142 HISTORICAL TALES.

On marched the great army. It crossed the plain
of Troy, and here Xerxes offered libations in honor
of the heroes of the Trojan war, the story of which
was told him. Reaching the Hellespont, he had a
marble throne erected, from which to view the pas-
sage of his troops. The bridges—which the scourged
and branded waters had now spared—were perfumed
with frankincense and strewed with myrtle boughs,
and, as the march began, Xerxes offered prayers to
the sun, and made libations to the sea with a golden
censer, which he then flung into the water, together
with a golden bowl and a Persian scimitar, perhaps
to repay the Hellespont for the stripes he had in-
flicted upon it.

At the first moment of sunrise the passage began,
the troops marching across one bridge, the baggage
and attendants crossing the other. All day the
march continued, and all night long, the whip being
used to accelerate the troops; yet so vast was the
host that for seven days and nights, without cessa-
tion, the army moved on, and a week was at its end
before the last man of the great Persian host set
foot on European soil.

Then down through the Grecian peninsula Xerxes
marched, doubtless inflated with pride at the great-
ness of his host and the might of the fleet which
sailed down the neighboring seas and through the
canal which he had cut to baffle stormy Athos. One
regret alone seemed to come into his mind, and that
was that in a hundred years not one man of that
vast army would be alive. It did not occur to him
that in less than one year few of them might be