[41] The incident respecting Pythius is in Herodot. vii, 27, 28, 38, 39. I place no confidence in the estimate of the wealth of Pythius; but in other respects, the story seems well entitled to credit. A tale essentially similar, yet rather less revolting, has been already recounted respecting Darius, when undertaking his expedition against Scythia. Both tales illustrate the intense force of sentiment with which the Persian kings regarded the obligation of universal personal service, when they were themselves in the field. They seem to have measured their strength by the number of men whom they collected around them, with little or no reference to quality: and the very mention of exemption—the idea that a subject and a slave should seek to withdraw himself from a risk which the monarch was about to encounter—was an offence not to be pardoned. In this as in the other acts of Oriental kings, whether grateful, munificent, or ferocious, we trace nothing but the despotic force of personal will, translating itself into act without any thought of consequences, and treating subjects with less consideration than an ordinary Greek master would have shown towards his slaves. From Sardis, the host of Xerxes directed its march to Abydos, first across Mysia and the river Kaïkus,—then through Atarneus, Karinê, and the plain of Thêbê: they passed Adramyttium and Antandrus, and crossed the range of Ida, most part of which was on their left hand, not without some loss from stormy weather and thunder.[42] From hence they reached Ilium and the river Skamander, the stream of which was drunk up, or probably in part trampled and rendered undrinkable, by the vast host of men and animals: in spite of the immortal interest which the Skamander derives from the Homeric poems, its magnitude is not such as to make this fact surprising. To the poems themselves, even Xerxes did not disdain to pay tribute: he ascended the holy hill of Ilium,—reviewed the Pergamus where Priam was said to have lived and reigned,—sacrificed one thousand oxen to the patron goddess Athênê,—and caused the Magian priests to make libations in honor of the heroes who had fallen on that venerated spot. He even condescended to inquire into the local details,[43] abundantly supplied to visitors by the inhabitants of Ilium, of that great real or mythical war to which Grecian chronologers had hardly yet learned to assign a precise date: and doubtless when he contemplated the narrow area of that Troy which all the Greeks confederated under Agamemnon had been unable for ten years to overcome, he could not but fancy that these same Greeks would fall an easy prey before his innumerable host. Another day’s march between Rhœteium, Ophryneium, and Dardanus on the left-hand, and the Teukrians of Gergis on the right-hand, brought him to Abydos, where his two newly-constructed bridges over the Hellespont awaited him. [42] Herodot. vii, 42.