7.179.1
Xerxes' fleet, however, set forth from the city of Therma, and the ten swiftest of the ships laid their course straight for Sciathus, where there lay an advance guard of three Greek ships, a Troezenian, an Aeginetan, and an Attic. These, when they sighted the foreigners ships, took to flight.
ch. 180
7.180.1
The ship of Troezen, of which Prexinus was captain, was pursued and straightway captured by the foreigners, who brought the best of its fighting men and cut his throat on the ship's prow, thinking that the sacrifice note of the foremost and fairest of their Greek captives would be auspicious. The name of the sacrificed man was Leon, and it was perhaps his name that he had to thank for it.
ch. 181
7.181.1
The Aeginetan trireme, of which Asonides was captain, did however give them some trouble. On board this ship was Pytheas son of Ischenous, who acted heroically on that day. When his ship had been taken, he would not stop fighting until he had been entirely hacked to mincemeat.
7.181.2
When he finally did fall, he still had life in him, and the Persian soldiers on the ships took great pains to keep him alive for his valor, tending his wounds with ointments and wrapping him in bandages of linen cloth note.
7.181.3
Upon returning to their own station, they showed him to the whole host, and made much of him and treated him with kindness. The rest of those whom they took in that ship, however, they used as slaves.
ch. 182
7.182.1
Two of the ships, then, were made captive, and the third trireme, of which Phormus an Athenian was captain, ran aground in her flight at the mouth of the Peneus; the barbarians took her hull but not the crew, for the Athenians, as soon as they had run their craft aground, leapt out and made their way through Thessaly to Athens.
ch. 183
7.183.1
The Greeks who were stationed at Artemisium were informed of these matters by beacons from Sciathus. They were frightened by this and accordingly changed their anchorage from Artemisium to Chalcis, proposing to guard the Euripus and leaving watchmen on the heights of Euboea.
7.183.2
Three of the ten barbarian ships ran aground on the reef called the Ant, which lies between Sciathus and Magnesia. The barbarians then brought a pillar of stone and set it on the reef, and when their course was plain before them, the whole fleet set forth and sailed from Therma, eleven days after the king had marched from there.
7.183.3
It was Pammon of Scyros who showed them where in the strait the reef lay. After sailing along all day, the foreign fleet reached Sepias in Magnesia and the beach between the town of Casthanaea and the Sepiad headland.
ch. 184
7.184.1
Until the whole host reached this place and Thermopylae it suffered no hurt, and calculation proves to me that its numbers were still such as I will now show. The ships from Asia were twelve hundred and seven in number, and including the entire host of nations involved, there were a total of two hundred and forty-one thousand and four hundred men, two hundred being reckoned for each ship.
7.184.2
noteOn board all these ships were thirty fighting men of the Persians and Medes and Sacae in addition to the company which each had of native fighters; the number of this added contingent is thirty-six thousand, two hundred and ten.
