16.45.3When Tennes assured him that he would deliver up the city, the King, maintaining his merciless rage, had all five hundred shot down while still holding the supplicant branches. Thereupon Tennes, approaching the mercenaries from Egypt, prevailed upon them to lead him and the King inside the walls.
16.45.4So Sidon by this base betrayal was delivered into the power of the Persians; and the King, believing that Tennes was of no further use to him, put him to death. note But the people of Sidon before the arrival of the King burned all their ships so that none of the townspeople should be able by sailing out secretly to gain safety for himself. But when they saw the city and the walls captured and swarming with many myriads of soldiers, they shut themselves, their children, and their women up in their houses and consumed them all in flames.
16.45.5They say that those who were then destroyed in the fire, including the domestics, amounted to more than forty thousand. After this disaster had befallen the Sidonians and the whole note city together with its inhabitants had been obliterated by the fire, the King sold that funeral pyre for many talents,
16.45.6for as a result of the prosperity of the householders there was found a vast amount of silver and gold melted down by the fire. So the disasters which had overtaken Sidon had such an ending, and the rest of the cities, panic-stricken, went over to the Persians.
16.45.7Shortly before this time Artemisia, who had held despotic rule over Caria, passed away after ruling two years, and Idrieus, note her brother, succeeded to the despotism and ruled seven years.
16.45.8In Italy the Romans made an armistice with the people of Praeneste, and a treaty with the Samnites, and they put to death two hundred sixty inhabitants of Tarquinii note at the hands of the public executioners in the Forum.
16.45.9In Sicily Leptines and Callippus, the Syracusans then in power, took by siege Rhegium, note which was garrisoned by the tyrant Dionysius the younger, ejected the garrison, and restored to the people of Rhegium their independence.
ch. 46 note
16.46.1When Apollodorus was archon in Athens, the Romans elected as consuls Marcus Valerius and Gaius Sulpicius. During their term of office, in Cyprus, while the people of Salamis were being besieged by Evagoras note and Phocion, the rest of the cities all became subject to the Persians, and Pnytagoras, note the king of Salamis, alone continued to endure the siege.
16.46.2Now Evagoras was endeavouring to recover his ancestral rule over the Salaminians and through the help of the King of the Persians to be restored to his kingship. But later, when he had been falsely accused to Artaxerxes and the King was backing Pnytagoras, Evagoras, after having given up hope of his restoration and made his defence on the accusations brought against him, was accorded another and higher command in Asia.
16.46.3But then when he had misgoverned his province he fled again to Cyprus and, arrested there, paid the penalty. Pnytagoras, who had made willing submission to the Persians, continued thenceforth to rule unmolested as king in Salamis.
16.46.4After the capture of Sidon and the arrival of his allies from Argos and Thebes and the Greek cities in Asia, the King of the Persians assembled all his army and advanced against Egypt.
16.46.5As he came to the great marsh where are the Barathra or Pits, as they are called, he lost a portion of his army through his lack of knowledge of the region. Since we have discoursed earlier on the nature of the marsh note and the peculiar mishaps which occur there in the first Book of our History, we shall refrain from making a second statement about it.
16.46.6Having passed through the Barathra with his army the King came to Pelusium. This is a city at the first mouth at which the Nile debouches into the sea. Now the Persians encamped at a distance of forty stades from Pelusium, but the Greeks close to the town itself.
16.46.7The Egyptians, since the Persians had given them plenty of time for preparation, had already fortified well all the mouths of the Nile, particularly the one near Pelusium because it was the first and the most advantageously situated.
16.46.8Five thousand soldiers garrisoned the position, Philophron the Spartiate being the general in command. The Thebans, being eager to show themselves the best of the Greeks that were taking part in the expedition, were the first to venture, unsupported and recklessly, to make a crossing through a narrow and deep canal.
16.46.9They had passed through it and were assaulting the walls when the garrison of Pelusium sallied forth from the city and engaged in battle with the Thebans. As the engagement proved severe because of the intense rivalry on both sides, they spent the whole of that day in the battle and were separated only by the night.
