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Xerxes, after this, left Mardonius in Thessaly, and marched away
himself, at his best speed, toward the Hellespont. In
five-and-forty days he reached the place of passage, where he arrived
with scarce a fraction, so to speak, of his former army. All along
their line of march, in every country where they chanced to be, his
soldiers seized and devoured whatever corn they could find belonging to
the inhabitants; while, if no corn was to be found, they gathered the
grass that grew in the fields, and stripped the trees, whether
cultivated or wild, alike of their bark and of their leaves, and so
fed themselves. They left nothing anywhere, so hard were they pressed
by hunger. Plague too and dysentery attacked the troops while still
upon their march, and greatly thinned their ranks. Many died; others
fell sick and were left behind in the different cities that lay upon the
route, the inhabitants being strictly charged by Xerxes to tend and
feed them. Of these some remained in Thessaly, others in Siris of
Paeonia, others again in Macedon. Here Xerxes, on his march into
Greece, had left the sacred car and steeds of Jove; which upon his
return he was unable to recover; for the Paeonians had disposed of
them to the Thracians, and, when Xerxes demanded them back, they
said that the Thracian tribes who dwelt about the sources of the
Strymon had stolen the mares as they pastured.
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