[148] Herodot. vii, 178. Δελφοὶ δὲ δεξάμενοι τὸ μαντήϊον, πρῶτα μὲν, Ἑλλήνων τοῖσι βουλομένοισι εἶναι ἐλευθέροισι ἐξήγγειλαν τὰ χρησθέντα αὐτοῖσι· καί σφι δεινῶς καταῤῥωδέουσι τὸν βάρβαρον ἐξαγγείλαντες, χάριν ἀθάνατον κατέθεντο.
[149] Herodot. vii, 189. The language of the historian in this chapter is remarkable: his incredulous reason rather gets the better of religious acquiescence.
Clemens Alexandrinus, reciting this incident together, with some other miracles of Ækus, Aristæus, Empedoklês, etc., reproves his pagan opponents for their inconsistency, while believing these, in rejecting the miracles of Moses and the prophets (Stromat. vi, pp. 629, 630).
[150] The pass over which Xerxes passed was that by Petra, Pythium, and Oloosson,—“saltum ad Petram,”—“Perrhæbiæ saltum,”—(Livy, xlv, 21; xliv, 27.) Petra was near the point where the road passed from Pieria, or lower Macedonia, into upper Macedonia (see Livy, xxxix, 26).
Compare respecting this pass, and the general features of the neighboring country, Colonel Leake, Travels in Northern Greece, vol. iii, ch. xviii, pp. 337-343, and ch. xxx, p. 430; also Boué, La Turquie en Europe, vol. i, pp. 198-202.
The Thracian king Sitalkês, like Xerxes on this occasion, was obliged to cause the forests to be cut, to make a road for his army, in the early part of the Peloponnesian war (Thucyd. ii, 98).
[151] Herodot. vii, 130, 131. That Xerxes, struck by the view of Olympus and Ossa, went to see the narrow defile between them, is probable enough; but the remarks put into his mouth are probably the fancy of some ingenious contemporary Greeks, suggested by the juxtaposition of such a landscape and such a monarch. To suppose this narrow defile walled up, was easy for the imagination of any spectator: to suppose that he could order it to be done, was in character with a monarch who disposed of an indefinite amount of manual labor, and who had just finished the cutting of Athos. Such dramatic fitness was quite sufficient to convert that which might have been said into that which was said, and to procure for it a place among the historical anecdotes communicated to Herodotus.
[152] The Persian fleet did not leave Therma until eleven days after Xerxes and his land-force (Herodot. vii, 183); it arrived in one day on the Sêpias Aktê, or southeastern coast of Magnesia (ibid.), was then assailed and distressed for three days by the hurricane (vii, 191), and proceeded immediately afterwards to Aphetæ (vii, 193). When it arrived at the latter places, Xerxes himself had been three days in the Malian territory (vii, 196).
[153] This point is set forth by Hoffmeister, Sittlich-religiöse Lebensansicht des Herodotos, Essen, 1832, sect. 19, p. 93.
[154] Herodot. vii, 196, 197, 201.