to diminish their efficiency.[198] With no longer delay than was requisite for such inscriptions, he followed the remaining fleet, which sailed round the coast of Attica, not stopping until it reached the island of Salamis. [197] Herodot. viii, 18. δρησμὸν δὴ ἐβούλευον ἔσω ἐς τὴν Ἑλλάδα. [198] Herodot. viii, 19, 21, 22; Plutarch, Themistoklês, c. 9. The news of the retreat of the Greek fleet was speedily conveyed by a citizen of Histiæa to the Persians at Aphetæ, who at first disbelieved it, and detained the messenger until they had sent to ascertain the fact. On the next day, their fleet passed across to the north of Eubœa, and became master of Histiæa and the neighboring territory: from whence many of them, by permission and even invitation of Xerxes, crossed over to Thermopylæ to survey the field of battle and the dead. Respecting the number of the dead, Xerxes is asserted to have deliberately imposed upon the spectators: he buried all his own dead, except one thousand, whose bodies were left out,—while the total number of Greeks who had perished at Thermopylæ, four thousand in number, were all left exposed, and in one heap, so as to create an impression that their loss had been much more severe than their own. Moreover, the bodies of the slain Helots were included in the heap, all of them passing for Spartans or Thespians in the estimation of the spectators. We are not surprised to hear, however, that this trick, gross and public as it must have been, really deceived very few.[199] According to the statement of Herodotus, twenty thousand men were slain on the side of the Persians,—no unreasonable estimate, if we consider that they wore little defensive armor, and that they were three days fighting. The number of Grecian dead bodies is stated by the same historian as four thousand: if this be correct, it must include a considerable proportion of Helots, since there were no hoplites present on the last day except the three hundred Spartans, the seven hundred Thespians, and the four hundred Thebans. Some hoplites were of course slain in the first two days’ battles, though apparently not many. The number who originally came to the defence of the pass seems to have been about seven thousand:[200] but the epigram, composed shortly afterwards, and inscribed on the spot by order of the Amphiktyonic assembly, transmitted to posterity the formal boast that four thousand warriors “from Peloponnesus had here fought with three hundred myriads or three million of enemies.”[201] Respecting this alleged Persian total, some remarks have already been made: the statement of four thousand warriors from Peloponnesus, must indicate all those who originally marched out of that peninsula under Leonidas. Yet the Amphiktyonic assembly, when they furnished words to record this memorable exploit, ought not to have immortalized the Peloponnesians apart from their extra-Peloponnesian comrades, of merit fully equal,—especially the Thespians, who exhibited the same