Hellespont and protecting the convoys for the army. When the winter came it
would have to be laid up; but by that time it was hoped Xerxes and the main
body would be safe in Asia. Mardonius, the most trusted of his satraps, was
to occupy northern Greece with a picked force of 300,000 men, with which he
was to attempt the conquest of the Peloponnesus next year.

The Persian fleet sailed from the roadstead of Phalerum during that same
night. How far the crews were demoralized by the defeat of the previous day
is shown by the fact that there was something of a panic as the white
cliffs of Sunium glimmered through the darkness in the moonlight and were
mistaken for the sails of hostile Greek warships menacing the line of
retreat. The Persians stood far out to sea to avoid these imaginary
enemies. When the day broke Themistocles and Eurybiades could hardly credit
the report that all the ships of Asia had disappeared from their anchorage
of the evening before. The Athenian admiral urged immediate pursuit, the
Spartan general hesitated and at last gave a reluctant consent. The fleet
sailed as far as the island of Andros, but found no trace of the enemy. In
vain Themistocles urged that it should go further, and if it failed to find
the enemy's fleet, at least show itself in the harbours of Asia and try to
rouse Ionia to revolt. Eurybiades declared that enough had been
accomplished, and refused to risk a voyage across the Archipelago in the
late autumn. So the victorious fleet returned to Salamis, and thence the
various contingents dispersed to be laid up for the winter in sheltered
harbours and on level beaches, where a stockade could be erected and a
guard left to protect the ships till the fine weather of next spring
allowed them to be launched again.

When Xerxes reached the Hellespont with his army, after having lost heavily
by disease and famine in his weary march through Thessaly, Macedonia, and
Thrace, he found that the long bridge with which he had linked together
Europe and Asia had been swept away by a storm. But the remnant of his
fleet was there waiting to ferry across the strait what was left of his
army, now diminished by many hundreds of thousands.

The next year witnessed the destruction both of the army left under
Mardonius in northern Greece and of the remainder of the Persian fleet that
had fought at Salamis. Pausanias, with a hundred thousand Greeks, routed
the Persian army at Plataea. A fleet of 110 trireme