28 HISTORY OF GREECE. is to follow me, with thy wife and thy entire family ? Know that the sensitive soul of man dwells in his ears : on hearing good things, it fills the body with delight, but boils with wrath when it hears the contrary. As, when thou didst good deeds and madest good offers to me, thou canst not boast of having sur- passed the king in generosity, — so now, when thou hast turned round and become impudent, the punishment inflicted on thee shall not be the full measure of thy deserts, but something less. For thyself and for thy four sons, the hospitality which I re- ceived from thee shall serve as protection ; but for that one son whom thou especially wishest to keep in safety, the forfeit of his life shall be thy penalty." He forthwith directed that the son of Pythius should be put to death, and his body severed in twain : of which one hah" was to be fixed on the right-hand, the other on the left-hand, of the road along which the army was to pass.i A tale essentially similar, yet rather less revolting, has been already recounted respecting Darius, when undertaking his ex- pedition against Scythia. Both tales illustrate the intense force of sentiment with which the Persian kings regarded the obliga- tion of universal personal service, when they were themselves in the field. They seem to have measured their strength by the number of men whom they collected around them, with little or no reference to quality : and the very mention of exemption — the idea that a subject and a slave should seek to withdraw him- self from a risk which the monarch was about to encounter — was an offence not to be pardoned. In this as in the other acts of Oriental kings, whether grateful, munificent, or ferocious, we trace nothing but the despotic force of personal will, translating itself into act without any thought of consequences, and treating sub- jects with less consideration than an ordinary Greek master would have shown towards his slaves. From Sardis, the host of Xerxes directed its march to Aby- dos, first across Mysia and the river Kaikus, — then through Atameus, Karing, and the plain of Thebe : they passed Adra- 1 The incident respecting Pythius is in Hciodot. vii, 27, 28, 38, 39. I place no confidence in the estimate of the wealth of Pythius ; but in other resnects, the story seems well entitled to credit.
