[120] Herodot. vii, 173.
[121] Herodot. vii, 172. τὴν ἐσβολὴν τὴν Ὀλυμπικήν. See the description and plan of Tempê in Dr. Clarke’s Travels, vol. iv, ch. ix, p. 280; and the Dissertation of Kriegk, in which all the facts about this interesting defile are collected and compared (Das Thessalische Tempe. Frankfort, 1834).
The description of Tempê in Livy (xliii, 18; xliv, 6) seems more accurate than that in Pliny (H. N. iv, 8). We may remark that both the one and the other belong to times subsequent to the formation and organization of the Macedonian empire, when it came to hold Greece in a species of dependence. The Macedonian princes after Alexander the Great, while they added to the natural difficulties of Tempê by fortifications, at the same time made the road more convenient as a military communication. In the time of Xerxes, these natural difficulties had never been approached by the hand of art, and were doubtless much greater.
The present road through the pass is about thirteen feet broad in its narrowest part, and between fifteen and twenty feet broad elsewhere,—the pass is about five English miles in length (Kriegk, pp. 21-33).
[122] Herodot. vii, 173.
[123] Herodot. viii, 140-143.
[124] Herodot. vii, 173, 174.
[125] Diodor. xi, 3. ἔτι παρούσης τῆς ἐν τοῖς Τέμπεσι φυλακῆς, etc.
[126] Herodot. vii, 131, 132, 174.
[127] Herodot. vii, 177