The description of Tempê in Livy (xliii, 18; xliv, 6) seems more accurate than that in Pliny (H. N. iv, 8). We may remark that both the one and the other belong to times subsequent to the formation and organization of the Macedonian empire, when it came to hold Greece in a species of dependence. The Macedonian princes after Alexander the Great, while they added to the natural difficulties of Tempê by fortifications, at the same time made the road more convenient as a military communication. In the time of Xerxes, these natural difficulties had never been approached by the hand of art, and were doubtless much greater. The present road through the pass is about thirteen feet broad in its narrowest part, and between fifteen and twenty feet broad elsewhere,—the pass is about five English miles in length (Kriegk, pp. 21-33). [122] Herodot. vii, 173. [123] Herodot. viii, 140-143. [124] Herodot. vii, 173, 174. This precipitate retreat produced consequences highly disastrous and discouraging. It appeared to leave all Hellas north of mount Kithæron and of the Megarid territory without defence, and it served either as reason or pretext for the majority of the Grecian states north of that boundary to make their submission to Xerxes, which some of them had already begun to do before.[125] When Xerxes in the course of his march reached the Thermaic gulf, within sight of Olympus and Ossa, the heralds whom he had sent from Sardis brought him tokens of submission from a third portion of the Hellenic name,—the Thessalians, Dolopes, Ænianes, Perrhæbians, Magnêtes, Lokrians, Dorians, Melians, Phthiôtid Achæans, and Bœotians,—among the latter is included Thebes, but not Thespiæ or Platæa. The Thessalians, especially, not only submitted, but manifested active zeal and rendered much service in the cause of Xerxes, under the stimulus of the Aleuadæ, whose party now became predominant: they were probably indignant at the hasty retreat of those who had come to defend them.[126] [125] Diodor. xi, 3. ἔτι παρούσης τῆς ἐν τοῖς Τέμπεσι φυλακῆς, etc. [126] Herodot. vii, 131, 132, 174. Had the Greeks been able to maintain the passes of Olympus and Ossa, all this northern fraction might probably have been induced to partake in the resistance instead of becoming auxiliaries to the invader. During the six weeks or two months which elapsed between the retreat of the Greeks from Tempê and the arrival of Xerxes at Therma, no new plan of defence appears to have been formed; for it was not until that arrival became known at the Isthmus that the Greek army and fleet made its forward movement to occupy Thermopylæ and Artemisium.[127] [127] Herodot. vii, 177 CHAPTER XL. BATTLES OF THERMOPYLÆ AND ARTEMISIUM.