Histories — Book 8 (Urania)

Herodotus · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

The Greeks assigned to the naval force were as follows: the Athenians provided one hundred and twenty-seven ships. The Plataeans, though inexperienced in seamanship, manned these ships alongside the Athenians out of sheer valor and eagerness. The Corinthians provided forty ships, the Megarians twenty. The Chalcidians manned twenty ships that the Athenians supplied, and the Aeginetans eighteen,

the Sicyonians twelve; from Lacedaemon came ten, from Epidaurus eight, from Eretria seven, from Troezen five, from Styra two; and the Ceans supplied two ships along with two penteconters; the Opuntian Locrians came to their aid with seven penteconters. These, then, were the forces that campaigned at Artemisium, and I have also stated how many ships each contingent provided. The total

number of ships gathered at Artemisium, apart from the penteconters, was two hundred and seventy-one. The commander who held the supreme authority was provided by the Spartans: Eurybiades son of Eurycleides. For the allies said that if a Laconian did not lead them, they would not follow the Athenians even if the Athenians led, but would dissolve the expedition that was to be. For there had been talk earlier, before they even sent to

Sicily for an alliance, that the naval command ought to be entrusted to the Athenians. But when the allies opposed this, the Athenians yielded, since they set great store on the survival of Greece and recognized that if they quarreled over the leadership, Greece would perish — and in this they judged rightly, for civil strife within a like-minded body is as much worse than war fought in harmony as war is worse than peace. Understanding this themselves, they did not press their claim but yielded,

for as long as they had great need of the allies, as they later showed. For once they had driven back the Persian and the fight had shifted to his own territory, they took the leadership away from the Lacedaemonians, using Pausanias' arrogance as their pretext. But that happened later. At the time in question, those Greeks who had come to Artemisium, when they saw many ships put in at Aphetae and the whole army

filling every space, since the enemy's situation had turned out contrary to what they expected — quite different from what they themselves had reckoned — they took fright and considered fleeing from Artemisium into the interior of Greece. When the Euboeans learned they were deliberating this, they begged Eurybiades to wait a short while, until they themselves had gotten their children and household safely away. When they could not persuade him, they turned instead to the Athenian general and persuaded

Themistocles, for a fee of thirty talents, on condition that they stay and fight the sea battle in defense of Euboea. Themistocles brought about the Greeks' staying in the following way: of this money he gave Eurybiades a share of five talents, pretending it was a gift from his own funds. When Eurybiades had been won over by this, only Adeimantus son of Ocytus, the Corinthian commander, still balked among the rest, declaring that he would sail away from

Artemisium and not remain. To him Themistocles said, with an oath, "You will not abandon us, since what I will give you exceeds anything the Persian king could send you for deserting the allies." And as he said this he sent to Adeimantus' ship three talents of silver. So all of these men were won over by gifts,

and the Euboeans got what they wanted, while Themistocles himself profited too, since it went unnoticed that he kept the rest of the money for himself; those who received a share of it believed it had come from Athens for this very purpose. Thus they remained in Euboea and fought the sea battle, and it came about like this. When the barbarians arrived at Aphetae in the early afternoon,

having learned even earlier that a few Greek ships lay at anchor off Artemisium, and now catching sight of them directly, they grew eager to attack, in hopes of somehow capturing them. Sailing straight at them did not yet seem wise, and for this reason: they worried that if the Greeks spotted them closing in, the Greeks would bolt into flight, with darkness then overtaking them as they ran, and so escape — whereas their design required that not even

a single fire-bearer should escape and survive. So against this they devised the following scheme: separating out two hundred ships from the whole fleet, they sent them around outside Sciathos, so that they would not be seen by the enemy sailing around Euboea past Caphereus and around Geraestus into the Euripus, so that the ships going that way might come round and block the Greeks' route of retreat, while the main fleet itself pressed them from

the opposite direction. Having planned this, they sent off the assigned ships, while they themselves had no intention of attacking the Greeks on that day, nor before the signal was due to appear from those sailing around, to show that they had arrived. So they sent these ships around, and meanwhile made a count of the remaining ships at Aphetae. During the time in which they were making this count

of the ships — for there was in that camp Scyllias of Scione, the best diver of the men of that time, who at the shipwreck that occurred off Pelion had recovered much of the treasure for the Persians, and had also kept much of it for himself — this Scyllias had actually intended to desert to the Greeks even earlier, but had had no opportunity to do so

until then. By what means he then made his way to the Greeks I cannot say for certain, and I am amazed if what is told is true: it is said that he dove into the sea at Aphetae and did not come up until he reached Artemisium, having made his way through the sea a distance of about eighty stadia. Many other things are also told

about this man that resemble falsehoods, though some of them are true; but concerning this particular matter, let it be my judgment that he reached Artemisium by boat. When he arrived, he immediately reported to the generals what had happened in the shipwreck, and told them of the ships sent around Euboea. Hearing this, the Greeks conferred among themselves. After much had been said,

the decision won out that they should stay put that day, camping there, and afterward, once midnight had gone by, set out to meet the ships sailing around the coast. Following this, since no one came out to attack them, they held off until late in the afternoon and then sailed out themselves against the barbarians, wanting to try their hand at fighting and at breaking through the enemy line. When the rest of Xerxes' soldiers

and his generals saw them sailing out with so few ships, they thought them utterly mad, and put out to sea themselves as well, expecting to capture them easily — a reasonable expectation, since they saw the Greek ships were few, while their own were many times more numerous and better sailers. With this contempt they surrounded them in a circle. Now those of the Ionians who were well disposed

toward the Greeks served unwillingly and were deeply distressed to see them surrounded, believing that none of them would return home — so weak did the Greeks' position seem to them. But those who were pleased at what was happening vied with one another to be the first to capture an Athenian ship and win gifts from the King, for it was the Athenians who were talked of most in the camps.

When the signal was given to the Greeks, first they turned their prows toward the barbarians and drew their sterns together into the center; then, at the second signal, they set to work, hemmed in as they were within a narrow space and facing the enemy head-on. There they captured thirty of the barbarian ships, along with Philaon son of Chersis, brother of Gorgus king of the Salaminians, a man of note in the camp. The first Greek to capture an enemy

ship was Lycomedes son of Aeschraeus, an Athenian, and he received the prize for valor. Those contending in this battle with indecisive fortune were parted by the coming of night. The Greeks sailed back to Artemisium, and the barbarians to Aphetae, having fought quite differently than they expected. In this sea battle Antidorus of Lemnos, alone among the Greeks serving with the King, deserted to

the Greeks, and for this deed the Athenians gave him land on Salamis. When night fell — it was midsummer — rain poured down without measure the whole night through, and there were harsh peals of thunder from Pelion; the corpses and the wreckage were carried toward Aphetae and gathered around the prows of the ships, entangling the blades of the oars.

The soldiers stationed there, hearing this, fell into fear, expecting to perish utterly, given the troubles that had befallen them. For before they could even catch their breath from the shipwreck and the storm that had occurred off Pelion, a fierce sea battle overtook them, and after the sea battle came a violent downpour and strong torrents

rushing toward the sea, and harsh thunderclaps. Such was that night for these men. But for those assigned to sail around Euboea, the same night was far more savage still, in proportion as it fell upon them out on the open sea, and their end was a grim one. For as they sailed on, the storm and the rain overtook them off the Hollows

of Euboea, and carried along by the wind, not knowing where they were being carried, they were driven onto the rocks. Everything was arranged by the god so that the Persian force might be brought down to equal the Greek and not be so much greater. These men, then, perished around the Hollows of Euboea. As for the barbarians at Aphetae, when day dawned upon them to their relief, they kept their ships

quiet, and in their present troubles they were content simply to remain at rest. Meanwhile fifty-three Attic ships came to reinforce the Greeks. Their arrival strengthened the Greeks' spirits, as did the news that came at the same time, that all the barbarian ships sailing around Euboea had been destroyed by the storm that had occurred. Waiting for the same hour as before, they sailed out and fell upon some Cilician ships; these they destroyed,

Once night fell, they sailed back to Artemisium. On the third day the barbarian commanders, finding it unbearable that so few ships should inflict such damage on them, and afraid of what Xerxes might do, refused to wait any longer for the Greeks to begin the fight, but urged each other on and launched their ships at midday. As it turned out, these naval battles occurred on the same days as

the land battles at Thermopylae. For the whole struggle at sea was about the Euripus, just as the men with Leonidas were guarding the pass. The one side urged each other on so that the barbarians should not get through into Greece, the other so that they might destroy the Greek force and gain control of the strait. When the men of Xerxes had drawn up their ships and sailed forward, the Greeks held their position without moving

off Artemisium. The barbarians formed their ships into a crescent and tried to encircle them, so as to surround them. At this the Greeks put out and engaged. In this sea battle both sides came off much alike. For the army of Xerxes, because of its size and numbers, fell into disorder by its own doing, the ships becoming tangled and running into one another; nevertheless it held its ground and did not give way,

for they thought it a terrible thing to be routed by so few ships. Many Greek ships were destroyed, and many men, but far more ships and men of the barbarians, and after fighting in this way each side drew apart. In this sea battle the Egyptians among the soldiers of Xerxes distinguished themselves most, who among other great feats performed also captured five Greek ships

with their crews. Among the Greeks on that day the Athenians distinguished themselves, and among the Athenians Cleinias son of Alcibiades, who served at his own expense with two hundred men and a ship of his own. When the two sides parted, each was glad to hurry to its own anchorage. The Greeks, once separated and free from the sea battle, held the field of the dead and the wrecks, but had been roughly

handled, not least the Athenians, half of whose ships had been damaged, and they were planning to flee back into Greece. But Themistocles, having conceived the idea that if the Ionian and Carian contingents could be broken off from the barbarian, the Greeks might be able to gain the mastery over the rest, and noting that the Euboeans were driving their flocks down to this stretch of sea, gathered the

commanders and told them that he thought he had a plan by which he hoped to draw away the best of the king's allies. This much he revealed for the moment, but as to the matter at hand he said they should do the following: slaughter as many of the Euboean flocks as anyone wished, for it was better that their own army have them than the enemy; and he advised that each man tell his own

men to light fires; as for the timing of departure, that would be his concern, so that they might reach Greece safely. They were pleased to do this, and at once lit fires and turned to the flocks. For the Euboeans, having disregarded the oracle of Bacis as meaningless, had neither carried anything away nor laid in provisions in expectation of war, and so brought ruin upon themselves.

Bacis has an oracle concerning this matter that reads thus: 'Take heed, when a man of foreign speech casts a papyrus yoke upon the sea, keep the loud-bleating goats far away from Euboea.' Because they had made no use of these words amid the troubles then upon them and those still expected, they were left to face only misfortune in the gravest matters. While this was going on, the scout from Trachis showed up. For at

Artemisium there was a scout, Polyas, an Anticyran by birth, who had been assigned, and kept a rowing boat ready, so that if the fleet should suffer defeat he might signal to those at Thermopylae; and likewise there was Abronichus son of Lysicles, an Athenian, ready with Leonidas to announce by a thirty-oared ship to those at Artemisium if anything new should befall the land force. This Abronichus, then, arriving, announced to them what had happened

concerning Leonidas and his force. When they learned this, they no longer delayed their withdrawal, but departed each in the order assigned to them, the Corinthians first, the Athenians last. Themistocles, choosing out the best-sailing ships of the Athenians, went about to the watering places, cutting inscriptions on the stones. These the Ionians, coming upon the following day at Artemisium, read.

