'Gainst famous Athens hath my son devised;
Nor did the deaths suffice of Asia's host
Whom Marathon destroyed; for them my son
Thought to exact requital, but instead,
Upon himself hath drawn this host of ills.
But speak, the ships that have destruction 'scaped,— 480
Where didst thou leave them? This canst clearly tell?
Messenger.
Of the surviving ships the captains straight
Before the wind took flight in disarray.
But of the host the remnant met their death
In the Bœotian's land. Some pressed with thirst
Round sparkling fount, some breathless, spent by toil.[1]
******
Thence crossed we over to the Phocian land,
To soil of Doris and the Melian gulf,
Whose plain Spercheios' stream with kindly draught
Waters; thereafter the Achaian soil, 490
And cities of Thessalians us received,
Straitened for food; there died the greater part
Of thirst and hunger, for both ills befel.
Magnesia and the Macedonian land
Traversed we then, far as to Axios' ford,
To Bolbe's marshy reed, and to the height
Of Mount Pangaios and the Edonian land;
But on that night, winter, out of due time,
Some god aroused, who Strymon's holy stream
Through its whole course congealed; then who before
- ↑ A passage of some length has been lost from the original.
