It was plainly important that the enemy’s fleet should be excluded from the Malian Gulf. The road eastwards from Thermopylæ runs by the side of the Gulf for a long distance after it has issued from the east gate of the pass; and it would have been fatal to the defenders had troops been landed there, since they would have been within short striking distance of the Greek position, and so have rendered any escape by way of the mountain path which leads by the modern Boudenitza to the Phocian plain at Elatea difficult, if not impossible. But there was a further possibility of which the Greek commanders must have been aware, and against which they would have to provide. If it was possible 200 years after this time for the Athenian galleys to sail close in shore and attack the flank of the army of Brennus when it was assailing the narrow part of the pass, there must have been a very much greater possibility of this being done in the year 480. On this rapidly advancing shore that which was done in 279 B.C. with difficulty, and not without danger, must conceivably have been a comparatively easy matter in 480. There was a further danger to be feared, supposing the northern bend of the strait had been left open. Landing on the north coast of Eubœa, a Persian force might have made its way to Chalets, and so have turned Thermopylæ. In the wars of later Greece this was a measure recognized as possible and actually put in practice by combatants commanding this part of the strait. The Greeks were undoubtedly right in the choice of Artemisium. As a naval station it possessed two further advantages: the strait was comparatively narrow at that point, and, above all, it was within sight of Thermopylæ. From the hillside above the road through the pass, only 150 feet above the level of the plain, the view extends right down this northern bend of the Euripus. From a point still higher up, some 1600 feet above the road, the whole channel is extended like a map. Signalling from one position to the other by means of the smoke and fire signals then used must have been quite easy, and it would be even possible from this higher position at Thermopylæ to observe the movements of large bodies of ships in the neighbourhood of Artemisium, though, owing to the distance, a single ship would hardly be discernible to the naked eye. It is quite clear that Herodotus was aware of the intimacy of the relation between the two positions.[113] The strategic capacity of those who were responsible for the Greek plans in the war of 480 was never more advantageously displayed than in this design of the dual defence of the pass and the strait. Had it been carried out with equal wisdom, or even with more harmonious vigour, Greece might perhaps have been spared the losses and anxiety of the year that followed.