44 HISTORY OF GREECE. contracting with them the tie of hospitality, accompanied with praise and presents ; though he does not seem to have ex- empted them from the charge of maintaining the army while in their territory. He here separated himself from his fleet, which was directed to sail through the canal of Athos, to double the two southwestern capes of the Chalkidic peninsula, to enter the Thermaic gulf, and to await his arrival at Therma. The fleet in its course gathered additional troops from the Greek towns in the two peninsulas of Sithonia and PaUene, as well as on the eastern side of the Thermaic gulf, in the region called Krusis, or Krossa;a, on the continental side of the isthmus of Pallene. These Greek towns were numerous, but of little individual impor- tance. Near Therma (Salonichi) in Mygdonia, in the interior of the gulf and eastward of the mouth of the Axius, the fleet awaited the arrival of Xerxes by land from Akanthus. He seems to have had a difiicult march, and to have taken a route considerably inland, through Paeonia and Krestonia, — a wild, woody, and untrodden country, where his baggage- camels were set upon by lions, and where there were also wild buUs, of pro- digious size and fierceness : at length he rejoined his fleet at Therma, and stretched his army throughout Mygdonia, the an- cient Pieria, and Bottiseis, as far as the mo«th of the Haliakmon.i Xerxes had now arrived within sight of Mount Olympus, the northern boundary of what was properly called Hellas ; after a march through nothing but subject territory, with magazines laid up beforehand for the subsistence of his army, with additional contingents levied in his course, and probably with Thracian volunteers joining him in the hopes of jilunder. The road along which he had marched was still shown with solemn reverence by the Thracians, and protected both from intruders and from til- lage, even in the days of Herodotus.2 The Macedonian princes, the last of his western tributaries, in whose teri'itory he now found himself, — together with the Thessalian Aleuadae, — un- dertook to conduct him farther. Nor did the task as yet appear difl&cult : what steps the Greeks were taking to oppose him, shall be related in the coming chapter.
- Herodot. vii, 122-127.
Respecting the name Pieria, and the geography of these regions, see the previous volume, vol. iv, eh. xxt. p. 14. ^ Herodot. vii, 116.