The message read as follows: 'Men of Ionia, it is unjust for you to march against your own fathers and help enslave Greece. Better still, come over to our side; and if that proves impossible for you, then at least withdraw yourselves from the fighting now, and urge the Carians to do likewise. If neither

of these is possible for you, but you are bound by too great a compulsion to revolt, then in the actual battle, when we engage, play the coward deliberately, remembering that you are descended from us and that the enmity toward the barbarian originally arose on our account through you.' Themistocles wrote this, I think, with a double purpose in mind: either that the message, escaping the king's notice, might make the Ionians change over

and come to their side, or that, if it were reported and denounced to Xerxes, it might make him distrust the Ionians and keep them away from the sea battles. This is what Themistocles wrote. Meanwhile, immediately after this, a man of Histiaea came by boat to the barbarians announcing the Greek withdrawal from Artemisium. They, out of disbelief, kept the messenger under guard and sent fast ships

ahead to look for themselves; and when these reported that it was so, then, as the sun was spreading its light, the whole fleet sailed together to Artemisium. Having waited there until midday, from then on they sailed to Histiaea; and arriving they took possession of the city of the Histiaeans, and overran all the coastal region of the Ellopian district and the land of Histiaeotis.

Meanwhile Xerxes, once he had settled matters concerning the dead, dispatched a herald to the naval force, having first arranged the following: of his own army's dead at Thermopylae — some twenty thousand in number — he left roughly a thousand of them exposed, and buried the remainder in dug trenches, covering them with brushwood and heaped earth, so the naval force would not catch sight of them.

When the herald had crossed over to Histiaea, he called an assembly of the whole camp and said this: 'Men, allies, King Xerxes grants to whoever of you wishes it leave to quit his post and come to see how he fights against those foolish men who hoped to overcome the king's power.' After he made this announcement, nothing thereafter became scarcer than boats, so many wished to see the sight. Crossing over

they went about viewing the dead; and all believed that those lying there were all Lacedaemonians and Thespians, though they also saw the helots. Yet it did not escape those who had crossed over that Xerxes had done this concerning his own dead; indeed it was even laughable: of the enemy's dead a thousand were shown lying there, while all of their own were gathered together and heaped up in one place, four

thousand strong. They devoted that day to this spectacle, and on the following day some sailed back to Histiaea to rejoin the fleet, while Xerxes and his men set out on the road. A handful of deserters from Arcadia reached them, men lacking a livelihood who wanted work. Bringing them before the king, the Persians questioned them about the Greeks,

what they were doing; one man before all the rest was the one asking them this. They told him that they were holding the Olympic games and watching a contest of athletics and horse racing. He then asked what the prize was that was set for them to contend for; they said it was a crown of olive that was given. At this Tigranes son of Artabanus, in speaking a most noble opinion, incurred a charge of cowardice

from the king. For on learning that the prize was a crown and not money, he could not keep silent, and said before everyone: 'Good heavens, Mardonius, what kind of men have you brought us to fight against, who contend not for money but for excellence!' This is what he said. In the meantime, once the disaster at Thermopylae had occurred, at once

the Thessalians dispatched a herald to the Phocians, for they had long borne them a grudge, one sharpened further by their most recent defeat. When the Thessalians and their allies had once invaded Phocian territory in full force, not many years before this royal campaign, the Phocians had beaten them back and handled them roughly. For when the Phocians had been cornered on Parnassus,

having with them the seer Tellias of Elis, then this Tellias devised for them the following stratagem. He whitened with chalk six hundred of the best men of the Phocians, both the men themselves and their weapons, and by night set them upon the Thessalians, having told them beforehand to kill anyone they saw who was not gleaming white. The Thessalian sentries, seeing these men first, were terrified, thinking it was some other kind of apparition, and

after the sentries the army itself was likewise, so that the Phocians gained control of four thousand dead bodies and shields, half of which they dedicated at Abae and the other half at Delphi; and a tenth of the spoils from this battle produced the great statues standing around the tripod in front of the temple at Delphi, and others like them are dedicated at Abae.

This is what the Phocians did to the Thessalian infantry who were besieging them; and to the cavalry that invaded their land they did irreparable harm. For at the pass that leads by Hyampolis, there they dug a great trench and placed empty jars in it, and heaping earth over them and making it look like the rest of the ground, they awaited the Thessalians as they invaded. And they, as

Rushing forward to seize the Phocians, they fell headlong into the storage jars, and the horses' legs were broken. Bearing a grudge over both of these incidents, the Thessalians sent a herald and proclaimed as follows: "Phocians, it is time you learned better than to think yourselves our equals. In the past, among the Greeks, as long as that policy suited us, we always had the upper hand over you; but now with the barbarian

we have such power that it is in our hands to strip you of your land, or worse, enslave you. Yet though we hold all the advantage, we bear you no lasting grudge; let there be fifty talents of silver in place of it, and we undertake to turn aside the forces advancing on your country." This was the offer the Thessalians made them. For the Phocians alone among the peoples of that region had not gone over to the Persians, for no other reason, as far as I can work out,

beyond their hatred for the Thessalians; had the Thessalians instead championed the Greek cause, I suspect the Phocians would have sided with the Medes. When the Thessalians made this proposal, the Phocians replied that they would not hand over the money, adding that they too were as free as the Thessalians to medize if that was their wish; but they would never willingly betray Greece. When word of this answer

was brought back, the Thessalians, now enraged against the Phocians, became guides for the barbarian's army on its march. From Trachis they invaded Doris; for a narrow strip of the land of Doris stretches this way, about thirty stadia wide, lying between the land of Malis and Phocis, which was in ancient times called Dryopis; this land

is the mother-city of the Dorians in the Peloponnese. This land of Doris the barbarians did not harm when they invaded it, for its people had medized and the Thessalians did not wish it. But when they invaded Phocis from Doris, they did not catch the Phocians themselves. Some of the Phocians had gone up to the heights of Parnassus. There is a peak there well suited to shelter a crowd,

the peak of Parnassus, standing apart near the city of Neon; its name is Tithorea; it was to this height that they hauled their belongings and climbed up themselves. Most of the rest carried their possessions away to the Ozolian Locrians and the city of Amphissa above the Crisaean plain. The barbarians overran the whole territory of Phocis, since the Thessalians guided the army this way; and whatever

lay in their path, they burned and cut down entirely, setting fire to the cities and to the temples as well. Marching this way along the Cephisus river, they laid waste to everything, and they burned the city of Drymus, and Charadra, and Erochus, and Tethronium, and Amphicaea, and Neon, and Pediea, and Tritea, and Elateia, and Hyampolis, and Parapotamii, and Abae, where there was

a rich sanctuary of Apollo, furnished with many treasuries and offerings; and there was then, as there still is now, an oracle there. This sanctuary too they plundered and burned. And pursuing some of the Phocians, they caught them near the mountains, and violated some women until they died from the sheer numbers of the men. Passing by Parapotamii, the barbarians came to Panopeae. From there their army, already dividing,

split apart. The greater and stronger part of the army, marching together with Xerxes himself toward Athens, invaded the land of Boeotia, into the territory of the Orchomenians. The whole population of Boeotia had medized, and their cities were being protected by Macedonian men stationed there, sent by Alexander; and they protected them for this reason, wishing to make it clear to Xerxes that the Boeotians favored the Persian side. These, then, of the barbarians

turned this way; but others of them, with guides, set out for the sanctuary at Delphi, keeping Parnassus on their right. Whatever part of Phocis these too passed through, they ravaged entirely; for they burned the city of the Panopeans, and of Daulis, and of the Aeolidae. They marched this way, separated from the rest of the army, for this reason: so that after plundering the sanctuary at Delphi

they might present its treasures to King Xerxes. For Xerxes, as I learn, knew everything in the sanctuary worth mentioning better than he knew what he had left behind in his own house, since so many people were always speaking of it, and especially of the offerings of Croesus son of Alyattes. The Delphians, learning of this, fell into utter terror, and in great fear consulted the oracle about the sacred

treasures, whether they should bury them in the ground or carry them off to another land. The god would not allow them to move them, saying he was himself able to protect what was his own. Hearing this, the Delphians turned to thinking of their own safety. Their children and women they sent across to Achaea, while of the men themselves most went up to the peaks of Parnassus and

carried their goods up into the Corycian cave, while others made their way out to Amphissa in Locris. All the Delphians, then, abandoned the city, except sixty men and the prophet. When the barbarians drew near and were in sight of the sanctuary, at that moment the prophet, whose name was Aceratus, saw sacred weapons lying in front of the temple, brought out from within the inner shrine,

weapons which it was forbidden for any man to touch. He went off to tell the Delphians who remained of this omen; but the barbarians, as they came hurrying toward the sanctuary of Athena Pronaia, encountered omens still greater than the one that had occurred before. It is indeed a great wonder in itself, that weapons of war should appear of their own accord lying outside the temple;

but what happened next was even more astonishing, and worthy of wonder above all portents. For when the barbarians were advancing on the sanctuary of Athena Pronaia, at that moment thunderbolts fell upon them from the sky, and two peaks broke off from Parnassus and came crashing down upon them with a great noise, killing many of them, and from the

sanctuary of Pronaia there arose a shout and a battle-cry. When all these things came together, terror fell upon the barbarians. The Delphians, learning that they were fleeing, came down after them and killed a good number of them. The survivors fled straight toward Boeotia. Those of the barbarians who returned said, as I learn, that besides these things they saw other divine happenings as well: two hoplites of greater than

human stature, they said, followed them, killing and pursuing. These two, the Delphians say, are local heroes, Phylacus and Autonous, whose sacred precincts are near the sanctuary, that of Phylacus right beside the road above the sanctuary of Pronaia, and that of Autonous near the Castalian spring, beneath the peak of Hyampeia. The stones that fell from Parnassus

were still preserved down to my own time, lying in the precinct of Athena Pronaia, where they had crashed down through the ranks of the barbarians as they fled. Such, then, was the departure of these men from the sanctuary. Meanwhile the Greek fleet, at the request of the Athenians, put in from Artemisium to Salamis. The Athenians asked them to put in at Salamis

for this reason: so that they themselves might get their children and women out of Attica, and also so they could deliberate on what course of action they should take. For given the state of their affairs they intended to hold a council, since their expectations had proved mistaken. They had expected to find the Peloponnesians in full force stationed in Boeotia to meet the barbarian, but they found none of them there; instead they learned that the Peloponnesians were walling off the Isthmus, since

they valued above all else the survival of the Peloponnese and were keeping guard over it, letting everything else go. Learning this, they then asked the fleet to put in at Salamis. So the rest of the fleet put in at Salamis, while the Athenians put in at their own land. After their arrival they made a proclamation, that any Athenian who was able should try to save his children and household. At this

most of them sent their families off to Troezen, some to Aegina, and some to Salamis. They hastened to remove them, wishing both to comply with the oracle, and also, not least, for this reason: the Athenians say that a great serpent, guardian of the acropolis, dwells in the sanctuary there. They say this and also that they set out monthly offerings for it as though it truly existed; and the monthly offering is a honey-cake.

