish the probable consumption, we have to

consider that never in any case of ancient history had so much

previous pains been taken to accumulate supplies on the line of

march: in addition to which the cities in Thrace were required to

furnish such an amount of provisions, when the army passed by, as

almost brought them to ruin. Herodotus himself expresses his surprise

how provisions could have been provided for so vast a multitude; and

were we to admit his estimate literally, the difficulty would be

magnified into an impossibility. Weighing the circumstances of the

case well, and considering that this army was the result of a maximum

of effort throughout the vast empire, that a great numerical total

was the thing chiefly demanded, and that prayers for exemption were

regarded by the Great King as a capital offence, and that provisions

had been collected for three years before along the line of march,—we

may well believe that the numbers of Xerxes were greater than were

ever assembled in ancient times, or perhaps at any known epoch of

history. But it would be rash to pretend to guess at any positive

number, in the entire absence of ascertained data: and when we learn

from Thucydides that he found it impossible to find out the exact

numbers of the small armies of Greeks who fought at Mantineia,[60]

we shall not be ashamed to avow our inability to count the Asiatic

multitudes at Doriskus. We may remark, however, that, in spite

of the reinforcements received afterwards in Thrace, Macedonia,

and Thessaly, it may be doubted whether the aggregate total ever

afterwards increased; for Herodotus takes no account of desertions,

which yet must have been very numerous, in a host disorderly,

heterogeneous, without any interest in the enterprise, and wherein

the numbers of each separate contingent were unknown.

[57] Even Dahlmann, who has many good remarks in defence of

Herodotus, hardly does him justice (Herodot, Aus seinem Buche

sein Leben, ch. xxxiv, p. 176).

[58] Only one hundred and twenty ships of war are mentioned

by Herodotus (vii, 185) as having joined afterwards from the

seaports in Thrace. But four hundred were destroyed, if not more,

in the terrible storm on the coast of Magnesia (vii, 190); and

the squadron of two hundred sail, detached by the Persians round

Eubœa, were also all lost (viii, 7); besides forty-five taken or

destroyed in the various sea-fights near Artemisium (vii, 194;

viii, 11). Other losses are also indicated (viii, 14-16).

As the statement of Æschylus for the number of the Persian

triremes at Salamis appears well-entitled to credit, we must

suppose either that the number of Doriskus was greater than

Herodotus has mentioned, or that a number greater than that which

he has stated joined afterwards.

See a good note of Amersfoordt, ad Demosthen. Orat. de Symmoriis,

p. 88 (Leyden, 1821).

[59] See on this point Volney, Travels in Egypt and Syria, ch.

xxiv, vol. ii, pp. 70, 71; ch. xxxii, p. 367; and ch. xxxix, p.

435, (Engl. transl.).

Kinneir, Geographical Memoir of the Persian Empire, pp. 22-23.

Bernier, who followed the march of Aurungzebe from Delhi, in

1665, says that some estimated the number of persons in the camp

at three hundred thousand, others at different totals, but that

no one knew, nor had they ever been counted. He says: “You are,

no doubt, at a loss to conceive how so vast a number both of men

and animals can be maintained in the field. The best solution of

the difficulty will be found in the temperance and simple diet of

the Indians.” (Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, translated

by Brock, vol. ii, App. p. 118).

So also Petit de la Croix says, about the enormous host of

Genghis-Khan: “Les hommes sont si sobres, qu’ils s’accommodent de

toutes sortes d’alimens.”

That author seems to estimate the largest army of Genghis at

seven hundred thousand men (Histoire de Genghis, liv. ii, ch. vi,

p. 193).

[60] Thucydid. v, 68. Xenophon calls the host of Xerxes

_innumerable_,—ἀναρίθμητον στρατιάν (Anabas. iii, 2, 13).

It seems not to be considered necessary for a Turkish minister

to know the numbers of an assembled Turkish army. In the war

between the Russians and Turks in 1770, when the Turkish army was

encamped at Babadag near the Balkan, Baron de Tott tells us: “Le

Visir me demanda un jour fort sérieusement si l’armée Ottomane

étoit nombreuse. C’est à vous que je m’adresserois, lui dis-je,

si j’étais curieux de le savoir. Je l’ignore, me repondit-il. Si

vous l’ignorez, comment pourrois-je en être instruit? _En lisant

la Gazette de Vienna_, me répliqua-t-il. Je restai confondu.”

The Duke of Ragusa (in his voyage en Hongrie, Turquie, etc.),

after mentioning the prodigiously exaggerated statements

current about the numbers slain in the suppressed insurrection

of the Janissaries at Constantinople in 1826, observes: “On

a dit et répété, que leur nombre s’étoit élévé a huit ou

dix mille, et cette opinion s’est accréditée (it was really

about five hundred). Mais les Orientaux en général, et les

Turcs en particulier, n’ont aucune idée des nombres: ils les

emploient sans exactitude, et ils sont par caractère portés à

l’exagération. D’un autre coté, le gouvernement a dû favoriser

cette opinion populaire, pour frapper l’imagination et inspirer

une plus grande terreur.” (Vol. ii, p. 37.)

