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Xerxes, vying with the zeal displayed by the Carthaginians, surpassed them in all his preparations to the degree that he excelled the Carthaginians in the multitude of peoples at his command. And he began to have ships built throughout all the territory along the sea that was subject to him, both Egypt and Phoenicia and Cyprus, Cilicia and Pamphylia and Pisidia, and also Lycia, Caria, Mysia, the Troad, and the cities on the Hellespont, and Bithynia, and Pontus. Spending a period of three years, as did the Carthaginians, on his preparations, he made ready more than twelve hundred warships. [2] He was aided in this by his father Darius, who before his death had made preparations of great armaments; for Darius, after Datis, his general, had been defeated by the Athenians at Marathon, had continued to be angry with the Athenians for having won that battle. But Darius, when already about to cross over1 against the Greeks, was stopped in his plans by death, whereupon Xerxes, induced both by the design of his father and by the counsel of Mardonius, as we have stated, made up his mind to wage war upon the Greeks. [3]

Now when all preparations for the campaign had been completed, Xerxes commanded his admirals to assemble the ships at Cyme and Phocaea, and he himself collected the foot and cavalry forces from all the satrapies and advanced from Susa. And when he had arrived at Sardis, he dispatched heralds to Greece, commanding them to go to all the states and to demand of the Greeks water and earth.2 [4] Then, dividing his army, he sent in advance a sufficient number of men both to bridge the Hellespont and to dig a canal through Athos3 at the neck of the Cherronesus, in this way not only making the passage safe and short for his forces but also hoping by the magnitude of his exploits to strike the Greeks with terror before his arrival. Now the men who had been sent to make ready these works completed them with dispatch, because so many labourers co-operated in the task. [5] And the Greeks, when they learned of the great size of the Persian armaments, dispatched ten thousand hoplites into Thessaly to seize the passes of Tempe; Synetus4 commanded the Lacedaemonians and Themistocles the Athenians. These commanders dispatched ambassadors to the states and asked them to send soldiers to join in the common defence of the passes; for they eagerly desired that all the Greek states should each have a share in the defence and make common cause in the war against the Persians. [6] But since the larger number of the Thessalians and other Greeks who dwelt near the passes had given the water and earth to the envoys of Xerxes when they arrived, the two generals despaired of the defence at Tempe and returned to their own soil.

1 i.e. from Asia into Europe via the Northern Aegean.

2 The submission of water and earth was a token of fealty or non-resistance.

3 A Persian fleet had been wrecked off the promontory of Mt. Athos in 492 B.C.

4 Hdt. 7.173 gives the name as Euaenetus.

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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