This honey-cake, which in all previous time had always been consumed, was on this occasion left untouched. When the priestess announced this, the Athenians were all the more eager and ready to abandon the city, believing that the goddess herself had abandoned the acropolis. And when everything had been removed to safety, they sailed to the fleet's camp. When those from Artemisium had put in their ships at Salamis, there gathered

also the rest of the Greek fleet, on hearing of it, from Troezen; for it had been announced beforehand that they should assemble at Pogon, the harbor of the Troezenians. And so far more ships gathered than had fought at Artemisium, and from more cities as well. The admiral in command was the same man as at Artemisium, Eurybiades son of Eurycleides, a Spartan, though not of royal descent; but by far

by far the greatest number of ships came from the Athenians, and the best-sailing ones too. Those who joined the campaign were as follows: from the Peloponnese, the Lacedaemonians supplied sixteen ships, the Corinthians the same number as at Artemisium, the Sicyonians fifteen ships, the Epidaurians ten, the Troezenians five, the Hermionians three — all of them, except the Hermionians, belonging to the Dorian and Macedonian stock, having set out last from Erineus and Pindus

and the land of Dryopis. The Hermionians are Dryopes, expelled by Heracles and the Malians from the territory now known as Doris. Such, then, were the Peloponnesians who joined the campaign; and from the mainland beyond the Peloponnese came the Athenians, who supplied more ships than everyone else put together, one hundred eighty in all, alone; for the Plataeans did not fight alongside the Athenians in the sea battle at Salamis, for the reason given below

a strange thing happened: as the Greeks were withdrawing from Artemisium, when they came opposite Chalcis, the Plataeans landed on the mainland of Boeotia and set about carrying off their households. These men, then, stayed behind saving their people. As for the Athenians: while the Pelasgians held the land now called Hellas, the Athenians were Pelasgians, called Cranaans; under king Cecrops they were called Cecropidae; and when Erechtheus took over

the rule they were renamed Athenians, and when Ion son of Xuthus became their war-leader they were called Ionians after him. The Megarians supplied the same complement of ships as at Artemisium; the Ambraciots came to help with seven ships, the Leucadians with three, these being a Dorian people from Corinth. Of the islanders the Aeginetans supplied thirty. They had other manned ships as well, but with those they guarded their own land,

while with the thirty best sailers they fought at Salamis. The Aeginetans are Dorians from Epidaurus; the island's former name was Oenone. After the Aeginetans came the Chalcidians, supplying the twenty they had at Artemisium, and the Eretrians the seven; these are Ionians. Then the Ceans supplying the same number, a people Ionian in stock, from Athens. The Naxians supplied four, though they had been sent

to the Medes by their fellow citizens, like the other islanders, but disregarding their orders they came over to the Greeks, at the urging of Democritus, a man of standing among the citizens and at that time a trierarch. The Naxians are Ionians descended from Athens. The Styrians supplied the same ships as at Artemisium, the Cythnians one ship and a fifty-oared vessel, both peoples being Dryopians. And

the Seriphians, Siphnians, and Melians joined the campaign, being the only islanders who had not offered the barbarian earth and water. All of these, living within the Thesprotians and the river Acheron, took part in the campaign; for the Thesprotians border the Ambraciots and Leucadians, who came from the most distant regions to campaign. Among those living beyond these, only the Crotoniates came to Greece's aid in her hour of danger, with one

ship, led by a man who had won the Pythian games three times, Phayllus; the Crotoniates are Achaean by descent. The rest who joined the campaign brought triremes, but the Melians, Siphnians, and Seriphians brought fifty-oared vessels: the Melians, of Lacedaemonian stock, supplied two, and the Siphnians and Seriphians, being Ionians from Athens, one apiece. The full count of ships, not counting the fifty-oared vessels, reached three hundred

and seventy-eight. When the generals from the cities named came together at Salamis, they took counsel, Eurybiades proposing that whoever wished should declare his opinion as to where it seemed most advantageous to fight the sea battle, among those regions still in their own control—for Attica was already given up—and he put the question concerning the rest. The opinions of most of the speakers agreed in favor of sailing

to the Isthmus and fighting the sea battle before the Peloponnese, giving this reasoning: that if they were defeated in the battle, being at Salamis they would be besieged on an island, where no help could reach them, whereas at the Isthmus they could retreat to their own people. While the generals from the Peloponnese were reasoning this out, an Athenian man arrived with the report that the barbarian had come into Attica and that the whole country was being burned. For

the army that had marched with Xerxes through Boeotia, after burning the city of Thespiae — its people having fled to the Peloponnese — and Plataea's city likewise, reached Athens and laid waste to everything there. He burned Thespiae and Plataea upon learning that the Thebans had refused to medize. From the crossing of the Hellespont, from where the barbarians began their march, after spending a month there

while they crossed into Europe, they were in Attica within three further months, in the archonship of Calliades at Athens. And they took the city deserted, finding only a few Athenians in the sanctuary, treasurers of the temple and poor men, who had barricaded the acropolis with doors and timbers and defended themselves against the attackers, partly from poverty of means not having

withdrawn to Salamis, and partly because they thought they had grasped the true meaning of the oracle the Pythia had given them — that the wooden wall would remain unconquered — and that this very thing, rather than the ships, was the refuge the oracle meant. The Persians took up position on the hill facing the acropolis, the one the Athenians call the Areopagus, and laid siege in this manner: whenever they wrapped tow around

their arrows and set it alight, they shot it at the barricade. Then those Athenians under siege nonetheless defended themselves, though they had come to the utmost extremity and the barricade had failed them; nor did they accept the terms of surrender the Pisistratids brought forward, but defending themselves they contrived various countermeasures, and in particular, as the barbarians approached the gates, they rolled down boulders, so that Xerxes was held for a good while in perplexity, unable

to take them. In time, however, a way out of the impasse appeared for the barbarians, for it was fated, according to the oracle, that all of the Attic mainland should come under the Persians. In front, then, before the acropolis, but behind the gates and the ascent, where no one kept watch, since no one would have expected anyone to climb up that way

—there some men climbed up near the shrine of Aglaurus, daughter of Cecrops, even though the place is a sheer cliff. When the Athenians saw them having climbed up onto the acropolis, some threw themselves down from the wall and were killed, while others fled into the sanctuary's inner chamber. Of the Persians who had climbed up, the first turned to the gates,

opening these, they killed the suppliants; and once all had been struck down, they stripped the temple of its treasures and set the entire acropolis ablaze. Having taken Athens completely, Xerxes sent a horseman to Susa to inform Artabanus of their present success. On the day after sending the herald, he assembled the Athenian exiles who traveled with him and ordered them to climb up to the acropolis and offer sacrifice according to

offerings in their own manner—whether because he had seen some vision in a dream that prompted this order, or because he felt some remorse for having burned the temple. The Athenian exiles did as instructed. I will explain why I have mentioned this. There is in this acropolis a shrine said to belong to Erechtheus, called earthborn, in which there is an olive tree and a pool of sea water, which

according to the account of the Athenians, Poseidon and Athena set down as tokens when they contended over the land. This olive tree, along with the rest of the sanctuary, happened to be burned by the barbarians; but on the second day after the burning, the Athenians ordered by the king to sacrifice, when they went up to the sanctuary, saw a shoot grown up from the stump, about a cubit long. This, then,

is what they told him. The Greeks at Salamis, once word reached them of what had happened at the Athenian acropolis, fell into such disorder that some of the generals did not even wait for the matter before them to be decided, but dashed to their ships and raised sail as though about to flee; and those who stayed behind agreed to fight the sea battle in front of the Isthmus instead. Night was coming on and

they, breaking up from the council, went aboard their ships. Then, as Themistocles arrived at his ship, Mnesiphilus, an Athenian, asked him what had been decided. Learning from him that it had been resolved to lead the ships back to the Isthmus and fight the sea battle before the Peloponnese, he said, "Then indeed, if they take the ships away from Salamis, you will no longer be fighting for one

fatherland: for each people will scatter to their own cities, and neither Eurybiades nor anyone else will be able to restrain them from letting the army disperse; and Greece will be destroyed by bad counsel. But if there is any device, go and try to undo what has been decided, if you can somehow persuade Eurybiades to change his mind and stay here." This suggestion pleased Themistocles greatly,

and without answering anything to it, he went to Eurybiades' ship. On arriving, he said he wished to share with him a matter of common concern; and Eurybiades bade him come aboard and say what he wished. Then Themistocles, sitting beside him, related all that he had heard from Mnesiphilus, presenting it as his own, and adding much more besides, until he persuaded him, by his insistence, to

disembark from the ship and gather the generals in council. When they had come together, before Eurybiades could set forth the reason for which he had gathered the generals, Themistocles spoke at great length, as a man in urgent need. And as he spoke, the Corinthian general Adeimantus son of Ocytus said, "Themistocles, in the games those who start before the signal get whipped."