Ktesias gives the total of the host at eight hundred thousand men,

and one thousand triremes, independent of the war-chariots: if

he counts the crews of the triremes apart from the eight hundred

thousand men, as seems probable, the total will then be considerably

above a million. Ælian assigns an aggregate of seven hundred

thousand men: Diodorus[61] appears to follow partly Herodotus, partly

other authorities. None of these witnesses enable us to correct

Herodotus, in a case where we are obliged to disbelieve him. He

is, in some sort, an original witness, having evidently conversed

with persons actually present at the muster of Doriskus, giving us

both their belief as to the numbers, together with the computation,

true or false, circulated among them by authority. Moreover, the

contemporary Æschylus, while agreeing with him exactly as to the

number of triremes, gives no specific figure as to the land-force,

but conveys to us, in his Persæ, a general sentiment of vast number,

which may seem in keeping with the largest statement of Herodotus:

the Persian empire is drained of men,—the women of Susa are left

without husbands and brothers,—the Baktrian territory has not been

allowed to retain even its old men.[62] The terror-striking effect

of this crowd was probably quite as great as if its numbers had

really corresponded to the ideas of Herodotus.

[61] Ktesias, Persica, c. 22, 23; Ælian, V. H. xiii, 3; Diodorus,

xi, 2-11.

Respecting the various numerical statements in this case, see the

note of Bos ad Cornel. Nepot. Themistocl. c. 2, pp. 75, 76.

The Samian poet Chœrilus, a few years younger than Herodotus,

and contemporary with Thucydides, composed an epic poem on the

expedition of Xerxes against Greece. Two or three short fragments

of it are all that is preserved: he enumerated all the separate

nations who furnished contingents to Xerxes, and we find not

only the Sakæ, but also the Solymi (apparently the Jews, and so

construed by Josephus) among them. See Fragments, iii and iv, in

Næke’s edition of Chœrilus, pp. 121-134. Josephus cont. Apion. p.

454, ed. Havercamp.

[62] Æschylus, Pers. 14-124, 722-737. Heeren (in his learned

work on the commerce of the ancient world, Über den Verkehr der

alten Welt, part 1, sect. 1, pp. 162, 558, 3d edition) thinks

that Herodotus had seen the actual muster-roll, made by Persian

authority, of the army at Doriskus. I cannot think this at all

probable: it is much more reasonable to believe that all his

information was derived from Greeks who had accompanied the

expedition. He must have seen and conversed with many such. The

Persian royal scribes, or secretaries, accompanied the king,

and took note of any particular fact or person who might happen

to strike his attention (Herodot. vii, 100; viii, 90), or to

exhibit remarkable courage. They seem to have been specially

attached to the person of the king as ministers to his curiosity

and amusement, rather than keepers of authentic and continuous

records.

Heeren is disposed to accept the numerical totals, given by

Herodotus as to the army of Xerxes, much too easily, in my

judgment: nor is he correct in supposing that the contingents

of the Persian army marched with their wives and families (pp.

557-559).

After the numeration had taken place, Xerxes passed in his chariot

by each of the several contingents, observed their equipment, and

put questions to which the royal scribes noted down the answers: he

then embarked on board a Sidonian trireme, which had been already

fitted up with a gilt tent, and sailed along the prows of his immense

fleet, moored in line about four hundred feet from the shore, and

every vessel completely manned for action. Such a spectacle was well

calculated to rouse emotions of arrogant confidence, and it was in

this spirit that he sent forthwith for Demaratus, the exiled king

of Sparta, who was among his auxiliaries,—to ask whether resistance

on the part of the Greeks to such a force was even conceivable.

The conversation between them, dramatically given by Herodotus,

is one of the most impressive manifestations of sentiment in the

Greek language.[63] Demaratus assures him that the Spartans most

certainly, and the Dorians of Peloponnesus probably, will resist

him to the death, be the difference of numbers what it may. Xerxes

receives the statement with derision, but exhibits no feeling of

displeasure: an honorable contrast to the treatment of Charidemus a

century and a half afterwards, by the last monarch of Persia.[64]

[63] When Herodotus specifies his informants—it is much to be

regretted that he does not specify them oftener—they seem to be

frequently Greeks, such as Dikæus the Athenian exile, Thersander

of Orchomenus in Bœotia, Archias of Sparta, etc. (iii, 55; viii,

65; ix, 16.) He mentions the Spartan king Demaratus often,

and usually under circumstances both of dignity and dramatic

interest: it is highly probable that he may have conversed with

that prince himself, or with his descendants, who remained

settled for a long time in Teuthrania, near the Æolic coast of

Asia Minor (Xenoph. Hellenica, iii, 1, 6), and he may thus have

heard of representations offered by the exiled Spartan king to

Xerxes. Nevertheless, the remarks made by Hoffmeister, on the

speeches ascribed to Demaratus by Herodotus, are well deserving

of attention (Sittlich-religiöse Lebensansicht des Herodotos, p.

