No man makes sacrifice to you, and for this neglect you deserve your neglect because of your salty and dirty water.’

Curiously enough, although much of this might be taken as the ravings of a paranoiac oriental monarch (as the Greeks thought), Xerxes’ behaviour was not so irrational. To the Zoroastrian, for whom the dream of the pastoral life was - like the Garden of Eden to the Jews - the ultimate aim to which the Good must aspire, their heaven was essentially one conceived by landsmen. Flowing streams of clear water were naturally part of this concept. As a land-bound people, moreover, they had a dislike of the sea and an inability to cope with it (hence their employment of the Egyptians and the Phoenicians to man their fleets). ‘The bitter water’, the undrinkable water of the sea, was symbolic of Ahriman, the evil power against which the true follower of Ahuramazda was pledged to fight. Xerxes’ cursing and lashings of the sea, therefore, was possibly no more than a symbolic act done, as Xerxes might have put it, ‘according to Truth and with the proper rite’.

His rage against the designers of the two bridges was, however, entirely in accordance with what the Greeks expected of an Eastern tyrant. They were executed. A Greek engineer, Harpalus, is on record as having been the designer of the final two successful bridges; aided probably by Ionian and Phoenician technicians. They were moored slantwise to the Black Sea and at right angles to the Hellespont. Upstream and downstream specially constructed anchors were laid. Those to the east were to hold the bridging vessels against winds from the Black Sea, as well as against the strong current that flows down permanently as the cold river-fed water of the Black Sea pours in to replenish the Mediterranean. Those laid to the south were to hold the bridges, and especially the southerly bridge, against any gales that might strike from the less expected but still not uncommon quarter of the south-west. Despite their lack of modern scientific instruments the technicians of 2400 years ago were more familiar from centuries of experience with prevailing winds and tides than many a modern mariner who glides through the Hellespont with thousands of horsepower under his feet, assisted by efficient lighthouses, radar, and radio beacons. In three places between the bridges gaps were left so that boats might pass up or down the Hellespont. Since the freeboard, or height of deck above waterline, was little more than eight feet in the average bireme, there would have been little difficulty for such a vessel to pass under the three open sections of the bridges -especially when it is remembered that the sailors were constantly used to lowering masts and yards whenever the weather was foul. (The squaresails on vessels of that period were of little use except with a following wind, or one from slightly abaft of the beam.)

One of the astonishing mechanical triumphs of Xerxes’ bridges of boats was the strength and the weight of the cables that held them together. The Phoenicians, we learn, used cables of flax, while the Egyptians had theirs made out of papyrus. These large and heavy lengths of cable were almost certainly brought up the Aegean on barges. ‘Each bridge’, writes Herodotus, ‘had two flax cables and four of papyrus. The flax was the heavier - half a fathom of it weighing 114 lbs.’ This may be an exaggeration or a misunderstanding of Eastern weights and measures, for this would have meant that over a distance of 1400 yards the total weight of the flax cables alone would have been nearly 100 tons. In any case, the whole project was of such size and scale that it is doubtful whether anything equivalent could have been achieved to equal it in Europe for many centuries to come. (It is only recently, since the aqualung and many other improvements in diving techniques, that enough has been recovered of the remains of ancient ships to reveal how far from primitive were the seafaring vessels of ancient mariners.)

Manpower had built the Pyramids, and manpower and animal power were to remain the gauge of human mechanical achievement until the Industrial Revolution. ‘As soon as the vessels were on station’, Herodotus writes, ‘the cables were hauled taut by wooden winches on the shore.’ The next thing was to cut planks equal to the breadth of the floats. These were then laid edge to edge over the cables and were bound together. Finally, brushwood was laid on top, followed by soil, which the workmen spread evenly and trod down flat. Only one last thing remained to do (evidence again of considerable forethought) and that was to erect palisades on either side of the bridges so that the animals which were to pass over would not take fright at the sight of ‘the bitter water’. Nothing in the Crusades centuries later, almost nothing until amphibious operations of the twentieth century, was to equal the skill and technical ability of these engineers and craftsmen of the Persian Empire - working in the fifth century B.C.


2 - THE GLORY OF THE HOUR

By the spring of 480 Xerxes had received the news that not only was the canal bypassing Mount Athos completed, but that both the bridges across the Hellespont were restored and ready for the army to cross. The time was ripe. The spring months, after the gales of winter, and long before the prevailing northerlies of summer set in, were ideal. True, there can sometimes be storms in this season, but they are rare.