Histories

Her ships were reputed to be the best in the whole fleet after the ships of +Sidon [35.366,33.55] (inhabited place), Al-Janub, Lebanon, Asia Sidon, and she gave the king the best advice of all his allies. The cities that I said she was the leader of are all of Dorian stock, as I can show, since the Halicarnassians are from Troizen [23.375,37.5] (Perseus)Troezen, and the rest are from Epidauros [23.0917,37.6] (Perseus)Epidaurus.

Here ends what I have said of the fleet. When his army had been numbered and marshalled, Xerxes desired to ride through and view it. Then he did this; as he rode in a chariot past the men of each nation, he questioned them while his scribes wrote it all down, until he had gone from one end to the other of the cavalry and infantry.

After he had done this, the ships were drawn down and launched into the sea. Xerxes alighted from his chariot into a Sidonian ship and sat under a golden canopy while he was carried past the prows of the ships, questioning the men in the same way as the army and having the answers written down.

The captains put out and anchored in line four hundred feet from the shore, with their prows turned landward and the marines armed for war; Xerxes viewed them by passing between the prows and the land.

After he passed by all his fleet and disembarked from the ship, he sent for Demaratus[*](The exiled king of Sparta [22.4417,37.0667] (Perseus) Sparta; see Hdt. 7.3.) son of Ariston, who was on the expedition with him against Greece [22,39] (nation), EuropeHellas. He summoned him and said, “Demaratus, it is now my pleasure to ask you what I wish to know. You are a Greek, and, as I am told both by you and by the other Greeks whom I have talked to, a man from neither the least nor the weakest of Greek cities.