"Arrived here, Xerxes wished to look upon his host; so, as there was a throne of white marble upon a hill near the city, which they of Abydos had prepared beforehand, by the king's bidding, for his especial use, Xerxes took his seat on it, and, gazing thence upon the shore below, beheld at one view all his land forces and all his ships. As he looked and saw the whole Hellespont covered with the vessels of his fleet, and all the shore and every plain about Abydos as full as could be of men, Xerxes congratulated himself on his good-fortune; but, after a little while, he wept. Then Artabanus, the king's uncle (the same who at the first so freely spake his mind to the king, and advised him not to lead his army against Greece), when he heard that Xerxes was in tears, went to him, and said: "'How different, sire, is what thou art now doing from what thou didst a little while ago! Then thou didst congratulate thyself, and now, behold! thou weepest.' "'There came upon me,' replied he, 'a sudden pity when I thought of the shortness of man's life, and considered that of all this host, so numerous as it is, not one will be alive when a hundred years are gone by.' "'And yet there are sadder things in life than that,' returned the other. 'Short. as our time is, there is no man, whether it be here among this multitude or elsewhere, who is so happy as not to have felt the wish--I will not say once, but full many a time--that he were dead rather than alive. Calamities fall upon us, sicknesses vex and harass us, and make life, short though it be, to appear long. So death, through the wretchedness of our life, is a most sweet refuge to our race; and God, who gives us the tastes we enjoy of pleasant times, is seen, in his very gift, to be envious.'" --Trans. by RAWLINSON. Much that is told about Xerxes--how he cut off Mount Athos from the main-land by a canal; how he made a bridge of boats across the Hellespont, where it is three miles wide, and ordered the waters to be scourged because they destroyed the bridge; how he constructed new bridges, over which his vast army crossed the Hellespont as along a royal road; and how his army drank a whole river dry--all of which is gravely related by Herodotus as fact, is discredited by the Latin poet JUVENAL, who attributes these stories to the imaginations of "browsy poets." Old Greece a tale of Athos would make out, Cut from the continent and sailed about; Seas bid with navies, chariots passing o'er The channel on a bridge from shore to shore; Rivers, whose depths no sharp beholder sees, Drunk, at an army's dinner, to the lees; With a long legend of romantic things, Which, in his cups, the browsy poet sings. --Tenth Satire. Trans. by DRYDEN. That Xerxes bridged the Hellespont, however, in the manner related by Herodotus, is an accepted fact of history. As MILTON says,