The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [185]
19. He would have made the men on the ship’s deck, who were not only Persians, but Persians of the highest rank, quit their place and go down below to take the oars,
20. Casting into the sea an equal number of the rowers, who were Phoenicians.
21. But the truth is, that the king returned into Asia by land, on the same road as the rest of the army.
22. There is another strong proof of this. It is certain that Xerxes passed through Abdera on his way back from Greece, where he made a contract of friendship with the inhabitants,
23. And presented them with a golden scymitar, and a tiara broidered with gold.
24. The Abderites declare, though somewhat improbably, that from the time of the king’s leaving Athens he never once loosed his girdle till he came to their city, since it was not till then that he felt himself in safety.
25. Now Abdera is nearer to the Hellespont than Eion and the Strymon, where Xerxes, according to the other tale, took ship.
Chapter 90
1. When the spoils of war had been divided among them and monuments made to their victory from the chiefest spoils,
2. The Greeks sailed to the Isthmus, where a prize of valour was to be awarded to the man who, among them all, had shown the most merit during the war.
3. When the chiefs were all come, they took the ballots to give their votes for the first and for the second in merit.
4. Then each man gave himself the first vote, since each considered that he himself was the worthiest;
5. But most of the second votes were given to Themistocles.
6. In this way, while the others received but one vote apiece, Themistocles had for the second prize a large majority of the suffrages.
7. Envy, however, hindered the chiefs from coming to a decision, and they all sailed away to their homes without making any award.
8. Nevertheless Themistocles was regarded everywhere as by far the wisest man of all the Greeks; and the whole country rang with his fame.
9. As the chiefs who fought at Salamis, notwithstanding that he was entitled to the prize, had withheld the honour from him,
10. Themistocles went without delay to Lacedaemon, in the hope that he would be honoured there.
11. And the Lacedaemonians received him handsomely, and paid him great respect.
12. The prize of valour, which was a crown of olive, they gave to Eurybiades;
13. But Themistocles was given a crown of olive too, as the prize of wisdom and dexterity.
14. He was likewise presented with the most beautiful chariot that could be found in Sparta;
15. And after receiving abundant praises, he was, upon his departure, escorted as far as the borders of Tegea by the three hundred picked Spartans who are called the Knights.
16. Never was it known, either before or since, that the Spartans escorted a man out of their city.
Chapter 91
1. Meanwhile hostilities were still taking place in the north.
2. Artabazus, the son of Pharnaces, a man always held in high esteem by the Persians, but who, after the affair of Plataea, rose still higher in their opinion,
3. Escorted King Xerxes as far as the Hellespont, with sixty thousand of the chosen troops of Mardonius.
4. When the king was safe in Asia, Artabazus set out upon his return;
5. And on arriving near Palline, and finding that Mardonius had gone into winter quarters in Thessaly, and was in no hurry for him to rejoin the camp,
6. He thought it his bounden duty, as the Potidaeans had just revolted, to occupy himself in reducing them to slavery.
7. For as soon as the king had passed their territory, and the Persian fleet had retreated from Salamis, the Potidaeans revolted from the barbarians openly;
8. As likewise did all the other inhabitants of that peninsula.
9. Artabazus therefore laid siege to Potidaea; and having a suspicion that the Olynthians were likely to revolt shortly, he besieged their city also.
10. Now Olynthus was at that time held by the Bottiaeans, who had been driven from the parts about the Thermaic Gulf by the Macedonians.