Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/107

 BATTLES OF THERMOPYL^ AND ARTEIHSIUM. 83 still farther swelled by the presence of these newly-submitted people, and by the Macedonian troops under Alexander ; so that the river Onochonus in Thessaly, and even the Apidanus in Achaea Phthiotis, would hardly suffice to supply it, but were drunk up, according to the information given to Herodotus. At Alus in Ach£Ea, he condescended to listen to the gloomy legend connected with the temple of Zeus Laphysteus and the sacred grove of the Athamantid family: he respected and protected these sacred places, — an incident which shows that the sacrilege and destruction of temples imputed to him by the Greeks, though true in regard to Athens, Abce, Miletus, etc., was by no means universally exhibited, and is even found qualified by occasional instances of great respect for Grecian religious feeling.i Along the shore of the Malian gulf he at length came into the Trachi- nian territory near Therm opylce, where he encamped, seemingly awaiting the arrival of the fleet, so as to combine his farther movements in advance,^ now that the enemy were immediately in his front. But his fleet was not destined to reach the point of communi- cation with the same ease as he had arrived before Thermopylae. After having ascertained by the ten ships already mentioned, which captured the three Grecian guardships, that the channel between Skiathos and the mainland was safe, the Persian admiral Megabates sailed with his whole fleet from Therma, or from Pydna,3 his station in the Thermaic gulf, eleven days after the monarch had begun his land-march ; and reached in one long day's sail the eastern coast of Magnesia, not far from its south- ernmost promontory. The greater part of this line of coast, formed by the declivities of Ossa and Pelion, is thoroughly rocky and inhospitable : but south of the town called Kasthanasa there was a short extent of open beach, where the fleet rested for the night before coming to the line of coast called the Sepias Akte.^ ' This point is set forth by Hoffmeister, Sittlich-religiose Lebensansicht des Herodotos, Essen, 1832, sect. 19, p. 93. ^ Herodot. vii, 196,197, 201. ^Diodor.xi, 12. der Gr. und Romer, vol. vii, p. 596), seem to treat Sepias as a cape, the southeastern corner of Magnesia: this is different from Herodotus, who
 * Diodorus (xi, 12), Plutarch (Themistokles, 8), and Mannert ( Geogr.