He, defending himself, replied, "But those who are left behind win no crown." At that time he answered the Corinthian mildly; but to Eurybiades he no longer said anything of what he had said before, that if they took the ships away from Salamis they would scatter and flee—for in the presence of the allies he did not think it proper to accuse anyone—but he held to another line of argument, saying the following. While Themistocles was speaking thus,

Adeimantus the Corinthian broke in again, telling him to hold his tongue since he had no fatherland, and urging Eurybiades not to permit a vote from a man without a city; for he said Themistocles ought to produce a city before offering opinions at all. He raised this charge against him because Athens had fallen and was in enemy hands. At that Themistocles unleashed harsh words against him and the Corinthians, and made plain

in his speech that they possessed both a city and a territory larger than theirs, as long as two hundred ships of theirs remained fully manned; for no Greeks could push them back if they attacked. Driving this point home, he turned his speech toward Eurybiades, speaking now more sharply. "If you stay put here, staying will make you a good man; but if you do not, you will bring Greece down: for our entire cause

the war is carried by the ships. But listen to me. If you do not do this, we will take up our households as we are and make our way to Siris in Italy, which has been ours from ancient times, and the oracles say it must be founded by us. And you, deprived of allies such as these, will remember my words." As Themistocles said this,

Eurybiades was won over by his argument. And it seems to me that it was chiefly fear of the Athenians that made him change his mind — fear that they would abandon the fleet if he led the ships to the Isthmus, since if the Athenians left, the rest would no longer be a match for the enemy. So he chose this course: to remain there and fight the sea battle. Thus the men at Salamis, having skirmished with words, once Eurybiades had decided, made their preparations there to fight at sea. Day was breaking, and

at the same moment as sunrise there was an earthquake on both land and sea. They decided to pray to the gods and to summon the sons of Aeacus as allies. Having so decided, they did this: after praying to all the gods, they called upon Ajax and Telamon from Salamis itself, and for Aeacus and the other sons of Aeacus they sent a ship to

Aegina. Now Dicaeus son of Theocydes, an Athenian exile who had become a man of standing among the Medes, said that at this time, when Attic land was being ravaged by Xerxes' infantry and was empty of Athenians, he happened to be with Demaratus the Lacedaemonian on the Thriasian plain, and saw a cloud of dust moving from Eleusis, as if raised by about thirty thousand men, and they marveled

at whose dust this could be, and presently they heard a voice, and the voice seemed to him to be the mystic cry of Iacchus. Demaratus, being unfamiliar with the rites performed at Eleusis, asked him what this sound was that they were hearing. And he himself said, "Demaratus, there is no way that some great disaster will not befall the king's

the army. For this much is clear, given that Attica lies deserted: the voice speaking is divine, coming forth from Eleusis to bring help to the Athenians and their allies. Should it descend upon the Peloponnese, danger will threaten the king himself along with the army on the mainland; but should it turn toward the ships at Salamis, the king will be risking

losing his fleet. This festival the Athenians hold every year for the Mother and the Daughter, and any Athenian who wishes, and any other Greek as well, is initiated into it; and the voice you hear is the cry of Iacchus that they raise at this festival." To this Demaratus replied, "Be silent, and do not speak this word to anyone else; for if it is reported to the king,

you will lose your head, and neither I nor anyone else on earth will be able to save you. Keep quiet, and let the gods take care of this army." So he counseled him, and out of the dust and the voice a cloud formed and was lifted up and carried toward Salamis, to the camp of the Greeks. Thus

they came to realize that Xerxes' fleet was fated for destruction. So said Dicaeus son of Theocydes, appealing to Demaratus and other witnesses. As for those stationed with Xerxes' fleet, once they had viewed the wreckage at Trachis and crossed over into Histiaea, they held there for three days, then sailed through the Euripus, and in another three days reached Phalerum.

As I judge the matter, the force that marched into Athens, arriving by both land and sea, numbered no fewer than the one that had reached Sepias and Thermopylae. For against those lost in the storm, and those who fell at Thermopylae and in the sea battles off Artemisium, I will set those who at that point had not yet joined the king's cause — the Malians, the Dorians, and

the Locrians and the Boeotians, who followed with their full levy except for the Thespians and the Plataeans, and also the Carystians and the Andrians and the Tenians and all the rest of the islanders, except the five cities whose names we mentioned earlier. For the further the Persian advanced into Greece, the more peoples followed him. When all these had arrived at Athens, except

the Parians (the Parians had lingered behind at Cythnos, watching to see which way the war would turn) — and the rest, once they reached Phalerum, Xerxes himself went down to the ships there, wanting to meet with them and learn the views of those sailing under him. Once he arrived and took his seat, the rulers of the various peoples and the ship commanders came at his summons and took their seats

in the order of honor that the king had given each of them, first the king of Sidon, then the king of Tyre, and then the rest. When they were seated in order, Xerxes sent Mardonius to go around and ask each of them, testing their opinion, whether he should give battle at sea. Mardonius went around asking, beginning with the man from Sidon, and all the others gave the same opinion, urging that a sea battle be fought; but Artemisia said this:

— what she had said. When she addressed Mardonius this way, those loyal to Artemisia treated her words as a disaster, expecting the king to punish her for opposing the sea battle; but those who resented and envied her, given her high standing among all the allies, took delight in the inquiry, hoping to see her ruined. But once the opinions reached Xerxes, he was

greatly pleased with Artemisia's opinion, and though he had already thought well of her before, he now praised her all the more. Nonetheless he ordered that the majority be followed, believing that at Euboea they had shirked because he himself was not present, but that now he had prepared to watch them fight the battle himself. When the order was given to put to sea, they led the ships out toward Salamis and arranged themselves in formation at their leisure. But

then the day did not allow time enough for them to fight the battle, for night came on; so they made their preparations for the next day. But fear and dread gripped the Greeks, especially those from the Peloponnese; they were afraid because, sitting there at Salamis, they were about to fight at sea on behalf of Athenian territory, and if defeated, they would be cut off on an island and besieged, leaving their own land

unguarded; meanwhile that same night the barbarians' infantry was on the march toward the Peloponnese. And yet every possible measure had been taken to keep the barbarians from invading by land. Once news reached the Peloponnesians that Leonidas and his men had died at Thermopylae, they rushed together from their cities and took up positions at the Isthmus, with Cleombrotus son of Anaxandrides, Leonidas's brother, in command.

Taking their position at the Isthmus and having blocked the Scironian road, after this, since they had so decided in council, they built a wall across the Isthmus. Since there were many tens of thousands of them and every man was working, the project advanced; for stones, bricks, timber, and baskets full of sand were brought in, and those who had come to help never rested from their labor, neither by night nor

by day. Those Greeks who came in full force to help at the Isthmus were these: the Lacedaemonians, all the Arcadians, the Eleans, the Corinthians, the Epidaurians, the Phliasians, the Troezenians, and the Hermionians. These were the ones who came to help, exceedingly fearful for Greece in her danger; but the rest of the Peloponnesians cared nothing for it, though the Olympic and Carneian festivals had already passed. The Peloponnese is inhabited by

seven peoples. Of these, two are indigenous and are settled in the same place now as in ancient times — the Arcadians and the Cynurians. One people, the Achaean, has not left the Peloponnese, but has left its own territory and now dwells in land not its own. The remaining four of the seven peoples are immigrants: the Dorians, the Aetolians, the Dryopians, and

the Lemnians. Of the Dorians there are many notable cities; of the Aetolians, Elis alone; of the Dryopians, Hermion and Asine near Cardamyle in Laconia; of the Lemnians, all the Paroreatae. The Cynurians, being indigenous, seem to be the only Ionians, but they have been thoroughly Dorianized, both by the rule of the Argives and by time, being the people of Orneae and their neighbors. Of these seven peoples, then,

the remaining cities, apart from those I have listed, sat out the war; and if I may speak freely, by sitting out they were siding with the Medes. So those at the Isthmus were engaged in this labor, as men running, so to speak, a race for everything, and having no hope of distinguishing themselves with their ships; but those at Salamis, hearing of this, nonetheless felt fear — not so much fear for themselves

as for the Peloponnese. For a time each man stood beside another and spoke in low voices, marveling at Eurybiades' poor judgment; but at last it broke out into the open. A meeting was held, and much was said on the same points — some arguing that they ought to sail away to the Peloponnese and risk their lives for that land, rather than remain and fight for a country already taken by the spear, while the Athenians,

the Aeginetans, and the Megarians pressed for staying put and defending the position. Themistocles, seeing himself outvoted by the Peloponnesians, quietly slipped away from the council, and once outside sent a man by boat to the Persian camp, telling him exactly what to say. This man was named Sicinnus; he served as a household slave and tutor to Themistocles' children, whom Themistocles afterward,

once the situation had settled, had enrolled as a citizen of Thespiae when the Thespians were taking in new citizens, and made rich with money besides. This man, arriving by boat, told the barbarian commanders: "The Athenian general has sent me in secret, without the other Greeks' knowledge (for he happens to favor the king's cause and hopes your side prevails over the Greeks), to let you know that the Greeks, gripped by fear, are plotting to flee,

"And now it offers you the finest of all opportunities, if only you do not let them slip away. For they do not agree with one another, nor will they stand against you—rather you will see them fighting each other at sea, those on your side against those who are not." Having told them this, he departed. The Persians, once the report seemed trustworthy, first put ashore many of their men on the islet called Psyttaleia, which lies between

Salamis and the mainland. Second, when it was the middle of the night, they moved their western wing forward, encircling toward Salamis, and those stationed around Ceos and Cynosura also moved forward, holding the whole strait with their ships as far as Munychia. They advanced their ships for this reason: so that the

Greeks might have no chance to escape, but might be trapped at Salamis and pay the penalty for the fighting at Artemisium. They put Persian troops ashore on the islet called Psyttaleia for this reason: since, once the sea battle began, it was there above all that the men and wrecks would be carried ashore (for the island lay right in the path of the coming battle), so that they might

save some and destroy others. They did this in silence, so that their enemies would not learn of it. So through that night, without any sleep, they made their preparations. As for oracles, I am not in a position to argue that they are untrue, since I do not wish to try to discredit words spoken so plainly, when I look at matters of this kind. But when they bridge with ships the sacred shore of golden-sworded Artemis, and sea-girt Cynosura, in mad hope,

having sacked shining Athens, holy Justice will quench mighty Excess, the son of Hybris, terribly raging, thinking he will devour everything. For bronze will clash with bronze, and Ares will redden the sea with blood. Then wide-seeing Zeus and lady Victory will bring the day of freedom to Greece. Regarding oracles that speak so plainly as this, spoken by Bacis, I dare not myself dispute them, nor do I accept such disputes from others.

Among the commanders at Salamis there was a good deal of back-and-forth argument; they did not yet realize that the barbarians had them surrounded with their ships, and assumed the enemy still held the positions seen by day. While the commanders were still disputing, Aristides son of Lysimachus crossed over from Aegina — an Athenian, though one the people had ostracized. Judging by what I have learned of his character,

to have been the best and most just man in Athens. This man, standing at the entrance to the council, called out Themistocles—though he was no friend of his, but rather his greatest enemy. But because of the magnitude of the present troubles he set that aside and called him out, wishing to confer with him; for he had already heard that those from the Peloponnese were eager to bring the ships back to the Isthmus. When Themistocles came out to him, Aristides said

the following: "We ought to quarrel with each other both at other times and especially now, over which of us will do more good for our country. But I tell you it makes no difference whether much or little is said about the Peloponnesians sailing away from here. For I tell you as an eyewitness that now, even if the Corinthians and Eurybiades himself

wished it, they would not be able to sail out; for we are surrounded on all sides by the enemy. Go in and tell them this." Themistocles answered him thus: "You urge something very useful, and you bring good news; for what I wished to happen, you have come having seen with your own eyes. Know that what the Medes are doing is my own doing; for since the Greeks were not willing to enter battle of their own accord,

it was necessary to force them into it against their will. But since you have come bringing good news, announce it to them yourself. For if I say it, I will seem to be inventing it, and I will not persuade them that the barbarians are not doing this. So go and tell them yourself how things stand. And once you have told them, if they believe you, that will be for the best; but if it does not seem credible to them, it will make no difference to us:

for they will no longer have any way to escape, if we are indeed surrounded on every side, as you say." At this Aristides stepped forward and spoke, saying he had come from Aegina and had barely managed to slip past the blockading ships unseen; for the whole Greek encampment was ringed by Xerxes' ships; and he urged them to ready themselves for defense. Having said this he withdrew, and once again a dispute broke out among them

of words; for most of the generals did not believe what had been reported. While they still disbelieved it, a trireme of Tenian men arrived as deserters, commanded by a man named Panaetius son of Sosimenes, and this ship brought the whole truth. Because of this deed the Tenians' name was engraved on the Delphic tripod, among the peoples credited with destroying the barbarian. With this ship that

deserted to Salamis, and with the one from Lemnos that had deserted earlier at Artemisium, the Greek fleet reached its full strength of three hundred eighty vessels; until then it had fallen two ships short of that figure. When the words of the Tenians seemed trustworthy to the Greeks, they prepared themselves to fight at sea. Dawn was breaking, and they held an assembly of the marines, and

