[89]
who rose to such a pitch of arrogance that, thinking it a small task to subjugate Hellas, and proposing to leave a memorial such as would mark a more than human power, did not stop until he had devised and compelled the execution of a plan whose fame is on the lips of all mankind—a plan by which, having bridged the Hellespont and channelled Athos, he sailed his ships across the mainland, and marched his troops across the main?1
1 A like artificiality of rhetoric to describe the presumption of Xerxes in building a bridge across the Hellespont for his troops and a canal through the promontory of Athos for his ships (Hdt. 7.22-24) seems to have been conventional. Cf. Lys. 2.29 and Aesch. Pers. 745 ff.