Polymnia   

Such then was the amount of the entire host of Xerxes. As for
the number of the women who ground the corn, of the concubines, and
the eunuchs, no one can give any sure account of it; nor can the
baggage-horses and other sumpter-beasts, nor the Indian hounds which
followed the army, be calculated, by reason of their multitude.
Hence I am not at all surprised that the water of the rivers was found
too scant for the army in some instances; rather it is a marvel to
me how the provisions did not fail, when the numbers were so great.
For I find on calculation that if each man consumed no more than a
choenix of corn a day, there must have been used daily by the army
110,340 medimni, and this without counting what was eaten by the
women, the eunuchs, the sumpter-beasts, and the hounds. Among all this
multitude of men there was not one who, for beauty and stature,
deserved more than Xerxes himself to wield so vast a power.
The fleet then, as I said, on leaving Therma, sailed to the
Magnesian territory, and there occupied the strip of coast between the
city of Casthanaea and Cape Sepias. The ships of the first row were
moored to the land, while the remainder swung at anchor further off.
The beach extended but a very little way, so that they had to anchor
off the shore, row upon row, eight deep. In this manner they passed
the night. But at dawn of day calm and stillness gave place to a
raging sea, and a violent storm, which fell upon them with a strong
gale from the east- a wind which the people in those parts call
Hellespontias. Such of them as perceived the wind rising, and were
so moored as to allow of it, forestalled the tempest by dragging their
ships up on the beach, and in this way saved both themselves and their
vessels. But the ships which the storm caught out at sea were driven
ashore, some of them near the place called Ipni, or "The Ovens," at
the foot of Pelion; others on the strand itself; others again about
Cape Sepias; while a portion were dashed to pieces near the cities
of Meliboea and Casthanaea. There was no resisting the tempest.
It is said that the Athenians had called upon Boreas to aid the
Greeks, on account of a fresh oracle which had reached them,
commanding them to "seek help from their son-in-law." For Boreas,
according to the tradition of the Greeks, took to wife a woman of
Attica, viz., Orithyia, the daughter of Erechtheus. So the
Athenians, as the tale goes, considering that this marriage made
Boreas their son-in-law, and perceiving, while they lay with their
ships at Chalcis of Euboea, that the wind was rising, or, it may be,
even before it freshened, offered sacrifice both to Boreas and
likewise to Orithyia, entreating them to come to their aid and to
destroy the ships of the barbarians, as they did once before off Mount
Athos. Whether it was owing to this that Boreas fell with violence
on the barbarians at their anchorage I cannot say; but the Athenians
declare that they had received aid from Boreas before, and that it was
he who now caused all these disasters. They therefore, on their return
home, built a temple to this god on the banks of the Ilissus.
Such as put the loss of the Persian fleet in this storm at the
lowest say that four hundred of their ships were destroyed, that a
countless multitude of men were slain, and a vast treasure engulfed.
Ameinocles, the son of Cretines, a Magnesian, who farmed land near
Cape Sepias, found the wreck of these vessels a source of great gain
to him; many were the gold and silver drinking-cups, cast up long
afterwards by the surf, which he gathered; while treasure-boxes too
which had belonged to the Persians, and golden articles of all kinds
and beyond count, came into his possession. Ameinocles grew to be a
man of great wealth in this way; but in other respects things did
not go over well with him: he too, like other men, had his own
grief- the calamity of losing his offspring.
As for the number of the provision craft and other merchant
ships which perished, it was beyond count. Indeed, such was the
loss, that the commanders of the sea force, fearing lest in their
shattered condition the Thessalians should venture on an attack,
raised a lofty barricade around their station out of the wreck of