Themistocles spoke best of all, his words all setting the better against the worse, whatever occurs in human nature and condition. Having urged them to choose the better of these, and having concluded his speech, he ordered them to board the ships. And so they began boarding, and the trireme from Aegina arrived, the one that had gone to fetch the sons of Aeacus. Then

the Greeks put out to sea with all their ships, and as they put out the barbarians at once fell upon them. The rest of the Greeks began backing water and running their ships aground, but Ameinias of Pallene, an Athenian man, put out and rammed a ship; and when his ship became entangled and they were unable to break free, then the others came to help Ameinias and joined the fight. This is how the Athenians say the sea battle

began, but the Aeginetans say it was the ship that had gone to Aegina to fetch the sons of Aeacus that began it. It is also said that a phantom of a woman appeared to them, and appearing, urged them on so that the whole Greek army heard it, first reproaching them thus: "Men, how long will you still be backing water?" Facing the Athenians were stationed the Phoenicians (for these held the

wing toward Eleusis and the west), and facing the Lacedaemonians were the Ionians; these held the wing toward the east and the Piraeus. A few of them, however, deliberately fought badly in accordance with Themistocles' instructions, but most did not. I could list the names of many trireme commanders who captured Greek ships, but I will make use of none of them except Theomestor son of Androdamas and Phylacus

son of Histiaeus, both Samians. I mention these two alone for this reason: because Theomestor, on account of this deed, was made tyrant of Samos by the Persians who established him, while Phylacus was recorded as one of the king's benefactors and was given much land. The king's benefactors are called orosangae in Persian. So it stood with these men; but the mass of the ships at Salamis was being destroyed, some

being destroyed some by the Athenians, some by the Aeginetans. For since the Greeks fought in good order and formation, while the barbarians were no longer arranged in ranks and did nothing with any sense, it was bound to turn out for them as in fact it did. And yet on that day they were, and proved themselves, far better than they had been off Euboea, every man eager and

fearing Xerxes, each one imagining that he himself was being watched by the king. As regards the others I cannot say precisely how each of the barbarians or the Greeks fought, but with Artemisia this is what happened, and it won her still greater esteem with the king. When the king's forces had fallen into great confusion, at that moment Artemisia's ship

was being pursued by an Athenian ship. Unable to escape, since other friendly ships were in front of her, and her own ship happened to be nearest of all to the enemy, she decided to do something, and it worked out well for her in doing it. Being pursued by the Athenian ship, she drove forward and rammed a friendly ship, one of the Calyndians, with the king of the Calyndians himself, Damasithymus, aboard. Whether indeed

some quarrel had arisen between her and him earlier while they were still around the Hellespont, I cannot say, nor whether she did this deliberately or whether the Calyndian ship simply happened by chance to fall in her path. But when she rammed and sank it, her good fortune brought her a double benefit. For the trierarch commanding the Athenian ship, spotting her ram

barbarian men, supposed that Artemisia's ship was either a Greek one, or had deserted from the barbarians and was fighting on their side, and so he turned away and went after other ships. This was one thing that turned out well for her — to escape and not be destroyed — and it also happened that by doing this harm she won the very greatest esteem with Xerxes. It is said that the king was watching and noticed her ship making the ram, and

one of those present said, "Master, do you see how well Artemisia is fighting, and how she has sunk a ship of the enemy?" And he asked whether the deed was truly Artemisia's, and they said yes, for they clearly recognized the ensign of her ship; the ship destroyed they supposed to be an enemy one. For, as has been said, everything else too worked out fortunately for her, and it helped that none of the men from the

Calyndian ship survived to accuse her. And Xerxes is said to have replied to what was told him, "My men have turned into women, while my women have become men." This is what they say Xerxes said. In this struggle there died the commander Ariabignes, son of Darius and brother of Xerxes, and many other well-known men of the Persians and Medes and

of the other allies died as well, though only a few Greeks; for the Greeks could swim, and those who lost their ships, unless killed in hand-to-hand fighting, swam over to Salamis. But most of the barbarians perished in the sea, not knowing how to swim. When the ships in front turned to flight, that is when most of them were destroyed; for those stationed behind, in

trying to press forward past the ships ahead so that they too might show the king some feat, collided with their own fleeing ships. And this too happened in that confusion. Some Phoenicians, whose ships had been destroyed, went before the king and laid blame on the Ionians, claiming that it was through them that the ships had been lost, as traitors. But it turned out that the Ionian commanders did not

perish, and the Phoenicians who made the accusation received the following reward instead. While they were still saying this, a Samothracian ship rammed an Athenian ship; the Athenian ship was sinking, but an Aeginetan ship bearing down sank the Samothracian ship in turn. But since the Samothracians were javelin-throwers, they struck down the marines from the ship that had sunk theirs, and boarded and took possession of it. This deed saved the Ionians,

for when Xerxes saw them accomplish this great feat, he turned on the Phoenicians, being extremely angry and blaming everyone, and ordered their heads cut off, so that men who had themselves proved cowards should not slander their betters. For whenever Xerxes saw any of his own men accomplish some feat in the battle, sitting as he was beneath the mountain opposite Salamis called

Aegaleos, he would ask who had done it, and his scribes would write down the trierarch's name, his father's name, and his city. Something also contributed to this outcome — the presence of a Persian named Ariaramnes, a friend, who was there for this Phoenician misfortune. So they turned their attention to the Phoenicians. Meanwhile the barbarians who had turned to flight and were sailing out toward Phalerum, the Aeginetans, lying in wait in the strait, performed deeds worthy of

note. For the Athenians in the confusion were destroying both the ships that stood against them and those that fled, while the Aeginetans dealt with those sailing out; and whenever some ships escaped the Athenians, fleeing they fell in among the Aeginetans. There the ship of Themistocles, in pursuit, and that of Polycritus son of Crius, an Aeginetan, which had rammed a Sidonian ship — the very one that had captured the

Aeginetan ship that had been on watch at Skiathos, on which Pytheas son of Ischenous was sailing, the man whom the Persians, admiring his courage, kept aboard their ship even after he had been cut to pieces — these two came together; while carrying him along with the Persians the Sidonian ship was captured, so that Pytheas was in this way brought safely to Aegina. When Polycritus saw the Athenian ship, he recognized the emblem of the flagship, and

he called out to Themistocles and mocked him, taunting him about the Aeginetans' supposed medizing. This is what Polycritus, having rammed the ship, hurled at Themistocles. As for the barbarians whose ships survived, they fled and arrived at Phalerum under the protection of the land army. In this sea battle the Aeginetans were reckoned the best of the Greeks, and after them the Athenians; among individual men, Polycritus the Aeginetan, and the Athenians

Eumenes of Anagyrus and Aminias of Pallene, who also pursued Artemisia. Had he realized that it was Artemisia sailing aboard that ship, he would not have stopped before either capturing her or being captured himself; for the Athenian trierarchs had been given orders to that effect, and besides there was a prize of ten thousand drachmas set for whoever should capture her while still living, so shocking did they find the idea of a woman campaigning against

Athens. As already noted, that ship got away safely; and the others too, whose ships had survived, were at Phalerum. As for Adeimantus, the Corinthian commander, the Athenians say that at the very outset, as the ships were closing, he was so terrified and struck with fear that he raised his sails and fled, and that the Corinthians, seeing their flagship fleeing, likewise sailed off. But when

they came in their flight opposite the sanctuary of Athena Skiras on Salamis, they met, by divine providence, a light boat; no sender for it could be identified, nor did it draw near the Corinthians with any knowledge of what had happened with the fleet. From this they infer that the matter was divine. For when the boat drew near the ships, those aboard it said this: "Adeimantus, you have turned your ships around and set out in

flight, betraying the Greeks; but they are in fact winning, gaining the victory over their enemies just as they had prayed for." When they said this, Adeimantus did not believe them, so they said again that they themselves were willing to be taken as hostages and put to death if the Greeks did not appear to be winning. So then he turned his ship around, and he and the others arrived at the camp only after the deed had already been accomplished.

Such is the account the Athenians give concerning these men, though the Corinthians themselves do not agree with it, but consider themselves to have been among the foremost in the sea battle; and the rest of Greece bears them witness too. Aristides son of Lysimachus, an Athenian, whom I mentioned a little earlier as a most excellent man, did the following in this confusion that arose around Salamis:

taking many of the hoplites who were arrayed along the Salaminian coastline, men of Athenian stock, he led them across and landed them on the island of Psyttaleia, and they slaughtered all the Persians who were on that little island. When the sea battle had broken up, the Greeks drew to Salamis whatever of the wrecks happened still to be there, and were ready for another sea battle,

expecting that the king would still make use of the ships that survived. But many of the wrecks the west wind caught up and carried along the coast of Attica to the shore called Colias; so that the whole of the oracle concerning this sea battle spoken by Bacis and Musaeus was fulfilled, and in particular, regarding the wrecks carried ashore there, what had been said many years before this

in an oracle to Lysistratus, an Athenian oracle-monger, which had escaped the notice of all the Greeks: "the women of Colias will roast with oars." This was destined to happen after the king had marched away. When Xerxes learned of the disaster that had occurred, fearing that some one of the Ionians might suggest to the Greeks, or that they themselves might think of it, to sail toward the Hellespont so as to destroy the bridges, and that he, cut off in Europe, might be in danger of perishing, he began planning

flight. But wishing not to make this evident either to the Greeks or to his own men, he attempted to build a causeway across to Salamis, and lashed together Phoenician merchant vessels to serve both as a bridge and as a wall, and made preparations for war as though he intended to fight another sea battle. All the others who saw him doing this were fully persuaded that he was fully resolved to remain and fight the war through; but Mardonius

was not at all deceived by any of this, since he was most experienced in the king's way of thinking. While Xerxes was doing these things, he also sent a messenger to Persia to announce the disaster that had befallen them. Of these messengers there is nothing among mortal things that arrives faster; this is how it has been devised by the Persians. For they say that for as many days as the whole journey takes, that many horses and

