Chapter XXXVIII (1)

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.