Histories

Herodotus

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

After this proclamation, there was nothing so hard to get as a boat, so many were they who wanted to see this. They crossed over and went about viewing the dead. All of them supposed that the fallen Greeks were all Lacedaemonians and Thespians, though helots were also there for them to see.

For all that, however, those who crossed over were not deceived by what Xerxes had done with his own dead, for the thing was truly ridiculous; of the Persians a thousand lay dead before their eyes, but the Greeks lay all together assembled in one place, to the number of four thousand.

All that day they spent in observation, and on the next the shipmen returned to their fleet at Histiaea while Xerxes' army set forth on its march.