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And now it will be useful to distinguish those Greeks who chose the side of the barbarians, in order that, incurring our censure here, their example may, by the obloquy visited upon them, deter for the future any who may become traitors to the common freedom. [2] The Aenianians, Dolopians, Melians,1 Perrhaebians, and Magnetans took the side of the barbarians even while the defending force was still at Tempe, and after its departure the Achaeans of Phthia, Locrians, Thessalians, and the majority of the Boeotians went over to the barbarians. [3] But the Greeks who were meeting in congress at the Isthmus2 voted to make the Greeks who voluntarily chose the cause of the Persians pay a tithe to the gods, when they should be successful in the war, and to send ambassadors to those Greeks who were neutral to urge them to join in the struggle for the common freedom. [4] Of the latter, some joined the alliance without reservation, while others postponed any decision for a considerable time, clinging to their own safety alone and anxiously waiting for the outcome of the war; the Argives, however, sending ambassadors to the common congress, promised to join the alliance if the congress would give them a share in the command. [5] To them the representatives declared plainly that, if they thought it a more terrible thing to have a Greek as general than a barbarian as master, they would do well to remain neutral, but if they were ambitious to secure the leadership of the Greeks, they should, it was stated, first have accomplished deeds deserving of this leadership and then strive for such an honour. After these events, when the ambassadors sent by Xerxes came to Greece and demanded both earth and water, all3 the states manifested in their replies the zeal they felt for the common freedom. [6]

When Xerxes learned that the Hellespont had been bridged and the canal4 had been dug through Athos, he left Sardis and made his way toward the Hellespont; and when he had arrived at Abydus, he led his army over the bridge into Europe. And as he advanced through Thrace, he added to his forces many soldiers from both the Thracians and neighbouring Greeks. [7] When he arrived at the city called Doriscus, he ordered his fleet to come there, and so both arms of his forces were gathered into one place. And he held there also the enumeration of the entire army, and the number of his land forces was over eight hundred thousand men, while the sum total of his ships of war exceeded twelve hundred, of which three hundred and twenty were Greek, the Greeks providing the complement of men and the king supplying the vessels. All the remaining ships were listed as barbarian; and of these the Egyptians supplied two hundred, the Phoenicians three hundred, the Cilicians eighty, the Pamphylians forty, the Lycians the same number, also the Carians eighty, and the Cyprians one hundred and fifty. [8] Of the Greeks the Dorians who dwelt off Caria, together with the Rhodians and Coans, sent forty ships, the Ionians, together with the Chians and Samians, one hundred, the Aeolians, together with the Lesbians and Tenedans, forty, the peoples of the region of the Hellespont, together with those who dwelt along the shores of the Pontus, eighty, and the inhabitants of the islands fifty; for the king had won over to his side the islands lying within the Cyanean Rocks5 and Triopium and Sunium. [9] Triremes made up the multitude we have listed, and the transports for the cavalry numbered eight hundred and fifty, and the triaconters three thousand. Xerxes, then, was busied with the enumeration of the armaments at Doriscus.

1 The inhabitants of Malis (also called Melis) in S. Thessaly, not of the island Melos in the southern Aegean.

2 At Corinth.

3 That is, all the states which had joined the alliance.

4 The use of this canal "is problematic; and its existence has been questioned in ancient as well as modern times, but is guaranteed by Thucydides and by vestiges still visible" (Munro in Camb. Anc. Hist. 4, p. 269).

5 At the entrance to the Black Sea; Triopium and Sunium are the promontories of Caria and Attica respectively.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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