Hearing all this, Xerxes, when he came to the temple grove, refrained from entering it himself and bade all his army do likewise, holding the house and the precinct of Athamas' descendants alike in reverence.The legend, in its main features, originates in the cult of “Zeus Laphystius,” a tribal god who, like the Jehovah of the O. T. and the Moloch and Melqart of the Phoenicians, has a right to all first-born, especially of the priestly house. In time human sacrifice is avoided by the substitution of a ram; but even then the first-born child must leave the country.

These were Xerxes' actions in +Thessaly [22.25,39.5] (region), Greece, Europe Thessaly and +Achaea [21.75,38.25] (department), Peloponnese, Greece, Europe Achaea. From here he came into Malis along a gulf of the sea, in which the tide ebbs and flows daily.Tidal movement is rare in the Mediterranean Sea [30,31.5] (sea)Mediterranean. But there is a strong ebb and flood in the Euripus, which is not far from the Malian gulf. There is low-lying ground about this gulf, sometimes wide and sometimes very narrow, and around it stand high and inaccessible mountains which enclose the whole of Malis and are called the Rocks of +Trachis [22.55,38.8] (Perseus) Trachis.

Now the first town by the gulf on the way from +Achaea [21.75,38.25] (department), Peloponnese, Greece, Europe Achaea is Anticyra, near to which the river Spercheus flows from the country of the Enieni and issues into the sea. About twenty furlongs from that river is another named Dyras, which is said to have risen from the ground to aid Heracles against the fire that consumed him and twenty furlongs again from that there is another river called the Black river.

The town of +Trachis [22.55,38.8] (Perseus) Trachis is five furlongs away from this Black river. Here is the greatest distance in all this region between the sea and the hills on which +Trachis [22.55,38.8] (Perseus) Trachis stands, for the plain is twenty-two thousand plethra in extent.This must be a measure not of length but of superficial extent: more than 5000 acres. In the mountains which hem in the Trachinian land there is a ravine to the south of +Trachis [22.55,38.8] (Perseus) Trachis, through which the river Asopus flows past the lower slopes of the mountains.

There is another river south of the Asopus, the Phoenix, a little stream which flows from those mountains into the Asopus. Near this stream is the narrowest place; there is only space for a single cart-way. +Thermopylae [22.5583,38.8] (Perseus) Thermopylae is fifteen furlongs away from the river Phoenix.