Herodotus' HISTORY BOOK 7 (POLYMNIA) Complete

Translated by G. Macaulay.

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187. This is the number of the whole army of Xerxes; but of the women who made bread for it, and of the concubines and eunuchs no man can state any exact number, nor again of the draught-animals and other beasts of burden or of the Indian hounds, which accompanied it, could any one state the number by reason of their multitude: so that it does not occur to me to wonder that the streams of some rivers should have failed them, but I wonder rather how the provisions were sufficient to feed so many myriads; for I find on computation that if each man received a quart[189] of wheat every day and nothing more, there would be expended every day eleven myriads of /medimnoi/[190] and three hundred and forty /medimnoi/ besides: and here I am not reckoning anything for the women, eunuchs, baggage-animals, or dogs. Of all these men, amounting to so many myriads, not one was for beauty and stature more worthy than Xerxes himself to possess this power.

188. The fleet, I say, set forth and sailed: and when it had put in to land in the region of Magnesia at the beach which is between the city of Casthanaia and the headland of Sepias, the first of the ships which came lay moored by the land and the others rode at anchor behind them; for, as the beach was not large in extent, they lay at anchor with prows projecting[191] towards the sea in an order which was eight ships deep. For that night they lay thus; but at early dawn, after clear sky and windless calm, the sea began to be violently agitated and a great storm fell upon them with a strong East[192] Wind, that wind which they who dwell about those parts call Hellespontias. Now as many of them as perceived that the wind was rising and who were so moored that it was possible for them to do so, drew up their ships on land before the storm came, and both they and their ships escaped; but as for those of the ships which it caught out at sea, some it cast away at the place called Ipnoi[193] in Pelion and others on the beach, while some were wrecked on the headland of Sepias itself, others at the city of Meliboia, and others were thrown up on shore[194] at Casthanaia: and the violence of the storm could not be resisted.

189. {khoinika}, the usual daily allowance.

190. The {medimnos} is about a bushel and a half, and is equal to 48 {khoinikes}. The reckoning here of 110,340 {medimnoi} is wrong, owing apparently to the setting down of some numbers in the quotient which were in fact part of the dividend.

191. {prokrossai ormeonto es ponton}: the meaning of {prokrossai} is doubtful, but the introduction of the word is probably due to a reminiscence of Homer, Il. xiv. 35, where the ships are described as drawn up in rows one behind the other on shore, and where {prokrossas} is often explained to mean {klimakedon}, i.e. either in steps one behind the other owing to the rise of the beach, or in the arrangement of the /quincunx/. Probably in this passage the idea is rather of the prows projecting in rows like battlements {krossai}, and this is the sense in which the word is used by Herodotus elsewhere (iv. 152). The word {krossai} however is used for the successively rising stages of the pyramids (ii. 125), and {prokrossos} may mean simply "in a row," or "one behind the other," which would suit all passages in which it occurs, and would explain the expression {prokrossoi pheromenoi epi ton kindunon}, quoted by Athenæus.

192. {apeliotes}. Evidently, from its name {Ellespontias} and from its being afterwards called {Boreas}, it was actually a North-East Wind.

193. i.e. "Ovens."

194. {exebrassonto}.

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