202 HISTORY OF GREECE. that people may leam for the future not to invade thy land," — the whole soil of Asia being regarded by the Persian monarchs as their rightful possession, and Protesilaus having been in this sense an aggressor against them. Xerxes, interpreting the request literally, and not troubling himself to ask who the invader was, consented : upon which, Artayktes, while the army were engaged in their forward march into Greece, stripped the sacred grove of Protesilaus, carrying all the treasures to Sestus. Nor was he content without still farther outraging Grecian senti- ment : he turned cattle into the grove, ploughed and sowed it, and was even said to have profaned the sanctuary by visiting it with his concubinesJ Such proceedings were more than enough to raise the strongest antipathy against him among the Cherso- nesite Greeks, who now crowded to reinforce the Athenians and blocked him up in Sestus. After a certain length of siege, the stock of provisions in the towi> failed, and famine began to make itself felt among the garrison, which nevertheless still held out, by painful shifts and endurance, until a late period in the autumn, when the patience even of the Athenian besiegers was well-nigh exhausted ; nor was it without difficulty that the leaders re- pressed the clamorous desire manifested in their own camp to return to Athens. Impatience having been appeased, and the seamen kept to- gether, the siege was pressed without relaxation, and presently the privations of the garrison became intolerable ; so that Ar- tayktes and CEobazus were at last reduced to the necessity of escaping by stealth, letting themselves down with a few follow- ers from the wall at a point where it was imperfectly blockaded. CEobazus found his way into Thrace, where, however, he was taken captive by the Absinthian natives and offered up as a sac- rifice to their god Pleistorus : Artayktes fled northward along the shores of the Hellespont, but was pursued by the Greeks, and made prisonernear -Sigos Potamos, after a strenuous resist- ance. He was brought with his son in chains to Sestus, which immediately after his departure had been cheerfully surrendered
- Herodot. ix, 116: compare i, 4. 'ApravKrrjc, uvi/p Tleparjg, Setvo^ 6e kcu
uTiKT&aXoc Of K a I (3aai?Ja eXavvovra ejt' 'A-&?}vag l^TjTrdTTjas, tu UpcorecriXeu Tov 'J<piK?.ov xpvfio-To. ef 'E?.o:ot'vrof {xpe/ionevoc. Compare Herodot. ii, 64.
