take to flight, for that if night should fall while they fled they would clean escape out of their hands. Now the desire of the Persians was that not even the torch-bearer, as men say, should escape. (When the Spartans go forth to war they have with them one who keeps the sacred fire for the sacrifices. Him they defend with all their might; nor is he killed unless the whole army perish.) They contrived therefore this plan. They separated two hundred ships from the whole fleet, and sent them around the island of Eubœa, commanding them to make a very wide circuit, lest the Greeks should see them. And their purpose was that the two hundred ships should bar the way by the Euripus (the Euripus is the channel at the extremity of the island southward), and that so the Greeks might be shut in on either side, for the two hundred ships would be behind them, and the remainder of the fleet would attack them from before. Having so done they remained in their place, till they should know by a signal that the two hundred ships had accomplished their voyage.
Now there was among the Persians a certain Scyllias of Scione, than whom there was in those days no more skillful diver. This man had saved much treasure for the Persians after the great storm that fell on the fleet from Mount Pelion, getting also no small portion for himself. He had been minded for some time to go over to the Greeks, but had not before found occasion. And indeed how he passed from the Persians to the Greeks is not certainly known; but marvelous things are told about it. For some say that diving into the sea at Aphetæ he did not come up to the top of the water so much as once till he was arrived at Artemisium, so passing through eighty furlongs of sea or thereabouts. Many other things are told about this man that are manifestly false, and some that are true. But as to his coming from Aphetæ to Artemisium, doubtless he came in a boat. And so soon as he was come he told the commanders of the fleet of the damage done to the Persians, and also of the two hundred ships that had been sent round Eubœa.