for the conveyance, not only of the supplies, but of the army itself.  Darius gave a trial to each of the two plans.  In the year B.C. 492 he sent a fleet and army under Mardonius by way of the Hellespont and the European coast; but this expedition met with severe disasters, the fleet being shattered by a storm off Mount Athos, and the land force greatly damaged by a night attack on the part of the Thracians.[14291] Two years later he dispatched the famous expedition under Datis and Artaphernes, which took its course through the islands, and landed perhaps 200,000 men on the plain of Marathon,[14292] but being there defeated by Miltiades, returned hastily to Asia by the sea route.  The fleets employed on both these occasions were numerous,[14293] and appear to have been collected from several of the Persian maritime states;[14294] the proportion which the several contingents bore one to another is not stated, but there can be little doubt that the Phoenicians contributed the greater number.  We have no details of the conduct of the Phoenicians on either occasion, beyond a casual notice that in the expedition of Datis and Artaphernes one of their vessels plundered the temple of Delium on the Boeotian coast opposite Chalcis, carrying off from it an image of Apollo plated with gold.[14295] The superstition of Datis deprived them of this valuable booty; but we may safely conclude from the anecdote that, while rendering service to Persia, the keen-witted mariners took care not to neglect their own material interests.

In the third and greatest of the expeditions conducted by Persia against Greece, the Phoenicians are found to have played a very important and prominent part.  Even before the expedition commenced, a call was made upon them in connection with it for services of an unusual character.  The loss of the fleet of Mardonius off Mount Athos induced Xerxes to determine on cutting a ship-canal through the isthmus which joins Athos to the mainland; and his passion for great and striking achievements caused him to project the construction of a double bridge of boats across the Hellespont.  Phoenician technical skill was invoked for the furtherance of both objects.  At Athos they worked in conjunction with the maritime states generally, but showed an amount of engineering knowledge far in advance of their fellow-labourers.  The others attempted to give perpendicular sides to their portions of the excavation, but found the sides continually fall in, and so (as Herodotus observes) “had double labour."[14296] The Phoenicians alone knew that the sides must be sloped at an angle, and, calculating the proper slope aright, performed their share of the task without mishap.  At the Hellespont the Phoenicians had for co-partners the Egyptians only, and the two nations appear to have displayed an equal ability.[14297] Cables were passed from shore to shore, made taut by capstans and supported by an almost continuous line of boats; planks were then laid upon the cables, and covered