And men are stationed at intervals, one for each day's journey, each with a horse assigned to him. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor night keeps them from completing their appointed course with all speed. The first rider hands off his instructions to the next, who in turn passes them along to the one after him, and from there the message runs on through one man after another,

just as in the torch-race that the Greeks perform for Hephaestus. The Persians call this relay of horses the angareion. Now the first message that arrived at Susa, that Xerxes held Athens, delighted those Persians left behind so much that they strewed all the roads with myrtle and burned incense and were themselves engaged in sacrifices and

festivities. But the second message that came upon them threw them into such confusion that they all tore their tunics and gave themselves over to endless shouting and wailing, laying the blame on Mardonius. It was not so much grief over the ships that made the Persians act this way as fear for Xerxes himself. And this went on among the Persians the whole time in between, until Xerxes

himself arrived and put a stop to it. Mardonius, seeing that Xerxes took the sea-battle very hard, and suspecting that he was planning flight from Athens, reflected to himself that he would pay the penalty for having persuaded the king to march against Greece, and that facing the risk of conquering Greece, or else dying honorably himself, having been raised up for great things, was preferable; yet

his judgment leaned more toward subduing Greece. So having reckoned this, he brought forward the following proposal. "Master, do not grieve, and do not take this event that has happened as any great disaster. For it is not wood that decides everything for us, but men and horses. None of these men who now think they have accomplished everything will disembark from

their ships to try to oppose you, nor will anyone come out from this mainland to do so. Those who did oppose us have paid the penalty. Now if it seems good, let us attempt the Peloponnese at once; and if it seems good to wait, that too can be arranged. Do not be discouraged, for there is no escape for the Greeks from having to answer, sooner or later, for what they have done, both now and before, and become your slaves. So above all

do this. But if you have in fact decided to withdraw and lead the army away yourself, I have another plan besides. Do not, O king, let the Persians become an object of ridicule to the Greeks, for in the Persians' case nothing has been damaged in this affair, nor can you say where we proved cowardly. If the Phoenicians and Egyptians and Cypriots and Cilicians proved cowardly, that

disaster has nothing to do with the Persians. Since then it is not the Persians who are at fault, listen to me: if you have resolved not to remain, march back to your own land, taking the greater part of the army with you, but I must furnish you with Greece enslaved, choosing out three hundred thousand of the army for myself." When Xerxes heard this he rejoiced, as one does out of troubles, and was

pleased, and after deliberating with Mardonius he said he would decide which of the two courses he would take. As he was deliberating with the invited Persians, it occurred to him to summon Artemisia to the council as well, since earlier she alone had seemed to know what should be done. When Artemisia arrived, having dismissed the others, both the Persian counselors and the bodyguards, Xerxes said this. "Mardonius urges me to remain here

and attempt the Peloponnese, telling me that the Persian forces and the infantry bear no blame at all for what happened, but would be glad to give proof of it. He therefore urges me either to do this, or else he himself wishes to choose out three hundred thousand of the army and furnish me with Greece enslaved, while he urges me to march off along with what remains of the army toward my own homeland. You then,

advise me — for you also advised me well about the sea-battle that took place, urging me not to bring it about — now too advise me which course I should take to succeed by good counsel." So he asked her advice, and she said this. "King, it is difficult for one giving advice to hit upon the best course when asked, but given the present circumstances, it seems to me that you yourself should march back, while Mardonius, if he wishes

and undertakes to do as he says, should be left behind with those he wishes. For if he subdues what he claims he wishes, and things go for him as he plans, the achievement, master, becomes yours, since your slaves accomplished it. But if the opposite of Mardonius's design comes about, it will be no great disaster as long as you yourself survive, and those affairs

concerning your own house survive too. For as long as you yourself survive and your house survives, the Greeks will have to run many races, many times, for their own survival. But if something happens to Mardonius, it is of no account, nor will the Greeks, in winning, have won anything, having destroyed only your slave; while you, having achieved the purpose for which you made this expedition, by burning Athens, will march away." Xerxes was delighted with this advice,

for she happened to say exactly what he himself was thinking. Indeed, I think that even if all men and women together had advised him to remain, he would not have remained, so thoroughly had he been frightened. Having praised Artemisia, he sent her off to convey his children to Ephesus, for some illegitimate children of his were accompanying him. And with the children he sent as guardian Hermotimus, a Pedasian by birth, ranked

not second among the eunuchs in the king's favor. The Pedasians live above Halicarnassus, and among these Pedasians the following thing is said to occur: whenever something difficult is going to happen within a set time to all the people dwelling around this city, then the priestess of Athena there grows a great beard. This has already happened to them twice. It was from among these

Pedasians that Hermotimus came, the man who, of all we know, exacted the greatest vengeance for a wrong done to him. He had been captured by enemies and put up for sale, and was bought by a man of Chios named Panionius, who made his living from the most unholy of trades: whenever he acquired boys of outstanding looks, he would castrate them and take them to sell at Sardis and Ephesus for large sums, since among the barbarians

eunuchs are valued more highly than others, for the sake of their complete trustworthiness. Panionius castrated many others besides, making his living from this practice, and this man among them. And since Hermotimus did not suffer misfortune in everything, he came from Sardis to the king bearing gifts along with the rest, and as the years passed he was honored above all the eunuchs by Xerxes. When the Persian

army was setting out against Athens while the king was at Sardis, Hermotimus, having gone down for some reason into the land the Chians occupy, known by the name Atarneus, found Panionius there. Recognizing him, he greeted him warmly and spoke many friendly words, telling him first of all the good things he himself owed to him, and second

promising him in return all the good things that would follow if he brought his household and came to live there, so that Panionius, gladly welcoming these words, brought his children and his wife. And when he had gotten his whole household in his power, Hermotimus said this: "O man who of all men has gained his living from the most unholy deeds, what evil did I, or any of

my ancestors, ever do to you or to any of yours, that you made me, instead of a man, into nothing? Did you think the gods would fail to notice what you were contriving then? They, following the just law, have brought you, for the unholy deeds you did, into my hands, so that you cannot complain of the justice that is now going to be done to you by me." Having reproached him with this, when

his children were brought before his eyes, Panionius was forced to cut off the genitals of his own four sons, and being forced, he did it; and when he had done this, his sons, being forced in turn, cut his off. So it was that vengeance and Hermotimus came round upon Panionius in this way. Xerxes, after entrusting his children to Artemisia to take away to Ephesus, called Mardonius and ordered him to choose out from the army whatever

men he wished, and to try to make his deeds match his words. For that day matters went thus far, and during the night, on the king's order, the generals led the ships back from Phalerum to the Hellespont as quickly as each could manage, so as to guard the bridges for the king's crossing. When the barbarians, sailing near Zoster, saw thin headlands

jutting out from this mainland, they thought they were ships and fled for a long distance; but in time, learning that they were not ships but headlands, they gathered together and continued on their way. When day came, the Greeks, seeing the land army remaining in place, expected the ships to be near Phalerum as well, and thought they would fight a sea-battle, and made ready to defend themselves. But when they learned that the ships

had gone, immediately after this they decided to pursue. Now they did not catch sight of Xerxes' naval force in their pursuit as far as Andros, and having arrived at Andros they took counsel. Themistocles then put forward the view that they should turn among the islands, and having pursued the ships, sail straight for the Hellespont to break the bridges; but Eurybiades proposed the opposite view, saying that if they broke

the bridges, this above all things would do Greece the greatest harm. For if the Persian were forced to remain in Europe, he would try not to stay quiet, since if he stayed quiet, no progress in his affairs would be possible for him nor would any way home appear, and his army would perish of famine; but if he made the attempt and set his hand to the work

Next, everything in Europe would fall to them, city by city and people by people, whether by conquest or by prior surrender; and they would have as food, forever, the annual produce of the Greeks. But since he thought the Persian, defeated in the sea battle, would not remain in Europe, he said they should let him flee, until in his flight he came

to his own country: from that point on, he urged, the struggle should be waged over his territory. The other Peloponnesian generals held to this same opinion. But when Themistocles realized he would not persuade the majority to sail to the Hellespont, he turned to the Athenians instead (for they, being most vexed at the enemy's escape, were eager to sail to the Hellespont

and to attempt it even on their own, if the others were unwilling), and he said the following to them: "I myself have been present at many such events, and have heard of many more like them: men driven to necessity, once defeated, fighting back and recovering from their former misfortune. But as for us—since we have found a windfall for ourselves and for Greece, having driven back so vast a swarm of men—we should not chase after men who are fleeing."

For it is not we who accomplished this, but the gods and heroes, who begrudged that one man should be king of both Asia and Europe, a man both unholy and reckless: who made no distinction between sacred things and private, burning and toppling the statues of the gods; who even scourged the sea and cast fetters into it. But since things stand well

for us as they are now, let us for the present remain in Greece; each of us should tend to himself and to his household, rebuild his house, and see carefully to the sowing of his fields, once he has driven the barbarian completely away; and with the coming of spring let us sail down to the Hellespont and Ionia." He said this intending to lay up credit with the Persian, so that if any misfortune should befall him at the hands of

the Athenians, he would have a way of escape—and indeed that is exactly what happened. By saying these things Themistocles was practicing deception, but the Athenians believed him; for since he had already before this been reputed wise and had shown himself to be truly wise and prudent in counsel, they were altogether ready to trust what he said. When they had been won over by him, immediately after this Themistocles sent men in a boat, men whom he trusted to keep silent

even under every kind of torture, to tell the king what he himself had instructed them to say. Among them was Sicinnus his household servant once again. When they arrived off the coast of Attica, the others remained with the boat while Sicinnus went up to Xerxes and said the following: "Themistocles son of Neocles, general of the Athenians and the best and wisest man of all the allies, has sent me to tell you that Themistocles the

Athenian, wishing to do you a service, held back the Greeks when they wanted to pursue your ships and to break up the bridges in the Hellespont. Now you may withdraw at your leisure." Having delivered this message, they sailed back. The Greeks, since they had decided against chasing the barbarians' ships any farther and against sailing toward the Hellespont to destroy the crossing there, laid siege around Andros,

wishing to seize it. Among the islanders, the Andrians were first asked by Themistocles for money and refused it; and when Themistocles put forward this argument—that the Athenians had come with two great gods on their side, Persuasion and Necessity, and that therefore they were certainly obliged to give money—they answered in reply, saying that it was quite reasonable that Athens should be great and prosperous, since she was blessed with useful gods,

but that the Andrians themselves were exceedingly short of land, and that two useless gods never left their island but always clung fondly to it: Poverty and Helplessness; and that the Andrians, being in the grip of these gods, would give no money—for never could the power of Athens be stronger than their own powerlessness. Having answered in this way and having refused to give

the money, they were besieged. Themistocles, for he did not stop pursuing his own advantage, sent threatening messages to the other islands as well, demanding money through the same messengers he had used with the king, saying that if they did not give what was asked, he would bring up the army of the Greeks and destroy them by siege. By saying this he gathered great sums from the people of Carystus and Paros, who, on learning

that Andros was under siege because it had medized, and that Themistocles was held in the highest esteem among the generals, sent money out of fear. Whether any other islanders also gave, I cannot say, though I think that some others did give as well, and not only these. Yet the Carystians suffered no lesser misfortune on this account; the Parians, however, by appeasing Themistocles with money,

escaped the army altogether. Themistocles, then, operating from Andros, acquired money from the islanders in secret from the other generals. Meanwhile Xerxes and his men, after waiting a few days following the sea battle, marched off toward Boeotia by the same road. For Mardonius had decided that he would see the king off partway and, since it was now too late in the season for warfare, that it was better to winter in Thessaly, and

then, with the coming of spring, to make an attempt on the Peloponnese. When they arrived in Thessaly, Mardonius there picked out first of all the Persians, all those called the Immortals, except for Hydarnes their commander (for he said he would not leave the king's side), and after them, from the rest of the Persians, the breastplate-wearers and the thousand horsemen, and the Medes and Sacae and Bactrians and

