| #### CHAPTER 119 |

| #### #### Such is the other account which is given of the return of Xerxes; but to me it seems quite unworthy of belief, alike in other respects, and in what relates to the Persians. For had the helmsman made any such speech to Xerxes, I suppose there is not one man in ten thousand who will doubt that this is the course which the king would have followed: he would have made the men upon the ship's deck, who were not only Persians, but Persians of the very highest rank, quit their place and go down below; and would have cast into the sea an equal number of the rowers, who were Phoenicians. But the truth is, that the king, as I have already said, returned into Asia by the same road as the rest of the army. ####  |