By this time there was come a messenger from Thermopylæ. For the Greeks had set a man in Trachis to tell them that fought in the Pass how it fared with the ships at Artemisium, and there was another man with King Leonidas who was to bring news to Artemisium of the doings of the Spartans. This man was now come, telling all that had befallen the Greeks in the Pass; which when the commanders of the fleet had heard, they delayed no longer, but departed, each in their order, first the Corinthians, and last of all the Athenians. But Themistocles chose the swiftest of the Athenian ships, and going to the places for watering, engraved there upon the rocks certain words which the Ionians coming the next day to Artemisium read. And the words were these, “Men of Ionia, ye do wrong making war against your fathers and seeking to enslave the land of Greece. Of right ye should be on our side. But if this be not possible to you, yet stand ye aloof from the battle, and entreat the Carians also that they do likewise. And if so be that ye can not either help us or stand aloof, being under such constraint that ye cannot revolt against the barbarians, yet, when the battle is joined, ye should hold your hands, remembering that ye are of our blood, and that for your sake we first prevoked the barbarians to wrath.” For Themistocles said to himself, “Either this writing will not come to the knowledge of the King, and the Ionians will perchance be persuaded to help us; or, coming to his knowledge, it will cause him to have doubts of them, and he will not suffer them to come into battle together with his ships.”
Now when the barbarians heard that the Greeks had fled from Artemisium, at the first they would not believe it, but afterward, finding it to be so, they sailed thither. And when they were arrived at the place there came a herald from King Xerxes, saying, “Comrades, the King permits any that will to leave his place and see for himself how he fights against the foolish men that thought to resist his might.” But before that he sent the herald he had ordered matters in this wise. He took of them that had been slain of his army at the Pass one thousand (but the number of the whole was twenty thousand), and left them to be seen; but the rest