d apparent stability of the work
was calculated to impose upon the minds of men, and to diminish their
power of resistance by impressing them strongly with a sense of the
irresistible greatness and strength of the invader.

The canal of Athos was also quite a legitimate and judicious
undertaking. [PLATE LXI.] No portion of the Greek coast is so dangerous
as that about Athos. Greek boatmen even at the present day refuse to
attempt the circumnavigation; and probably any government less apathetic
than that of the Turks would at once re-open the old cutting. The work
was one of very little difficulty, the breadth of the isthmus being less
than a mile and a half, the material sand and marl, and the greatest
height of the natural ground above the level of the sea about fifty
feet. The construction of a canal in such a locality was certainly
better than the formation of a ship-groove or Diolcus--the substitute
for it proposed by Ferodotus, [PLATE LXI.] not to mention that it is
doubtful whether at the time that this cutting was made ship-grooves
were known even to the Greeks.

[Illustration: PLATE LXI.]

Xerxes, having brought his preparations into a state of forwardness,
having completed his canal and his bridge--after one failure with the
latter, for which the constructors and the sea were punished--proceeded,
in the year B.C. 481, along the "Royal Road" from Susa to Sardis, and
wintered at the Lydian capital. His army is said to have accompanied
him; but more probably it joined him in the spring, flocking in,
contingent after contingent, from the various provinces of his vast
Empire. Forty-nine nations, according to Herodotus, served under his
standard; and their contingents made up a grand total of eighteen
hundred thousand men. Of these, eighty thousand were cavalry, while
twenty thousand rode in chariots or on camels; the remainder served on
foot. There are no sufficient means of testing these numbers. Figures
in the mouth of an Oriental are vague and almost unmeaning; armies are
never really counted: there is no such thing as a fixed and definite
"strength" of a division or a battalion. Herodotus tells us that a rough
attempt at numbering the infantry of the host was made on this occasion;
but it was of so rude and primitive a description that little dependence
can be placed on the results obtained by it. Ten thousand men were
counted, and were made to stand close together; a line was then drawn
round them, and a