young monarch, and the difficulties of the
campaign on the banks of the Nile, afforded them a favourable occasion
for throwing off the yoke. They elected as king a certain Shamasherib,
whose antecedents are unknown; but their independence was of short
duration,* for Megabyzos, son of Zopyrus, who governed the province by
hereditary right, forced them to disarm after a siege of a few months.

* This Shamasherib is mentioned only on a contract dated
from his accession, which is preserved in the British
Museum.

It would appear that Xerxes treated them with the greatest severity: he
pillaged the treasury and temple of Bel, appropriated the golden statue
which decorated the great inner hall of the ziggurat, and carried away
many of the people into captivity (581). Babylon never recovered this
final blow: the quarters of the town that had been pillaged remained
uninhabited and fell into ruins; commerce dwindled and industry flagged.
The counsellors of Xerxes had, no doubt, wished to give an object-lesson
to the province by their treatment of Babylon, and thus prevent the
possibility of a revolution taking place in Asia while its ruler was
fully engaged in a struggle with the Greeks. Meanwhile all preparations
were completed, and the contingents of the eastern and southern
provinces concentrated at Kritalla, in Cappadocia, merely awaited the
signal to set out. Xerxes gave the order to advance in the autumn of
481, crossed the Halys and took up his quarters at Sardes, while his
fleet prepared to winter in the neighbouring ports of Phocae and Kyme.*

* Diodorus, who probably follows Ephorus, is the only writer
who informs us of the place where the fleet was assembled.

Gathered together in that little corner of the world, were forces such
as no king had ever before united under his command; they comprised 1200
vessels of various build, and probably 120,000 combatants, besides the
rabble of servants, hucksters, and women which followed all the armies
of that period. The Greeks exaggerated the number of the force beyond
all probability. They estimated it variously at 800,000, at 3,000,000,
and at 5,283,220 men; 1,700,000 of whom were able-bodied foot-soldiers,
and 80,000 of them horsemen.*

* Herodotus records the epigram to the effect that 3,000,000
men attacked Thermopylae. Ctesias and Ephorus adopt the same
figures; Iso-crates is contented with 700,000 combatants and
5,000,000