118).

“Herodotus always brings into connection with insolent kings some

man or other through whom he gives utterance to his own lessons

of wisdom. To Crœsus, at the summit of his glory, comes the wise

Solon: Crœsus himself, reformed by his captivity, performs the

same part towards Cyrus and Kambyses: Darius, as a prudent and

honest man, does not require any such counsellor; but Xerxes

in his pride has the sententious Artabanus and the sagacious

Demaratus attached to him; while Amasis king of Egypt is employed

to transmit judicious counsel to Polykratês, the despot of

Samos. Since all these men speak one and the same language, it

appears certain that they are introduced by Herodotus merely as

spokesmen for his own criticisms on the behavior and character

of the various monarchs,—criticisms which are nothing more than

general maxims, moral and religious, brought out by Solon,

Crœsus, or Artabanus, on occasion of particular events. The

speeches interwoven by Herodotus have, in the main, not the same

purpose as those of Tacitus,—to make the reader more intimately

acquainted with the existing posture of affairs, or with the

character of the agents,—but a different purpose quite foreign

to history: they embody in the narrative his own personal

convictions respecting human life and the divine government.”

This last opinion of Hoffmeister is to a great degree true, but

is rather too absolutely delivered.

[64] Herodot. vii, 101-104. How inferior is the scene between

Darius and Charidemus, in Quintus Curtius! (iii, 2, 9-19, p. 20,

ed. Mutzel.)

Herodotus takes up substantially the same vein of sentiment and

the same antithesis as that which runs through the Persæ of

Æschylus; but he handles it like a social philosopher, with a

strong perception of the real causes of Grecian superiority.

It is not improbable that the skeleton of the conversation

between Xerxes and Demaratus was a reality, heard by Herodotus

from Demaratus himself or from his sons; for the extreme

specialty with which the Lacedæmonian exile confines his praise

to the Spartans and Dorians, not including the other Greeks,

hardly represents the feeling of Herodotus himself.

The minuteness of the narrative which Herodotus gives respecting

the deposition and family circumstances of Demaratus (vi, 63,

_seq._), and his view of the death of Kleomenês as an atonement

to that prince for injury done, may seem derived from family

information (vi, 84).

After the completion of the review, Xerxes with the army pursued

his march westward, in three divisions and along three different

lines of road, through the territories of seven distinct tribes of

Thracians, interspersed with Grecian maritime colonies: all was

still within his own empire, and he took reinforcements from each

as he passed: the Thracian Satræ were preserved from this levy by

their unassailable seats amidst the woods and snows of Rhodopê. The

islands of Samothrace and Thasus, with their subject towns on the

mainland, and the Grecian colonies Dikæa,[65] Maroneia, and Abdêra,

were successively laid under contribution for contingents of ships or

men; and, what was still more ruinous, they were further constrained

to provide a day’s meal for the immense host as it passed: for the

day of his passage the Great King was their guest. Orders had been

transmitted for this purpose long beforehand, and for many months

the citizens had been assiduously employed in collecting food for

the army, as well as delicacies for the monarch,—grinding flour of

wheat and barley, fattening cattle, keeping up birds and fowls;

together with a decent display of gold and silver plate for the

regal dinner. A superb tent was erected for Xerxes and his immediate

companions, while the army received their rations in the open region

around: on commencing the march next morning, the tent with all its

rich contents was plundered, and nothing restored to those who had

furnished it. Of course, so prodigious a host, which had occupied

seven days and seven nights in crossing the double Hellespontine

bridge, must also have been for many days on its march through the

territory, and therefore at the charge, of each one among the cities,

so that the cost brought them to the brink of ruin, and even in some

cases drove them to abandon house and home. The cost incurred by the

city of Thasus, on account of their possessions of the mainland,

for this purpose, was no less than four hundred talents[66] (equal

to ninety-two thousand eight hundred pounds): while at Abdêra,

the witty Megakreon recommended to his countrymen to go in a body

to the temples and thank the gods, because Xerxes was pleased to

be satisfied with one meal in the day. Had the monarch required

breakfast as well as dinner, the Abderites must have been reduced to

the alternative either of exile or of utter destitution.[67] A stream

called Lissus, which seems to have been of no great importance, is

said to have been drunk up by the army, together with a lake of some

magnitude near Pistyrus.[68]

[65] Herodot. vii, 109, 111, 118.

