8.128.3
The generals read the letter and perceived who was the traitor, but they resolved for Scione's sake that they would not condemn Timoxenus with a charge of treason, for fear that the people of Scione should hereafter be called traitors.
ch. 129
8.129.1
This is how Timoxenus' treachery was brought to light. But when Artabazus had besieged Potidaea for three months, there was a great ebb-tide in the sea which lasted for a long while, and when the foreigners saw that the sea was turned to a marsh, they prepared to pass over it into Pallene.
8.129.2
When they had made their way over two-fifths of it, however, and three yet remained to cross before they could be in Pallene, there came a great flood-tide, higher, as the people of the place say, than any one of the many that had been before. Some of them who did not know how to swim were drowned, and those who knew were slain by the Potidaeans, who came among them in boats.
8.129.3
The Potidaeans say that the cause of the high sea and flood and the Persian disaster lay in the fact that those same Persians who now perished in the sea had profaned the temple and the image of Poseidon which was in the suburb of the city. I think that in saying that this was the cause they are correct. Those who escaped alive were led away by Artabazus to Mardonius in Thessaly. This is how the men who had been the king's escort fared.
ch. 130
8.130.1
All that was left of Xerxes' fleet, having in its flight from Salamis touched the coast of Asia and ferried the king and his army over from the Chersonese to Abydos, wintered at Cyme. Then early in the first dawn of spring they mustered at Samos, where some of the ships had wintered. The majority of their fighting men were Persians and Medes.
8.130.2
Mardontes son of Bagaeus and Artayntes son of Artachaees came to be their admirals, and Artayntes chose also his own nephew Ithamitres to have a share in the command. But by reason of the heavy blow dealt them they went no further out to sea westwards, nor did anyone insist that they should so do. They did, however, lie off Samos keeping watch against a revolt in Ionia. The whole number of their ships, Ionian and other, was three hundred.
8.130.3
In truth they did not expect that the Greeks would come to Ionia, but rather that they would be content to guard their own country. This they thought because the Greeks had not pursued them when they fled from Salamis, but had been glad to be quit of them. In regard to the sea, the Persians were at heart beaten men, but they supposed that on land Mardonius would easily prevail.
8.130.4
So they were at Samos, and there planned to do what harm they could to their enemies and to listen in the interim for news of how Mardonius' affairs were proceeding.
ch. 131
8.131.1
As for the Greeks, the coming of spring and Mardonius' being in Thessaly moved them to action. They had not yet begun the mustering of their army, but their fleet, one hundred and ten ships, came to Aegina.
