Histories

Herodotus

Herodotus. Godley, Alfred Denis, translator. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann, Ltd., 1920-1925 (printing).

When they had made their way over two-fifths of it, however, and three yet remained to cross before they could be in +Pallene [23.8833,38.05] (Perseus) Pallene, there came a great flood-tide, higher, as the people of the place say, than any one of the many that had been before. Some of them who did not know how to swim were drowned, and those who knew were slain by the Potidaeans, who came among them in boats.

The Potidaeans say that the cause of the high sea and flood and the Persian disaster lay in the fact that those same Persians who now perished in the sea had profaned the temple and the image of Poseidon which was in the suburb of the city. I think that in saying that this was the cause they are correct. Those who escaped alive were led away by Artabazus to Mardonius in +Thessaly [22.25,39.5] (region), Greece, Europe Thessaly. This is how the men who had been the king's escort fared.

All that was left of Xerxes' fleet, having in its flight from Salamis (island), Attica, Central Greece and Euboea, Greece, EuropeSalamis touched the coast of Asia (continent)Asia and ferried the king and his army over from the Gelibolu Yarimadasi (peninsula), Canakkale, Marmara, Turkey, AsiaChersonese to Abydus [26.416,40.2] (deserted settlement), Canakkale, Marmara, Turkey, Asia Abydos, wintered at Kyme [24.1167,38.6333] (Perseus)Cyme. Then early in the first dawn of spring they mustered at +Nisos Samos [26.8,37.75] (island), Samos, Aegean Islands, Greece, Europe Samos, where some of the ships had wintered. The majority of their fighting men were Persians and Medes.