s in Persia an unpardonable offence.
The hospitality of Pythius was forgotten, and Xerxes ordered that his
son should be slain, and half the body hung on each side of the army,
probably as a salutary warning to all who should have the temerity to
question the despot's arbitrary will.

On marched the great army. It crossed the plain of Troy, and here
Xerxes offered libations in honor of the heroes of the Trojan war, the
story of which was told him. Reaching the Hellespont, he had a marble
throne erected, from which to view the passage of his troops. The
bridges--which the scourged and branded waters had now spared--were
perfumed with frankincense and strewed with myrtle boughs, and, as the
march began, Xerxes offered prayers to the sun, and made libations to
the sea with a golden censer, which he then flung into the water,
together with a golden bowl and a Persian scimitar, perhaps to repay the
Hellespont for the stripes he had inflicted upon it.

At the first moment of sunrise the passage began, the troops marching
across one bridge, the baggage and attendants crossing the other. All
day the march continued, and all night long, the whip being used to
accelerate the troops; yet so vast was the host that for seven days and
nights, without cessation, the army moved on, and a week was at its end
before the last man of the great Persian host set foot on European soil.

Then down through the Grecian peninsula Xerxes marched, doubtless
inflated with pride at the greatness of his host and the might of the
fleet which sailed down the neighboring seas and through the canal which
he had cut to baffle stormy Athos. One regret alone seemed to come into
his mind, and that was that in a hundred years not one man of that vast
army would be alive. It did not occur to him that in less than one year
few of them might be alive, for all thought of any peril to his army
and fleet from the insignificant numbers of the Greeks must have been
dismissed with scorn from his mind.

Like locusts the army marched southward through Thrace, eating up the
cities as it advanced, for each was required to provide a day's meals
for the mighty host. For months those cities had been engaged in
providing the food which this army consumed in a day. Many of the cities
were brought to the verge of ruin, and all of them were glad to see the
army march on. At length Xerxes saw before him Mount Olympus, on the
northern boundary of the land of Hellas or Greece. Th