Polymnia   

out.
On his arrival at Alus in Achaea, his guides, wishing to inform
him of everything, told him the tale known to the dwellers in those
parts concerning the temple of the Laphystian Jupiter- how that
Athamas the son of Aeolus took counsel with Ino and plotted the
death of Phrixus; and how that afterwards the Achaeans, warned by an
oracle, laid a forfeit upon his posterity, forbidding the eldest of
the race ever to enter into the court-house (which they call the
people's house), and keeping watch themselves to see the law obeyed.
If one comes within the doors, he can never go out again except to
be sacrificed. Further, they told him how that many persons, when on
the point of being slain, are seized with such fear that they flee
away and take refuge in some other country; and that these, if they
come back long afterwards, and are found to be the persons who entered
the court-house, are led forth covered with chaplets, and in a grand
procession, and are sacrificed. This forfeit is paid by the
descendants of Cytissorus the son of Phrixus, because, when the
Achaeans, in obedience to an oracle, made Athamas the son of Aeolus
their sin-offering, and were about to slay him, Cytissorus came from
Aea in Colchis and rescued Athamus; by which deed he brought the anger
of the god upon his own posterity. Xerxes, therefore, having heard
this story, when he reached the grove of the god, avoided it, and
commanded his army to do the like. He also paid the same respect to
the house and precinct of the descendants of Athamas.
Such were the doing of Xerxes in Thessaly and in Achaea, From
hence he passed on into Malis, along the shores of a bay, in which
there is an ebb and flow of the tide daily. By the side of this bay
lies a piece of flat land, in one part broad, but in another very
narrow indeed, around which runs a range of lofty hills, impossible to
climb, enclosing all Malis within them, and called the Trachinian
cliffs. The first city upon the bay, as you come from Achaea, is
Anticyra, near which the river Spercheius, flowing down from the
country of the Enianians, empties itself into the sea. About twenty
furlongs from this stream there is a second river, called the Dyras,
which is said to have appeared first to help Hercules when he was
burning. Again, at the distance of twenty furlongs, there is a
stream called the Melas, near which, within about five furlongs,
stands the city of Trachis.
At the point where this city is built, the plain between the hills
and the sea is broader than at any other, for it there measures 22,000
plethra. South of Trachis there is a cleft in the mountain-range which
shuts in the territory of Trachinia; and the river Asopus issuing from
this cleft flows for a while along the foot of the hills.
Further to the south, another river, called the Phoenix, which has
no great body of water, flows from the same hills, and falls into
the Asopus. Here is the narrowest place of all; for in this part there
is only a causeway wide enough for a single carriage. From the river
Phoenix to Thermopylae is a distance of fifteen furlongs; and in
this space is situate the village called Anthela, which the river
Asopus passes ere it reaches the sea. The space about Anthela is of
some width, and contains a temple of Amphictyonian Ceres, as well as
the seats of the Amphictyonic deputies, and a temple of Amphictyon
himself.
King Xerxes pitched his camp in the region of Malis called
Trachinia, while on their side the Greeks occupied the straits.
These straits the Greeks in general call Thermopylae (the Hot
Gates); but the natives, and those who dwell in the neighbourhood,
call them Pylae (the Gates). Here then the two armies took their
stand; the one master of all the region lying north of Trachis, the
other of the country extending southward of that place to the verge of
the continent.
The Greeks who at this spot awaited the coming of Xerxes were
the following:- From Sparta, three hundred men-at-arms; from
Arcadia, a thousand Tegeans and Mantineans, five hundred of each