crew escape.--The
alarm spread.--Return of the Persian galleys.--The monument of
stones.--Progress of the fleet.--The fleet anchors in a bay.--A coming
storm.--The storm rages.--Destruction of many vessels.--Plunder of the
wrecks.--Scyllias, the famous diver.--Dissensions in the Greek
fleet.--Jealousy of the Athenians.--Situation of the
Athenians.--Eurybiades appointed commander.--Debates in the Greek
council.--Dismay of the Euboeans.--The Greek leaders
bribed.--Precautions of the Persians.--Designs of the Persians
discovered.--The Greeks decide to give battle.--Euripus and
Artemisium.--Advance of the Greeks.--The battle.--A stormy night.--Scene
of terror.--A calm after the storm.--Terror of the Euboeans.--Their
plans.--The Greeks retire.--Inscription on the rocks.--The commanders of
the Persian fleet summoned to Thermopylae.

From Therma--the last of the great stations at which the Persian army
halted before its final descent upon Greece--the army commenced its
march, and the fleet set sail, nearly at the same time, which was early
in the summer. The army advanced slowly, meeting with the usual
difficulties and delays, but without encountering any special or
extraordinary occurrences, until, after having passed through Macedon
into Thessaly, and through Thessaly to the northern frontier of Phocis,
they began to approach the Straits of Thermopylae. What took place at
Thermopylae will be made the subject of the next chapter. The movements
of the fleet are to be narrated in this.

In order distinctly to understand these movements, it is necessary
that the reader should first have a clear conception of the geographical
conformation of the coasts and seas along which the path of the
expedition lay. By referring to the map of Greece, we shall see that the
course which the fleet would naturally take from Therma to the
southeastward, along the coast, was unobstructed and clear for about a
hundred miles. We then come to a group of four islands, extending in a
range at right angles to the coast. The only one of these islands with
which we have particularly to do in this history is the innermost of
them, which was named Sciathus. Opposite to these islands the line of
the coast, having passed around the point of a mountainous and rocky
promontory called Magnesia, turns suddenly to the westward, and runs in
that direction for about thirty miles, when it again turns to the
southward and eastward as before. In the sort of corner