Note 171 — Chapter X · FROM SALAMIS TO PLATÆA.

Modern historians have taken this account of the intended or attempted construction of the mole too seriously. It has been pointed out, for instance, that the only point in the strait east of the bay of Eleusis at which it could possibly be carried out, is at the narrows where the island of St. George contracts the width of the channel, and that it is impossible that, under the circumstances as they stood, Xerxes should have been able to bring vessels to that part of the strait. But Herodotus never attempts to give the impression that the operation was ever undertaken seriously; he makes it plain, indeed, that it was not. If that were so, and it was merely designed to give the Greeks a wrong impression, it did not in the least matter whether it was made at a possible or impossible point. Ktesias, Pers. 26, and Strabo, 395, say that the mole was begun before the battle. This would imply that a serious attempt was made to construct it. The notorious unreliability of Ktesias, and the lateness of Strabo’s evidence, render this account of the matter unworthy of consideration.