Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/168

 144 HISTORY OF GREECE. be left behind among the cities through whose territory the retreat was carried ; strict orders being left by Xerxes that these cities should maintain and tend them. After forty-five days' march from Attica, he at length found himself at the Hellespont, whither his fleet, retreating from Salamis, had arrived long before him.i But the short-lived bridge had already been knocked to pieces by a storm, so that the army was transported on shipboard across to Asia, where it first obtained comfort and abundance, and where the change from privation to excess engen- dered new maladies. In the time of Herodotus, the citizens of Abdera still showed the gilt cimeter and tiara, which Xerxes had presented to them when he halted there in his retreat, in token of hospitality and satisfaction: and they even went the length of affirming that never, since his departure from Attica, had he loosened his girdle until he reached their city. So fertile was Grecian fancy in magnifying the terror of the repulsed invader! who reentered Sardis, with a broken army and hum- bled spirit, only eight months after he had left it, as the presumed conqueror of the western world.^ Meanwhile the Athenians and Peloponnesians, liberated from the immediate presence of the enemy either on land or sea, and passing from the extreme of terror to sudden ease and security, indulged in the full delight and self-congratulation of unexpected victory. On the day before the battle, Greece had seemed irre- trievably lost : she was now saved even against all reasonable hope, and the terrific cloud impending over her was dispersed.3 ' Herodot. viii, 130. ^ See the account of the retreat of Xerxes, in Herodotus, viii, 115-120, with many stories which he mentions only to reject. The description given in the Persa of J^^schylus (v, 486, 515, 570) is conceived in the same spirit. The strain reaches its loudest pitch in Justin (ii, 13), who tells us that Xerxes was obliged to cross the strait in a fishing-boat. " Ipse cum paucis Abydon contendit. Ubi cum solutum pontem hibernis tempestatibus offendisset, piscatoriA scapha trepidus trajecit. Erat res spectaculo digna et, asstima- tione sortis humanse, rerum varietate miranda — in exiguo latentem videre navigio, quem paulo ante vix sequor omne capiebat : carentem etiam omni sen-oruni ministerio, cujus exercitus propter multitudinem terns graves erant." ■' Herodot. viii, 109. Vfieli de, evprj/xa yap evprjKafiev njiia^ airovg Kal T^v 'EXXada ^7 SiuKufiev avdpac (^Evyovraq.