herodotus

and the sons of Heracles of Sparta demand of thee satisfaction formurder, because thou didst kill their king, fighting in defence ofHellas." He laughed and then kept silence some time, and after thatpointing to Mardonios, who happened to be standing by him, he said:"Then Mardonios here shall give them satisfaction, such as is fittingfor them to have." 115. The herald accordingly accepted the utteranceand departed; and Xerxes leaving Mardonios in Thessaly went on himselfin haste to the Hellespont and arrived at the passage where thecrossing was in five-and-thirty days, bringing back next to nothing,as one may say,[84] of his army: and whithersoever they came on themarch and to whatever nation, they seized the crops of that people andused them for provisions; and if they found no crops, then they tookthe grass which was growing up from the earth, and stripped off thebark from the trees and plucked down the leaves and devoured them,alike of the cultivated trees and of those growing wild; and they leftnothing behind them: thus they did by reason of famine. Then plaguetoo seized upon the army and dysentery, which destroyed them by theway, and some of them also who were sick the king left behind, layingcharge upon the cities where at the time he chanced to be in hismarch, to take care of them and support them: of these he left some inThessaly, and some at Siris in Paionia, and some in Macedonia. Inthese parts too he had left behind him the sacred chariot of Zeus,when he was marching against Hellas; but on his return he did notreceive it back: for the Paionians had given it to the Thracians, andwhen Xerxes asked for it again, they said that the mares while atpasture had been carried off by the Thracians of the upper country,who dwelt about the source of the Strymon. 116. Here also a Thracian,the king of the Bisaltians and of the Crestonian land, did a deed ofsurpassing horror; for he had said that he would not himself besubject to Xerxes with his own will and had gone away up to MountRhodope, and also he had forbidden his sons to go on the march againstHellas. They however, either because they cared not for his command,or else because a desire came upon them to see the war, went on themarch with the Persian: and when they returned all unhurt, being sixin number, their father plucked out their eyes for this cause. 117.They then received this reward: and as to the Persians, when passingon from Thrace they came to the passage, they crossed over theHellespont in haste to Abydos by means of the ships, for they did notfind the floating-bridges still stretched across but broken up by astorm. While staying there for a time they had distributed to them anallowance of food more abundant than they had had by the way, and fromsatisfying their hunger without restraint and also from the changes ofwater there died many of those in the army who had remained safe tillthen. The rest arrived with Xerxes at Sardis.118. There is also another story reported as follows, namely that when