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1

The preceding Book, which is the tenth of our narrative, closed with the events of the year just before the crossing of Xerxes into Europe and the formal deliberations which the general assembly of the Greeks held in Corinth on the alliance between Gelon and the Greeks; and in this Book we shall supply the further course of the history, beginning with the campaign of Xerxes against the Greeks, and we shall stop with the year which precedes the campaign of the Athenians against Cyprus under the leadership of Cimon.2 [2]

Calliades was archon in Athens, and the Romans made Spurius Cassius and Proculus Verginius Tricostus consuls, and the Eleians celebrated the Seventy-fifth Olympiad, that in which Astylus of Syracuse won the "stadion." It was in this year that king Xerxes made his campaign against Greece, for the following reason. [3] Mardonius the Persian was a cousin of Xerxes and related to him by marriage, and he was also greatly admired by the Persians because of his sagacity and courage. This man, being elated by pride and at the height of his physical vigour, was eager to be the leader of great armaments; consequently he persuaded Xerxes to enslave the Greeks, who had ever been enemies of the Persians. [4] And Xerxes, being won over by him and desiring to drive all the Greeks from their homes, sent an embassy to the Carthaginians to urge them to join him in the undertaking and closed an agreement with them, to the effect that he would wage war upon the Greeks who lived in Greece, while the Carthaginians should at the same time gather great armaments and subdue those Greeks who lived in Sicily and Italy. [5] In accordance, then, with their agreements, the Carthaginians, collecting a great amount of money, gathered mercenaries from both Italy and Liguria and also from Galatia and Iberia3; and in addition to these troops they enrolled men of their own race from the whole of Libya and of Carthage; and in the end, after spending three years in constant preparation, they assembled more than three hundred thousand foot-soldiers and two hundred war vessels.

1 480 B.C.

2 That is, the Book covers the years 480-451 B.C.

3 Gaul and Spain.

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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