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Updated: May 4, 2025
"I should like to know," said a fourth, "what rations were given with all that hard fighting;" on which an Irishman replied, "to be sure, every time the sun rose, two pounds of good ox beef, and plenty of whiskey." At another time he told them of the invasion of Xerxes, and his crossing the wide Hellespont.
There, look, was the waterway to Constantinople. I waited patiently to see the Navy pour up it in triumphant procession. Beside me was the stranger who had spoken to us in the afternoon, and I said to him: "The coast seems clear. Let's go down and swim the Hellespont, where Leander and Byron swam."
Darius listened to these suggestions of Atossa with interest and with evident pleasure. He said that he had been forming some such plans himself. He was going to build a bridge across the Hellespont or the Bosporus, to unite Europe and Asia; and he was also going to make an incursion into the country of the Scythians, the people by whom Cyrus, his great predecessor, had been defeated and slain.
The Grecian fleet now sailed towards the Hellespont with the view of destroying the bridge; but hearing that it no longer existed, Leotychides departed homewards with the Peloponnesian vessels.
Those, however, who would receive his gifts, or who asked for anything, were rewarded with a lavish hand, so that he distributed among them nearly all the revenues of Macedonia; so confident of success was he when he set out. When he had crossed the Hellespont he proceeded to Troy, offered sacrifice to Athena, and poured libations to the heroes who fell there.
With the turn of imagination then prevalent, many were doubtless disposed to take him for a god on earth, as Grecian spectators had once supposed with regard to Xerxes, when they beheld the innumerable Persian host crossing the Hellespont.
Artabanus the uncle disappears finally from view at the time when Xerxes dismissed him to return to Susa at the first crossing of the Hellespont. This second Artabanus was the captain of the king's body-guard and, consequently, the common executioner of the despot's decrees.
Crossing the Hellespont after the battle of Pharsalia in a small boat, he met two of the enemy's ships. Without hesitation he discovered himself, called upon them to surrender, and was obeyed. At Alexandria he was surprised by a sudden sally of the besieged, and had to leap into the harbor.
VI. While Xerxes rested at the Lydian city, an enterprise, scarcely less magnificent in conception than that of the canal at Athos, was completed at the sacred passage of the Hellespont. Here was constructed from the coast of Asia to that of Europe a bridge of boats, for the convoy of the army. Scarce was this completed when a sudden tempest scattered the vessels, and rendered the labour vain.
And this scroll is called a staff, after the name of the wood, as a thing measured is by the name of the measure. But Lysander, when the staff came to him to the Hellespont, was troubled, and fearing Pharnabazus's accusations most, made haste to confer with him, hoping to end the difference by a meeting together.
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