Indians, both infantry and the rest of the cavalry. These whole peoples he took entire, but from the other allies he picked out only a few at a time, choosing men of fine appearance or those he knew had done something useful. But the one people he chose in the greatest number was the Persians, men who wore torques and bracelets, and after them the Medes; these were not fewer in number

than the Persians, but inferior in strength. So that altogether they numbered three hundred thousand, cavalry included. During this time, while Mardonius was selecting his army and Xerxes was still around Thessaly, an oracle had come from Delphi to the Lacedaemonians, telling them to demand satisfaction from Xerxes for the killing of Leonidas and to accept whatever he offered. So the Spartans sent a herald with all speed, who, when he caught up

with the army, still entirely in Thessaly, came before Xerxes and addressed him thus: "King of the Medes, the Lacedaemonians and the descendants of Heracles from Sparta demand from you satisfaction for a killing, because you killed their king while he was defending Greece." Xerxes laughed and, after a long pause, since Mardonius happened to be standing beside him, pointed to him and said, "Well then, Mardonius here

will give them the satisfaction that is fitting for them." The herald, taking this answer, departed. Xerxes, leaving Mardonius behind in Thessaly, himself marched in haste to the Hellespont, and reached the crossing point in forty-five days, bringing back scarcely any part of his army, so to speak. Wherever they went on their march and among whatever peoples they passed,

they seized and ate the crops of those people; but if they found no crops at all, they gathered the grass growing up from the ground and stripped the bark from trees and picked their leaves and ate them, whether from cultivated or wild trees alike, and left nothing behind: this they did out of hunger. Plague and dysentery also seized the army along the road and

destroyed it. Those among them who fell sick he left behind, ordering the cities where he happened to be marching at the time to care for and feed them—some in Thessaly, some in Siris in Paeonia, and some in Macedonia. It was there that he had left the sacred chariot of Zeus when he marched against Greece, and on his way back he did not recover it, for the Paeonians had handed it over to the Thracians, and later, when Xerxes demanded it back, claimed

that it had been seized while grazing by the Thracians living further up near the sources of the Strymon. There too the king of the Bisaltae and of the Crestonian land, a Thracian, did a monstrous thing: he himself said he would never willingly be enslaved to Xerxes, and went off up into Mount Rhodope, and forbade his sons to campaign against Greece. But they,

paying no heed—or perhaps simply feeling a desire to watch the war—campaigned along with the Persian; and when all six of them returned unharmed, their father gouged out their eyes for this reason. This was the reward they received. As for the Persians, marching on from Thrace, they arrived at the crossing point, and hastened to cross the Hellespont in their ships

to Abydos: for they no longer found the bridges of boats stretched across, but broken apart by a storm. There, while held up, they got a larger ration of food than they had had on the march, and eating without any restraint and changing waters, many of the surviving army died. The rest, together with Xerxes, arrived at Sardis. There is also another story told, that when Xerxes

marching away from Athens reached Eion on the Strymon, from there he no longer traveled by land, but put Hydarnes in charge of leading the army back to the Hellespont, and boarded a Phoenician ship himself to be carried to Asia. As he sailed, a great and stormy wind called the Strymonian is said to have caught him. And since the storm grew worse as the ship was overloaded, so that on the deck

there were many Persians of those traveling with Xerxes, the king, falling into terror, called out to the helmsman and asked whether there was any way of safety for them; and the man said, "Master, there is none, unless some relief is made from these many passengers." And Xerxes, on hearing this, is said to have replied, "Men of Persia, now let one of you show his care for the king: for it is in your hands

"seems to be my only safety." He said this, and they, doing obeisance, leapt into the sea, and the ship, thus lightened, made it safely across to Asia. As soon as Xerxes had disembarked on land, he did the following: because the man had saved the king's life, he gave the helmsman a golden crown, but because he had destroyed many Persians, he cut off his head.

This is another story told about Xerxes' homeward journey, but it seems to me in no way credible, neither in general nor in this particular about the fate of the Persians. For if these words had really been spoken by the helmsman to Xerxes, I have not found one opinion in ten thousand that would disagree that the king would have done the following instead: brought down onto the hold those on the deck, since they were Persians

and indeed the foremost of the Persians, while the rowers were Phoenicians, so that he would have thrown into the sea an equal number of the Phoenicians. But in truth, as noted earlier, he returned to Asia by the land route, marching with the rest of his army. This too is strong evidence: it is clear that Xerxes, on his return journey, arrived at Abdera and made a pact of friendship

with them, and gave them gifts, a golden sword and a tiara worked with gold thread. And as the Abderites themselves say — though what they say seems to me in no way credible — he first loosened his belt in flight from Athens on his way back, once he felt himself safe. Now Abdera lies nearer to the Hellespont than to the Strymon and Eion, from which they say he boarded the ship.

The Greeks, when they were unable to take Andros, turned instead to Carystus, and having ravaged its territory, departed for Salamis. First of all, then, they set aside first-fruits for the gods, including three Phoenician triremes, one to be dedicated at the Isthmus, which was still there in my time, one at Sunium, and one to Ajax

himself at Salamis. After this they divided up the spoil and sent the first-fruits to Delphi, from which a statue was made holding in its hand the ornament of a ship's prow, being twelve cubits in size; it stands where the golden statue of Alexander the Macedonian stands. Having sent the first-fruits to Delphi, the Greeks asked the god jointly whether he had received the first-fruits in full and to his satisfaction.

He said that he had received them in full from the other Greeks, but not from the Aeginetans, and he demanded from them the prize for valor for the sea battle at Salamis. The Aeginetans, on learning this, dedicated golden stars, which stand on a bronze mast, three of them, at the corner, very near the mixing bowl of Croesus. After the division of the spoil, the Greeks sailed to the Isthmus

to award the prize for valor to the man judged most worthy among the Greeks throughout this war. When the generals arrived, they distributed the votes at the altar of Poseidon, judging the first and second out of all, and there each of them cast a vote for himself, each thinking himself to have been the best, but for second place the majority converged in judging Themistocles. So the others each got one vote apiece,

but Themistocles far outstripped the rest for second place. Because the Greeks were unwilling to decide the matter out of envy, but each sailed off to his own home without a verdict, nevertheless Themistocles was proclaimed and reputed to be by far the wisest man among the Greeks throughout the whole of Greece. But because, though victorious, he was not honored by those who had fought at Salamis, he went soon after this to Lacedaemon, wanting to be honored; and

the Lacedaemonians received him well and honored him greatly. As prizes for valor they gave to Eurybiades a crown of olive, and to Themistocles too, for his wisdom and skill, a crown of olive; and they gave him the finest chariot in Sparta as a gift. Having praised him much, three hundred chosen Spartans, those who are called the Knights, escorted him on his departure as far as the borders of Tegea. He alone of all men we

know of the Spartans ever escorted. When he arrived from Lacedaemon at Athens, there Timodemus of Aphidnae, one of the enemies of Themistocles but otherwise not among the distinguished men, maddened by envy, reviled Themistocles, bringing up his journey to Lacedaemon, saying that he had received the honors from the Lacedaemonians on account of Athens, not on account of himself. And he, when Timodemus

would not stop saying this, said, "It is like this: I would not have been honored so by the Spartans had I been a Belbinite, nor would you, my good man, had you been an Athenian." So much, then, for that. Artabazus son of Pharnaces, a man of repute among the Persians even before, and become still more so after the events at Plataea, having six myriads of troops that Mardonius

had picked out, was accompanying the king on his journey as far as the strait. But when the king was in Asia, and Artabazus on his way back was passing through Pallene — since Mardonius was wintering around Thessaly and Macedonia and was in no hurry for him to come to the rest of the army — he did not think it right, having come upon the Potidaeans in revolt, not to enslave them. For the Potidaeans, once the king had passed by

and the Persian fleet had fled away from Salamis, had openly revolted from the barbarians; and so too had the others who held Pallene. Thereupon Artabazus laid siege to Potidaea. Suspecting also that the Olynthians were revolting from the king, he laid siege to that city as well; it was held by the Bottiaeans, who had been driven out from the Thermaic Gulf by the Macedonians. When

he had taken it by siege, he led the people out to a lake and slaughtered them, and handed over the city to Critobulus of Torone and to the Chalcidian people to govern, and thus the Chalcidians got possession of Olynthus. Having destroyed this city, Artabazus applied himself intently to Potidaea; and as he pressed on eagerly, Timoxeinus, the general of the Scionaeans, agreed with him on a betrayal — in what manner it began at first I am not able to say (for it is not told),

but in the end it happened as follows: whenever Timoxeinus wished to send a letter to Artabazus, or Artabazus to Timoxeinus, they would wrap it around the notch of an arrow, and feathering it, shoot it to an agreed place. But Timoxeinus' betrayal of Potidaea was discovered: for Artabazus, shooting at the agreed spot, missed it and struck a man of Potidaea in the shoulder,

and a crowd ran around the man who had been struck, as tends to happen in war, and they immediately took the arrow, and when they learned of the letter, they carried it to the generals; the allied forces of the other Pallenians were also present. When the generals had read the letter and learned who was responsible for the betrayal, they decided not to expose Timoxeinus for his betrayal, for the sake of the city of Scione, so that the Scionaeans should not be considered

traitors for all time thereafter. He, then, was discovered in this way. But for Artabazus, when three months had passed in the siege, there occurred a great ebb of the sea, lasting a long time. The barbarians, seeing that a shoal had formed, passed over into Pallene. But when they had crossed two portions of the way, and three still remained, which they needed to cross to be safely inside

Pallene, a great tidal surge of the sea came upon them, bigger than any that had ever occurred before, as the local people say, though it happens often enough. Those of them who did not know how to swim perished, and those who did know how the Potidaeans finished off by sailing out against them in boats. The Potidaeans say that the cause of the surge and the flood tide and the disaster to the Persians was this: that against the temple of Poseidon

and the statue in the suburb these same Persians who were destroyed by the sea had committed sacrilege; and in saying this was the cause, they seem to me to speak well. Those who survived Artabazus led away to Mardonius in Thessaly. Such was the fortune of those who had escorted the king. As for the fleet of Xerxes, the survivors, when it reached Asia in flight from Salamis

and had ferried the king and the army across from the Chersonese to Abydos, wintered at Cyme. When spring began to shine early, they gathered quickly at Samos; some of the ships had wintered there too. Most of the Persians and Medes aboard were marines. As commanders there came to them Mardontes son of Bagaeus and Artayntes son of Artachaees; and sharing command with these, at Artayntes' own choosing, was his nephew

Ithamitres. Since they had been struck so hard, they did not advance further westward, nor did anyone force them to, but sitting at Samos they kept watch over Ionia so that it should not revolt, having three hundred ships including the Ionian ones. Nor did they expect the Greeks to come to Ionia at all, but thought it would be enough for them to guard their own, reckoning by the fact that the Greeks had not pursued them in their flight from Salamis but

had gladly gone off home. By sea, then, they were beaten in spirit, but on land they thought Mardonius would prevail by far. Being at Samos, they at once deliberated whether they could do their enemies any harm, and also listened out for which way Mardonius' affairs would turn. The coming of spring roused the Greeks, as did Mardonius' being in Thessaly.

