r the work. Now Athos is a mountain great and famous,
running down to the sea and inhabited by men: and where the mountain
ends on the side of the mainland the place is like a peninsula with an
isthmus about twelve furlongs 24 across. Here it is plain land or hills
of no great size, extending from the sea of the Acanthians to that which
lies off Torone; and on this isthmus, where Athos ends, is situated a
Hellenic city called Sane: moreover there are others beyond Sane 25 and
within the peninsula of Athos, all which at this time the Persian had
resolved to make into cities of an island and no longer of the mainland;
these are, Dion, Olophyxos, Acrothoon, Thyssos, Cleonai.

23. These are the cities which occupy Athos: and they dug as follows,
the country being divided among the Barbarians by nations for the
work:--at the city of Sane they drew a straight line across the isthmus,
and when the channel became deep, those who stood lowest dug, while
others delivered the earth as it was dug out to other men who stood
above, as upon steps, and they again to others when it was received,
until they came to those that were highest; and these bore it away and
cast it forth. Now the others except the Phenicians had double toil by
the breaking down of the steep edges of their excavation; for since they
endeavoured to make the opening at the top and that at the bottom both
of the same measure, some such thing was likely to result, as they
worked: but the Phenicians, who are apt to show ability in their works
generally, did so in this work also; for when they had had assigned
to them by lot so much as fell to their share, they proceeded to dig,
making the opening of the excavation at the top twice as wide as the
channel itself was to be; and as the work went forward, they kept
contracting the width; so that, when they came to the bottom, their work
was made of equal width with that of the others. Now there is a meadow
there, in which there was made for them a market and a place for buying
and selling; and great quantities of corn came for them regularly from
Asia, ready ground.

24. It seems to me, making conjecture of this work, that Xerxes when
he ordered this to be dug was moved by a love of magnificence and by
a desire to make a display of his power and to leave a memorial behind
him; for though they might have drawn the ships across the isthmus with
no great labour, he bade them dig a channel for the sea of such breadth
that two