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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.
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