ith whom he proposed to conclude
the war; but as autumn was now approaching, he resolved to postpone all
further operations till the spring.

After forty-five days' march from Attica, Xerxes again reached the
shores of the Hellespont, with a force greatly diminished by famine and
pestilence. On the Hellespont he found his fleet, but the bridge had
been washed away by storms. Landed on the shores of Asia, the Persian
army at length obtained abundance of provisions, and contracted new
maladies by the sudden change from privation to excess. Thus
terminated this mighty but unsuccessful expedition.

Greece owed its salvation to one man--Themistocles, This was virtually
admitted by the leaders of the other Grecian states, when they
assembled to assign the prizes of wisdom and conduct. Upon the altar of
Poseidon, at the isthmus of Corinth, each chief deposited a ticket
inscribed with two names, of those whom he considered entitled to the
first and second prizes. But in this adjudication vanity and self-love
defeated their own objects. Each commander had put down his own name
for the first prize; for the second, a great majority preponderated in
favour of Themistocles. From the Spartans, also, Themistocles received
the honours due to his merit. A crown of olive was conferred upon him,
together with one of the most splendid chariots which the city could
produce.

On the very same day on which the Persians were defeated at Salamis the
Sicilian Greeks also obtained a victory over the Carthaginians. There
is reason to believe that the invasion of Sicily by the Carthaginians
was concerted with Xerxes, and that the simultaneous attach on two
distinct Grecian peoples, by two immense armaments, was not merely the
result of chance. Gelon, the powerful ruler of Syracuse, defeated
Hamilcar, the Carthaginian general, with the loss it is said of 150,000
men.

In the spring of B.C. 479 Mardonius prepared to open the campaign. He
was not without hopes of inducing the Athenians to join the Persian
alliance, and he despatched Alexander, king of Macedon, to conciliate
the Athenians, now partially re-established in their dilapidated city.
His offers on the part of the Persians were of the most seductive kind;
but the Athenians dismissed him with a positive refusal, whilst to the
Lacedaemonians they protested that no temptations, however great,
should ever induce them to desert the common cause of Greece and
freedom. In return for t