The Grecian inhabitants of the Chersonese readily joined the Athenians in expelling the Persians, who, taken altogether by surprise, had been constrained to throw themselves into Sestus, without stores of provisions or means of making a long defence. But of all the Chersonesites the most forward and exasperated were the inhabitants of Elæus,—the southernmost town of the peninsula, celebrated for its tomb, temple, and sacred grove of the hero Protesilaus, who figured in the Trojan legend as the foremost warrior in the host of Agamemnon to leap ashore, and as the first victim to the spear of Hektor. The temple of Protesilaus, conspicuously placed on the sea-shore,[413] was a scene of worship and pilgrimage not merely for the inhabitants of Elæus, but also for the neighboring Greeks generally, insomuch that it had been enriched with ample votive offerings, and probable deposits for security,—money, gold and silver saucers, brazen implements, robes, and various other presents. The story ran, that when Xerxes was on his march across the Hellespont into Greece, Artayktês, greedy of all this wealth, and aware that the monarch would not knowingly permit the sanctuary to be despoiled, preferred a wily request to him: “Master, here is the house of a Greek, who, in invading thy territory, met his just reward and perished: I pray thee give his house to me, in order that people may learn for the future not to invade _thy_ land,”—the whole soil of Asia being regarded by the Persian monarchs as their rightful possession, and Protesilaus having been in this sense an aggressor against them. Xerxes, interpreting the request literally, and not troubling himself to ask who the invader was, consented: upon which, Artayktês, while the army were engaged in their forward march into Greece, stripped the sacred grove of Protesilaus, carrying all the treasures to Sestus. Nor was he content without still farther outraging Grecian sentiment: he turned cattle into the grove, ploughed and sowed it, and was even said to have profaned the sanctuary by visiting it with his concubines.[414] Such proceedings were more than enough to raise the strongest antipathy against him among the Chersonesite Greeks, who now crowded to reinforce the Athenians and blocked him up in Sestus. After a certain length of siege, the stock of provisions in the town failed, and famine began to make itself felt among the garrison, which nevertheless still held out, by painful shifts and endurance, until a late period in the autumn, when the patience even of the Athenian besiegers was well-nigh exhausted; nor was it without difficulty that the leaders repressed the clamorous desire manifested in their own camp to return to Athens. [413] Thucyd. viii, 102. [414] Herodot. ix, 116: compare i, 4. Ἀρταΰκτης, ἀνὴρ Πέρσης, δεινὸς δὲ καὶ ἀτάσθαλος· ὃς καὶ βασιλέα ἐλαύνοντα ἐπ’ Ἀθήνας ἐξηπάτησε, τὰ Πρωτεσίλεω τοῦ Ἰφίκλου χρήματα ἐξ Ἐλαιοῦντος ὑφελόμενος. Compare Herodot. ii, 64.