The land army had not yet gathered, but the fleet arrived at Aegina, one hundred and ten ships in number. The general and admiral was Leutychides, son of Menares, son of Hegesilaus, son of Hippocratides, son of Leutychides, son of Anaxilaus, son of Archidamus, son of Anaxandrides, son of Theopompus, son of Nicander, son of Charilaus, son of Eunomus, son of Polydectes, son of Prytanis, son of Eurypon, son of Procles, son of Aristodemus, son of

Aristomachus, son of Cleodaeus, son of Hyllus—Heracles' own line—and belonging to the other royal house. All these, except for the first seven named after Leutychides, were the other kings of Sparta. Of the Athenians, Xanthippus son of Ariphron was general. When all the ships had gathered at Aegina, messengers from the Ionians arrived at the camp of the Greeks, who had also gone to Sparta

A little before this they had arrived asking the Lacedaemonians to free Ionia—among them Herodotus son of Basileides, who with his fellow conspirators had plotted the death of Strattis, tyrant of Chios, being seven in number. When their plot became known, one of those involved having betrayed the enterprise, the other six fled the island and made their way to Sparta, and

now again to Aegina, asking the Greeks to sail down to Ionia. The Greeks brought them only as far as Delos, with great reluctance, for anything beyond that seemed altogether dangerous to the Greeks, who had no experience of those regions and imagined everything full of enemy forces—they believed Samos to be as far off as the Pillars of Heracles. And it so happened that

the barbarians, out of fear, dared not sail down further west than Samos, while the Greeks, though the Chians pressed them, would not go further east than Delos. So fear guarded the space between them. The Greeks then sailed to Delos, while Mardonius wintered around Thessaly. From there he set out and sent to the oracles a man of European stock named Mys, instructing him

to go and consult every oracle he could test. What exactly he wished to learn from the oracles by giving these instructions I cannot say, for it is not recorded; but I myself suppose he sent concerning the present situation and nothing else. This Mys is reported to have gone to Lebadeia and, by paying a local man, persuaded him to go down to

Trophonius, and to have gone to Abae in Phocis to the oracle there; and indeed when he first came to Thebes he consulted Ismenian Apollo—for there, just as at Olympia, one may get an oracle from the sacrifices—and besides this he persuaded some foreigner, not a Theban, with money, to sleep in the shrine of Amphiaraus. No Theban is allowed to seek an oracle there for this reason:

Amphiaraus, through oracles, bade them choose whichever of two things they wanted—to have him as a seer or as an ally—and to give up the other. They chose to have him as an ally. For this reason no Theban is allowed to sleep there seeking an oracle. But at that time, the Thebans report an extraordinary marvel took place: this European Mys, making his rounds of every oracle in turn, came also to

the precinct of Ptoan Apollo. This shrine is called the Ptoon and belongs to the Thebans; it lies above Lake Copais, very near the mountain by the city of Acraephia. When this man called Mys came to the shrine, three men chosen from the citizens by the community were following him, meant to record whatever oracle should be given, and suddenly the

prophet delivered the oracle in a foreign tongue. The Thebans who were following were astonished to hear a foreign language instead of Greek, and did not know what to do with the situation before them. But Mys the European snatched from their hands the tablet they were carrying, on which he wrote what the prophet said, saying that the oracle had been given in the Carian tongue; and having written it down, he departed to

Thessaly. Mardonius, having read whatever it was the oracles said, afterward sent as messenger to Athens Alexander son of Amyntas, a Macedonian, partly because the Persians were connected to him by marriage—for Bubares, a Persian, had married Gygaea, sister of Alexander and daughter of Amyntas, from whom was born to him Amyntas of Asia, who bore the name of his mother's father,

to whom the great city of Alabanda in Phrygia was given by the king to hold; and Mardonius sent him also because he learned that Alexander was proxenos and benefactor of the Athenians. For he thought this was the best way to win the Athenians over, having heard that they were a numerous and valiant people, and knowing that it was chiefly the Athenians who had brought about the disasters that had befallen the Persians at sea. If these joined him

he expected easily to gain control of the sea—as indeed would have happened—and on land he thought himself far superior, and so he reckoned that his cause would prevail over that of the Greeks. Perhaps too the oracles told him this, advising him to make the Athenian his ally; trusting these, he sent Alexander. Now the seventh ancestor of this Alexander was Perdiccas, who acquired the

tyranny over the Macedonians in the following manner. Three brothers of the descendants of Temenus fled from Argos to Illyria—Gauanes, Aeropus, and Perdiccas—and crossing over from Illyria into upper Macedonia they came to the city of Lebaea. There they served for wages under the king, one tending horses, another cattle, and the youngest of them, Perdiccas, the small

livestock. Now the king's wife herself baked their food, for in ancient times the ruling houses of men, not only the common people, were poor in wealth. Whenever she baked, the bread of the boy Perdiccas, the hired servant, would come out double its own size. As this kept happening again and again, she told her husband; and he,

on hearing it, was struck at once by the thought that it was a portent signifying something great. So he summoned the servants and told them to leave his land. They said it was only fair that they should receive their wages before departing. When the king heard talk of wages—for as it happened the sun was shining into the house through the smoke-hole—he said, struck with madness,

"I give you the wage you deserve—this," pointing to the sun. Now Gauanes and Aeropus, the elder brothers, stood dumbfounded on hearing this; but the boy, who happened to be holding a knife, said, "We accept, O king, what you give," and with the knife he traced a circle on the floor of the house around the sun, and having traced it, he scooped into the fold of his garment three handfuls of

sunlight, and then departed, he and his companions. So they went away; but one of the king's counselors told him what the boy had done, and how it was with understanding that the youngest of them had taken what was given. The king, hearing this and enraged, sent horsemen after them to kill them. But there is a river in that country,

to which the descendants from Argos of these men sacrifice as their savior: this river, once the sons of Temenus had crossed it, rose so greatly that the horsemen were unable to cross. The brothers, coming into another part of Macedonia, settled near the so-called Gardens of Midas son of Gordias, where roses grow of their own accord, each having sixty petals and surpassing all others

in fragrance. In these very gardens, as the Macedonians say, Silenus was caught. Above the gardens lies a mountain called Bermion, impassable because of the cold. Setting out from there once they held this region, they went on to subdue the rest of Macedonia as well. From this Perdiccas, then, Alexander was descended as follows: Alexander was son of Amyntas, Amyntas of Alcetas, and Alcetas' father was

Aeropus, his father was Philip, Philip's father was Argaeus, and his father was Perdiccas, who acquired the rule. This is what Alexander said. The Lacedaemonians learned that Alexander had reached Athens on a mission for the barbarian, seeking to win the Athenians over to an agreement, and recalling the oracles that said they, along with the other Dorians, were fated to be driven from the Peloponnese through the combined action of the Medes and the Athenians, were greatly afraid that the Athenians might come to terms

with the Persian, and at once resolved to send envoys. And it so happened that both embassies arrived together, for the Athenians had deliberately delayed, knowing well that the Lacedaemonians would hear that a messenger had come from the barbarian to negotiate terms, and that on learning it they would send envoys with all speed. They did this on purpose, to show the Lacedaemonians their own resolve. When

Alexander had finished speaking, the envoys from Sparta took their turn and said: "The Lacedaemonians have sent us to ask you neither to do anything new in Greece nor to accept proposals from the barbarian. For this would be neither just nor honorable for any of the Greeks, but least of all for you, for many reasons. You are the ones who stirred up this war, though we

wished nothing of the kind, and the struggle at first concerned your own territory, but now it extends to all of Greece. Besides, it is in no way to be endured that the Athenians should become the cause of slavery for the Greeks, you who have always, even long ago, shown yourselves to be liberators of many peoples. Still, we sympathize with you in your distress, since you have now been deprived of two harvests and your homes have been ruined for a long time now. In

return for this, the Lacedaemonians and their allies promise to support your women and all those of your households useless for war, for as long as this war continues. Do not let Alexander the Macedonian win you over, smoothing out Mardonius' message as he does. He must act as he does, for being a tyrant himself he cooperates with a tyrant; but you must not act so, if indeed you are

thinking rightly, knowing that among barbarians there is nothing trustworthy or true." So spoke the envoys. And the Athenians answered Alexander as follows: "We too know well that the power of the Mede is many times greater than ours, so there is no need to reproach us with that. But nonetheless, in our longing for freedom we shall defend ourselves as best we can. Do not attempt

to persuade us to come to terms with the barbarian, for we shall not be persuaded. And now report back to Mardonius that the Athenians say this: as long as the sun keeps to the same course by which it now goes, we shall never come to terms with Xerxes; rather, trusting in the gods and heroes as our allies, we shall go out against him in our defense—the gods and heroes whom he showed no regard for when he burned their houses and their images.

"and in the future, do not come before the Athenians with speeches of that sort, nor, thinking you are doing them a service, urge them to do something unlawful. For we do not wish anything unpleasant to happen to you at the hands of the Athenians, seeing that you are our guest-friend and friend." This was their reply to Alexander, but to the messengers from Sparta they said the following. "That the Lacedaemonians should fear we might come to terms with the barbarian was very natural indeed; but

it seems shameful that you, knowing well the spirit of the Athenians, should still have been afraid of this—that there is nowhere on earth so much gold, nor a land so surpassing in beauty and excellence, that we would accept it and be willing to enslave Greece by taking the Persian side. For there are many great reasons preventing us from doing this, even if we wished to: first and greatest, the images of the gods and

their dwellings, burned and razed to the ground, which we are bound of necessity to avenge to the utmost rather than come to terms with the one who did these things; and further, the fact that the Greek people are of one blood and one language, and have shared shrines of the gods and sacrifices, and alike customs—for the Athenians to become betrayers of these would not be right. Know this then, if you did not happen to know it before:

as long as even one Athenian remains alive, we will never come to terms with Xerxes. We are grateful, however, for the concern you have shown for us, in that you foresaw our households being ruined and were willing to undertake to support our dependents. And for you the favor has been fulfilled in full; we, however, will hold out as best we can, without troubling you at all. But now, since things stand thus, send out an army as quickly as possible,

for as we reckon, it will not be long before the barbarian arrives and invades our land, but as soon as he learns the news that we will do none of the things he asked of us. Before he arrives in Attica, then, it is time for us to go forth in aid to Boeotia." When the Athenians had given this answer, the envoys departed for Sparta.

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