ned to be standing by him, he said: "Then Mardonios here shall give
them satisfaction, such as is fitting for them to have."

115. The herald accordingly accepted the utterance and departed; and
Xerxes leaving Mardonios in Thessaly went on himself in haste to
the Hellespont and arrived at the passage where the crossing was in
five-and-thirty days, bringing back next to nothing, as one may say, 84
of his army: and whithersoever they came on the march and to whatever
nation, they seized the crops of that people and used them for
provisions; and if they found no crops, then they took the grass which
was growing up from the earth, and stripped off the bark from the trees
and plucked down the leaves and devoured them, alike of the cultivated
trees and of those growing wild; and they left nothing behind them: thus
they did by reason of famine. Then plague too seized upon the army and
dysentery, which destroyed them by the way, and some of them also who
were sick the king left behind, laying charge upon the cities where at
the time he chanced to be in his march, to take care of them and support
them: of these he left some in Thessaly, and some at Siris in Paionia,
and some in Macedonia. In these parts too he had left behind him the
sacred chariot of Zeus, when he was marching against Hellas; but on his
return he did not receive it back: for the Paionians had given it to the
Thracians, and when Xerxes asked for it again, they said that the mares
while at pasture had been carried off by the Thracians of the upper
country, who dwelt about the source of the Strymon.

116. Here also a Thracian, the king of the Bisaltians and of the
Crestonian land, did a deed of surpassing horror; for he had said that
he would not himself be subject to Xerxes with his own will and had gone
away up to Mount Rhodope, and also he had forbidden his sons to go on
the march against Hellas. They however, either because they cared not
for his command, or else because a desire came upon them to see the war,
went on the march with the Persian: and when they returned all unhurt,
being six in number, their father plucked out their eyes for this cause.

117. They then received this reward: and as to the Persians, when
passing on from Thrace they came to the passage, they crossed over the
Hellespont in haste to Abydos by means of the ships, for they did not
find the floating-bridges still stretched across but broken up by a
storm. While staying there for a time