Polymnia   

noised abroad, and I heard thou wert coming down to the Grecian coast,
straightway, as I wished to give thee a sum of money for the war, I
made count of my stores, and found them to be two thousand talents
of silver, and of gold four millions of Daric staters, wanting seven
thousand. All this I willingly make over to thee as a gift; and when
it is gone, my slaves and my estates in land will be wealth enough for
my wants."
This speech charmed Xerxes, and he replied, "Dear Lydian, since
I left Persia there is no man but thou who has either desired to
entertain my army, or come forward of his own free will to offer me
a sum of money for the war. Thou hast done both the one and the other,
feasting my troops magnificently, and now making offer of a right
noble sum. In return, this is what I will bestow on thee. Thou shalt
be my sworn friend from this day; and the seven thousand staters which
are wanting to make up thy four millions I will supply, so that the
full tale may be no longer lacking, and that thou mayest owe the
completion of the round sum to me. Continue to enjoy all that thou
hast acquired hitherto; and be sure to remain ever such as thou now
art. If thou dost, thou wilt not repent of it so long as thy life
endures."
When Xerxes had so spoken and had made good his promises to
Pythius, he pressed forward upon his march; and passing Anaua, a
Phrygian city, and a lake from which salt is gathered, he came to
Colossae, a Phrygian city of great size, situated at a spot where
the river Lycus plunges into a chasm and disappears. This river, after
running under ground a distance of about five furlongs, reappears once
more, and empties itself, like the stream above mentioned, into the
Maeander. Leaving Colossae, the army approached the borders of Phrygia
where it abuts on Lydia; and here they came to a city called
Cydrara, where was a pillar set up by Croesus, having an inscription
on it, showing the boundaries of the two countries.
Where it quits Phrygia and enters Lydia the road separates; the
way on the left leads into Caria, while that on the right conducts
to Sardis. If you follow this route, you must cross the Maeander,
and then pass by the city Callatebus, where the men live who make
honey out of wheat and the fruit of the tamarisk. Xerxes, who chose
this way, found here a plane-tree so beautiful, that he presented it
with golden ornaments, and put it under the care of one of his
Immortals. The day after, he entered the Lydian capital.
Here his first care was to send off heralds into Greece, who
were to prefer a demand for earth and water, and to require that
preparations should be made everywhere to feast the king. To Athens
indeed and to Sparta he sent no such demand; but these cities
excepted, his messengers went everywhere. Now the reason why he sent
for earth and water to states which had already refused was this: he
thought that although they had refused when Darius made the demand,
they would now be too frightened to venture to say him nay. So he sent
his heralds, wishing to know for certain how it would be.
Xerxes, after this, made preparations to advance to Abydos,
where the bridge across the Hellespont from Asia to Europe was
lately finished. Midway between Sestos and Madytus in the
Hellespontine Chersonese, and right over against Abydos, there is a
rocky tongue of land which runs out for some distance into the sea.
This is the place where no long time afterwards the Greeks under
Xanthippus, the son of Ariphron, took Artayctes the Persian, who was
at that time governor of Sestos, and nailed him living to a plank.
He was the Artayctes who brought women into the temple of
Protesilaus at Elaeus, and there was guilty of most unholy deeds.
Towards this tongue of land then, the men to whom the business was
assigned carried out a double bridge from Abydos; and while the
Phoenicians constructed one line with cables of white flax, the
Egyptians in the other used ropes made of papyrus. Now it is seven
furlongs across from Abydos to the opposite coast. When, therefore,
the channel had been bridged successfully, it happened that a great