es. It
commands them to preserve their ranks, to stand firm at the posts
assigned them, and there to conquer or die.

"This is the truth in respect to them. If what I say seems to you
absurd, I will in future be silent. I have spoken honestly what I
think, because your majesty commanded me to do so; and, notwithstanding
what I have said, I sincerely wish that all your majesty's desires and
expectations may be fulfilled."

The ideas which Demaratus thus appeared to entertain of danger to the
countless and formidable hosts of Xerxes's army, from so small and
insignificant a power as that of Sparta, seemed to Xerxes too absurd to
awaken any serious displeasure in his mind. He only smiled, therefore,
at Demaratus's fears, and dismissed him.

Leaving a garrison and a governor in possession of the castle of
Doriscus, Xerxes resumed his march along the northern shores of the
AEgean Sea, the immense swarms of men filling all the roads, devouring
every thing capable of being used as food, either for beast or man, and
drinking all the brooks and smaller rivers dry. Even with this total
consumption of the food and the water which they obtained on the march,
the supplies would have been found insufficient if the whole army had
advanced through one tract of country. They accordingly divided the host
into three great columns, one of which kept near the shore; the other
marched far in the interior, and the third in the intermediate space.
They thus exhausted the resources of a very wide region. All the men,
too, that were capable of bearing arms in the nations that these several
divisions passed on the way, they compelled to join them, so that the
army left, as it moved along, a very broad extent of country trampled
down, impoverished, desolate, and full of lamentation and woe. The whole
march was perhaps the most gigantic crime against the rights and the
happiness of man that human wickedness has ever been able to commit.

The army halted, from time to time, for various purposes, sometimes for
the performance of what they considered religions ceremonies, which were
intended to propitiate the supernatural powers of the earth and of the
air. When they reached the Strymon, where, it will be recollected, a
bridge had been previously built, so as to be ready for the army when it
should arrive, they offered a sacrifice of five white horses to the
river. In the same region, too, they halted at a place called the Nine
Ways, where Xerxes