The rhetoricians of after-ages have loved to describe Darius Codomanus as a second Xerxes in ostentation and imbecility; but a fair examination of his generalship in this his last campaign shows that he was worthy of bearing the same name as his great predecessor, the royal son of Hystaspes.

As the advance of Cambyses into Egypt had been flanked by a fleet, so also was that of Xerxes into Greece.

[Footnote 8: The numerical strength of the Persian and Túránian forces appears prodigious on all occasions, but nothing when compared with the army under Xerxes at Thermopylae, which, with the numerous retinue of servants, eunuchs, and women that attended it, is said to have amounted to no less than 5,283,220 souls.

The minute account of its review by Xerxes on the shores of the Hellespont proves that, however inefficient the semi-civilised contingents accompanying it may have been, the regular Persian army appeared, in discipline, equipment, and drill, to have come up to the highest standard of the most intense 'pipeclay' epoch.

" He that erst marched like Xerxes with innumerable armies, as rich as Croesus, now shifts for himself in a poor cock-boat, is bound in iron chains, with Bajazet the Turk, and a footstool with Aurelian, for a tyrannising conqueror to trample on.