7.104.2
You yourself best know what love I bear them: they have robbed me of my office and the privileges of my house, and made me a cityless exile; your father received me and gave me a house and the means to live on. It is not reasonable for a sensible man to reject goodwill when it appears; rather he will hold it in great affection.
7.104.3
I myself do not promise that I can fight with ten men or with two, and I would not even willingly fight with one; yet if it were necessary, or if some great contest spurred me, I would most gladly fight with one of those men who claim to be each a match for three Greeks.
7.104.4
So is it with the Lacedaemonians; fighting singly they are as brave as any man living, and together they are the best warriors on earth. They are free, yet not wholly free: law is their master, whom they fear much more than your men fear you.
7.104.5
They do whatever it bids; and its bidding is always the same, that they must never flee from the battle before any multitude of men, but must abide at their post and there conquer or die. If I seem to you to speak foolishness when I say this, then let me hereafter hold my peace; it is under constraint that I have now spoken. But may your wish be fulfilled, King.”
ch. 105
7.105.1
Thus Demaratus answered. Xerxes made a joke of the matter and showed no anger, but sent him away kindly. After he had conversed with Demaratus, and appointed Mascames son of Megadostes governor of this Doriscus, deposing the governor Darius had appointed, Xerxes marched his army through Thrace towards Hellas.
ch. 106
7.106.1
Xerxes left behind this Mascames, who so conducted himself that to him alone Xerxes always sent gifts, as being the most valiant of all the governors that he or Darius appointed; he sent these gifts every year, and so did Artaxerxes son of Xerxes to Mascames' descendants. Before this march, governors had been appointed everywhere in Thrace and on the Hellespont.
7.106.2
All of these in Thrace and the Hellespont, except the governor of Doriscus, were after this expedition captured by the Greeks; but no one could ever drive out Mascames in Doriscus, though many tried. For this reason gifts are sent by the successive kings of Persia.
ch. 107
7.107.1
The only one of those who were driven out by the Greeks whom king Xerxes considered a valiant man was Boges, from whom they took Eion. He never ceased praising this man, and gave very great honor to his sons who were left alive in Persia; indeed Boges proved himself worthy of all praise. When he was besieged by the Athenians under Cimon son of Miltiades, he could have departed under treaty from Eion and returned to Asia, but he refused, lest the king think that he had saved his life out of cowardice; instead he resisted to the last.
7.107.2
When there was no food left within his walls, he piled up a great pyre and slew his children and wife and concubines and servants and cast them into the fire; after that, he took all the gold and silver from the city and scattered it from the walls into the Strymon; after he had done this, he cast himself into the fire. Thus he is justly praised by the Persians to this day.
ch. 108
7.108.1
From Doriscus Xerxes went on his way towards Hellas, compelling all that he met to go with his army. As I have shown earlier, all the country as far as Thessaly had been enslaved and was tributary to the king, by the conquests of Megabazus and Mardonius after him.
7.108.2
On his road from Doriscus he first passed the Samothracian fortresses; note of these, the city built farthest to the west is called Mesambria. Next to it is the Thasian city of Stryme; between them runs the river Lisus, which now could not furnish water enough for Xerxes' army, but was exhausted.
