into the Trachinian territory near Thermopylæ, where he encamped, seemingly awaiting the arrival of the fleet, so as to combine his farther movements in advance,[154] now that the enemy were immediately in his front. [150] The pass over which Xerxes passed was that by Petra, Pythium, and Oloosson,—“saltum ad Petram,”—“Perrhæbiæ saltum,”—(Livy, xlv, 21; xliv, 27.) Petra was near the point where the road passed from Pieria, or lower Macedonia, into upper Macedonia (see Livy, xxxix, 26). Compare respecting this pass, and the general features of the neighboring country, Colonel Leake, Travels in Northern Greece, vol. iii, ch. xviii, pp. 337-343, and ch. xxx, p. 430; also Boué, La Turquie en Europe, vol. i, pp. 198-202. The Thracian king Sitalkês, like Xerxes on this occasion, was obliged to cause the forests to be cut, to make a road for his army, in the early part of the Peloponnesian war (Thucyd. ii, 98). [151] Herodot. vii, 130, 131. That Xerxes, struck by the view of Olympus and Ossa, went to see the narrow defile between them, is probable enough; but the remarks put into his mouth are probably the fancy of some ingenious contemporary Greeks, suggested by the juxtaposition of such a landscape and such a monarch. To suppose this narrow defile walled up, was easy for the imagination of any spectator: to suppose that _he_ could order it to be done, was in character with a monarch who disposed of an indefinite amount of manual labor, and who had just finished the cutting of Athos. Such dramatic fitness was quite sufficient to convert that which _might have been_ said into that which _was_ said, and to procure for it a place among the historical anecdotes communicated to Herodotus. [152] The Persian fleet did not leave Therma until eleven days after Xerxes and his land-force (Herodot. vii, 183); it arrived in one day on the Sêpias Aktê, or southeastern coast of Magnesia (ibid.), was then assailed and distressed for three days by the hurricane (vii, 191), and proceeded immediately afterwards to Aphetæ (vii, 193). When it arrived at the latter places, Xerxes himself had been _three days_ in the Malian territory (vii, 196). [153] This point is set forth by Hoffmeister, Sittlich-religiöse Lebensansicht des Herodotos, Essen, 1832, sect. 19, p. 93. [154] Herodot. vii, 196, 197, 201.