Already the sufferers are attributing their troubles to the wanton rashness of Xerxes, and we shall see that this feeling is more and more clearly expressed as the play goes on, so that Darius, with whom the whole expedition originated, is regarded as having been comparatively cautious and sparing of his people. This is not a true view of the history. Xerxes was rather indolent and reluctant, and required much pressure before he would carry out his father's plans. Whether Æschylus was himself in error on this point, or wished to represent the Persians as forgetting the true state of the case in their distress, we cannot tell: at any rate, it is necessary to the poem that the author of the calamity should suffer by it, so that it was natural to exaggerate the rashness of Xerxes, and to contrast with it the supposed moderation of his father.
But there are more calamities still to tell. In their disordered flight some died of thirst and famine; some perished in the attempt to cross the frozen Strymon, the great river of Thrace, where "such as owned no god till now, awe-struck, with many a prayer, adored the earth and sky." A few "dragged on their toilsome march, and reached their native soil,"—few indeed out of so many.
"My visions," says the unhappy queen, "were too true; it is too late for sacrifices now to change the past, yet I will offer libations to the dead and prayers to the gods, in case there may yet be some better thing in store." Then she departs, begging the Chorus to receive her son with words of comfort.
