Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/66

42 mSTORY OF GREECE. nies Dikcea,! Maroneia, and Abdera, were successively laid under contribution for contingents of ships or men ; and, what M'as still more ruinous, they were further constrained to provide a day's meal for the immense host as it passed : for the day of his pas- sage the Gi-eat King was their guest. Orders had been trans- mitted for this purpose long beforehand, and for many months the citizens had been assiduously employed in collecting food for the army, as well as delicacies for the monarch, — grinding flour of wheat and barley, fattening cattle, keeping up birds and fowls ; together with a decent display of gold and silver plate for the regal dinner. A superb tent was erected for Xerxes and his immediate companions, while the army received their rations in the open region around : on commencing the march next morn- ing, the tent with all its rich contents was plundered, and noth- ing restored to those who had furnished it. Of course, so prodig- ious a host, which had occupied seven days and seven nights in crossing the double Hellespontine bridge, must also have been for many days on its march through the territory, and therefore at the charge, of each one among the cities, so that the cost brought them to the brink of ruin, and even in some cases drove them to abandon house and home. The cost incurred by the city of Thasus, on account of their possessions of the mainland, for this purpose, was no less than four hundred talents^ (equal to ninety-two thousand eight hundred pounds) : while at Abdera, the witty Megakreon recommended to his countrymen to go in a body to the temples and thank the gods, because Xerxes was pleased to be satisfied with one meal in the day. Had .the mon- ai'ch requb'ed breakfast as well as dinner, the Abderites must have been reduced to the alternative either of exile or of utter destitution.3 A stream called Lissus, which seems to have been 1 Herodot. vii, 109, 111, 118. - This sum of four hundred talents was equivalent to the entire annual tribute charged in the Persian king's rent-roll, upon the sati'apy compris- ing the western and southern coast of Asia Minor, wherein were included all the Ionic and ^olic Greeks, besides Lykians, Pamphylians, etc. (Herodot. iii, 90.) ^ Herodot. vii, 118-120. He gives (vii, 187) the computation of the quantity of com which would have been required for daily consumption, assuming the immense ntunbers as he conjectures them, and reckoning one