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Updated: May 9, 2025
Not far from the mouth of the Hebrus, where it emptied into the Ægean Sea, was a great plain, which was called the plain of Doriscus. There was an extensive fortress here, which had been erected by the orders of Darius when he had subjugated this part of the country.
The first to cross were the ten thousand household troops, called Immortals, wearing garlands on their heads; then followed Xerxes himself in his gilded chariot, and then the rest of the army. It occupied seven days for the vast hosts to cross the bridge. Xerxes then directed his march to Doriscus, in Thrace, near the mouth of the Hebrus, where he joined his fleet.
The Athenians and Spartans settled, for the time, their own quarrels, and held a council to take the necessary measures for forming a more extended confederation. All this took place while Xerxes was slowly advancing from Sardis to the Hellespont, and from the Hellespont to Doriscus, as described in the preceding chapter.
Let, however, the ancient annals be accredited which record that the Persian host which was led into Greece was, while encamped on the shores of the Hellespont, and making a new and artificial sea, numbered in battalions at Doriscus; a computation which has been unanimously regarded by all posterity as fabulous.
As if to contrast the little band under the command of Leonidas, Herodotus again enumerates the Persian force, swelled as it now was by many contributions, forced and voluntary, since its departure from Doriscus.
The Phoenician ships retired from Samos on the approach of the Greek fleet under Leotychides. No Phoenicians fought at Mycale. None are heard of as engaged at Sestos, or Byzantium, or Eion, or Doriscus, or even Phaselis.
Of these people, who each got a certain advantage, some have suffered what is notorious to all, others have yet to suffer what may befall them. As to yourselves; the amount of your losses I do not mention: but in the very making of the peace how have you been deceived! how plundered! Lost you not the Phocians, Thermopylae, country toward Thrace, Doriscus, Serrium, Cersobleptes himself?
At Doriscus he had held a review of his army, and smiled when the fawning scribes told how one million seven hundred thousand foot and eighty thousand horse followed his banners.
A throne was provided for the king, and seats for the various commanders according to their respective ranks, and a conspicuous place was assigned to Artemisia, the Carian queen, who, the reader will perhaps recollect, was described as one of the prominent naval commanders, in the account given of the great review at Doriscus.
It appears, however, that after twelve years of petty operations, during which Eion was recovered, and Doriscus frequently attacked, but without effect, the Athenians resolved, in B.C. 466, upon a great expedition to the eastward.
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