CHAPTER 126

Artabazus, the son of Pharnaces, a man whom the Persians had always held in much esteem, but who, after the affair of Plataea, rose still higher in their opinion, escorted King Xerxes as far as the strait, with sixty thousand of the chosen troops of Mardonius. When the king was safe in Asia, Artabazus set out upon his return; and on arriving near Palline, and finding that Mardonius had gone into winter-quarters in Thessaly and Macedonia, and was in no hurry for him to join the camp, he thought it his bounden duty, as the Potidaeans had just revolted, to occupy himself in reducing them to slavery. For as soon as the king had passed beyond their territory, and the Persian fleet had made its hasty flight from Salamis, the Potidaeans revolted from the barbarians openly; as likewise did all the other inhabitants of that peninsula.