Their ships with brazen beaks did bite each other, And shattered their own oars. Meanwhile the Greeks Stroke after stroke dealt dexterous all around, Till our ships showed their keels, and the blue sea Was seen no more, with multitude of ships And corpses covered. All the shores were strewn, And the rough rocks, with dead; till, in the end, Each ship in the barbaric host, that yet Had oars, in most disordered flight rowed off. As men that fish for tunnies, so the Greeks, With broken booms, and fragments of the wreck, Struck our snared men, and hacked them, that the sea, With wail and moaning, was possessed around, Till black-eyed Night shot darkness o'er the fray.[f27] These ills thou hearest: to rehearse the whole, Ten days were few; but this, my queen, believe, No day yet shone on Earth whose brightness looked On such a tale of death. {314} ATOSSA. A sea of woes On Persia bursts, and all the Persian name! MESSENGER. Thou hast not heard the half: another woe Remains, that twice outweighs what I have told. ATOSSA. What worse than this? Say what mischance so strong To hurt us more, being already ruined? MESSENGER. The bloom of all the Persian youth, in spirit The bravest, and in birth the noblest, princes In whom thy son placed his especial trust, All by a most inglorious doom have perished. ATOSSA. O wretched me, that I should live to hear it! But by what death did Persia's princes die? MESSENGER. There is an islet, fronting Salamis, To ships unfriendly, of dance-loving Pan[n17] The chosen haunt, and near the Attic coast. Here Xerxes placed his chiefest men, that when The routed Greeks should seek this strand, our troops Might both aid friends, where friends their aid required, And kill the scattered Greeks, an easy prey; Ill-auguring what should hap! for when the gods Gave to the Greeks the glory of the day,[f28] Straightway well-cased in mail from their triremes They leapt, rushed on the isle, and hedged it round, That neither right nor left our men might turn, But fell in heaps, some struck by rattling stones, Some pierced by arrows from the twanging bow. Then, in one onslaught fiercely massed, the Greeks Our fenceless chiefs in slashing butchery Mowed down, till not one breath remained to groan. But Xerxes groaned: for from a height that rose From the sea-shore conspicuous,[f29] with clear view He mustered the black fortune of the fight. His stole he rent, and lifting a shrill wail Gave the poor remnant of his host command To flee; and fled with them. Lament with me, This second sorrow heaped upon the first.