82 mSTORY OF GREECE. Xerxes had halted on the Thermaic gulf for several days, employing a large portion of his numerous army in cutting down the woods and clearing the roads, on the pass over Olympus from upper Macedonia into Perrhaebia, which was recommended by his Macedonian allies as preferable to the defile of Tempe.i Not intending to march through the latter, he is said to have gone by sea to view it ; and remarks are ascribed to him on the facUity of blocking it up so as to convert all Thessaly into one vast lake.2 His march from Therma through Macedonia, Per- rhaebia, Thessaly, and Achasa Phthiotis, into the territory of the Malians and the neighborhood of Thermopylae, occupied eleven or twelve days :3 the people through whose tOTVTis he passed had already made their submission, and the Thessalians especially were zealous in seconding his efforts. BQs numerous host was
- The pass over which Xerxes passed was that by Petra, Pythium, and
Oloosson, — " saltum ad Petram," — " Pen-hcebijE saltum," — (Livy, xlv, 21 ; xliv, 27.) Petra was near the point where the road passed from Pieria, or lower Macedonia, into upper Macedonia (see Livy, xxxix, 26J. Compare respecting this pass, and the general features of the neigh boring country, Colonel Leake, Travels in Northern Greece, vol. iii, ch xviii, pp. 337-343, and ch. xxx, p. 430 ; also Boue, La Turquie en Europe, vol. i, pp. 198-202. The Thracian king Sitalkes, like Xerxes on this occasion, was obliged to cause the forests to be cut, to make a road for his army, in the early part of the Peloponnesian war (Thucyd. ii, 98). ^ Herodot. vii, 130, 131. That Xerxes, struck by the view of Olympus and Ossa, went to see the narrow defile between them, is probable enough ; but the I'emarks put into his mouth are probably the fancy of some inge- nious contemporary Greeks, suggested by the juxtaposition of such a land- scape and such a monarch. To suppose this narrow defile walled up, was easy for the imagination of any spectator : to suppose that he could order it to be done, was in character with a monarch who disposed of an in- definite amount of manual labor, and who had just finished the cutting of Athos. Such dramatic fitness was quite sufficient to convert that which migld have been said into that which was said, and to procure for it a place among the historical anecdotes communicated to Herodotus. ^ The Persian fleet did not leave Therma until eleven days after Xerxes and his land-force (Herodot. vii, 183) ; it arrived in one day on the Sepias Akte, or southeastern coast of Magnesia (ibid.), was then assailed and dis- tressed for three days by the hurricane (vii, 191), and proceeded imme- diately aftei-wards to Aphetse (vii, 193). When it arrived at the latter places, Xerxes himself had been three days in the Malian territory (vii, 196)