[66] This sum of four hundred talents was equivalent to the

entire annual tribute charged in the Persian king’s rent-roll,

upon the satrapy comprising the western and southern coast of

Asia Minor, wherein were included all the Ionic and Æolic Greeks,

besides Lykians, Pamphylians, etc. (Herodot. iii, 90.)

[67] Herodot. vii, 118-120. He gives (vii, 187) the computation

of the quantity of corn which would have been required for daily

consumption, assuming the immense numbers as he conjectures

them, and reckoning one chœnix of wheat for each man’s daily

consumption, equal to one eighth of a medimnus. It is unnecessary

to examine a computation founded on such inadmissible data.

[68] Herodot. vii, 108, 109.

Through the territory of the Edonian Thracians and the Pierians,

between Pangæus and the sea, Xerxes and his army reached the river

Strymon at the important station called Ennea Hodoi, or Nine-Roads,

afterwards memorable by the foundation of Amphipolis. Bridges had

been already thrown over the river, to which the Magian priests

rendered solemn honors by sacrificing white horses and throwing them

into the stream. Nor were his religious feelings satisfied without

the more precious sacrifices often resorted to by the Persians: he

here buried alive nine native youths and nine maidens, in compliment

to Nine-Roads, the name of the Spot:[69] moreover, he also left,

under the care of the Pæonians of Siris, the sacred chariot of Zeus,

which had been brought from the seat of empire, but which doubtless

was found inconvenient on the line of march. From the Strymon he

marched forward along the Strymonic gulf, passing through the

territory of the Bisaltæ, near the Greek colonies of Argilus and

Stageirus, until he came to the Greek town of Akanthus, hard by the

isthmus of Athos, which had been recently cut through. The fierce

king of the Bisaltæ[70] refused submission to Xerxes, fled to Rhodopê

for safety, and forbade his six sons to join the Persian host.

Unhappily for themselves, they nevertheless did so, and when they

came back he caused all of them to be blinded.

[69] Herodot. vii, 114. He pronounces this savage practice to

be specially Persian. The old and cruel Persian queen Amestris,

wife of Xerxes, sought to prolong her own life by burying alive

fourteen victims, children of illustrious men, as offerings to

the subterranean god.

[70] Herodot. viii, 116.

All the Greek cities, which Xerxes had passed by, obeyed his orders

with sufficient readiness, and probably few doubted the ultimate

success of so prodigious an armament. But the inhabitants of Akanthus

had been eminent for their zeal and exertions in the cutting of

the canal, and had probably made considerable profits during the

operation; Xerxes now repaid their zeal by contracting with them

the tie of hospitality, accompanied with praise and presents;

though he does not seem to have exempted them from the charge of

maintaining the army while in their territory. He here separated

himself from his fleet, which was directed to sail through the canal

of Athos, to double the two southwestern capes of the Chalkidic

peninsula, to enter the Thermaic gulf, and to await his arrival at

Therma. The fleet in its course gathered additional troops from

the Greek towns in the two peninsulas of Sithonia and Pallênê, as

well as on the eastern side of the Thermaic gulf, in the region

called Krusis, or Krossæa, on the continental side of the isthmus of

Pallênê. These Greek towns were numerous, but of little individual

importance. Near Therma (Salonichi) in Mygdonia, in the interior of

the gulf and eastward of the mouth of the Axius, the fleet awaited

the arrival of Xerxes by land from Akanthus. He seems to have had

a difficult march, and to have taken a route considerably inland,

through Pæonia and Krestônia,—a wild, woody, and untrodden country,

where his baggage-camels were set upon by lions, and where there

were also wild bulls, of prodigious size and fierceness: at length

he rejoined his fleet at Therma, and stretched his army throughout

Mygdonia, the ancient Pieria, and Bottiæis, as far as the mouth of

the Haliakmôn.[71]

[71] Herodot. vii, 122-127.

Respecting the name Pieria, and the geography of these regions,

see the previous volume, vol. iv, ch. xxv. p. 14.

Xerxes had now arrived within sight of Mount Olympus, the northern

boundary of what was properly called Hellas; after a march through

nothing but subject territory, with magazines laid up beforehand

for the subsistence of his army, with additional contingents levied

in his course, and probably with Thracian volunteers joining him in

the hopes of plunder. The road along which he had marched was still

shown with solemn reverence by the Thracians, and protected both

from intruders and from tillage, even in the days of Herodotus.[72]

The Macedonian princes, the last of his western tributaries, in

whose territory he now found himself,—together with the Thessalian

Aleuadæ,—undertook to conduct him farther. Nor did the task as yet

appear difficult: what steps the Greeks were taking to oppose him,

shall be related in the coming chapter.

[72] Herodot. vii, 116.