At length Xerxes, with a miserable remnant of his troops, arrived at Abydos, on the shores of the Hellespont. He found the bridge broken down. The winds and storms had demolished what the Greeks had determined to spare. The immense structure, which it had cost so much toil and time to rear, had wholly disappeared, leaving no traces of its existence, except the wrecks which lay here and there half buried in the sand along the shore. There were some small boats at hand, and Xerxes, embarking in one of them, with a few attendants in the others, and leaving the exhausted and wretched remnant of his army behind, was rowed across the strait, and landed at last safely again on the Asiatic shores.
[Illustration: THE RETURN OF XERXES TO PERSIA.]
The place of his landing was Sestos. From Sestos he went to Sardis, and from Sardis he proceeded, in a short time, to Susa. Mardonius was left in Greece. Mardonius was a general of great military experience and skill, and, when left to himself, he found no great difficulty in reorganizing the army, and in putting it again in an efficient condition. He was not able, however, to accomplish the undertaking which he had engaged to perform. After various adventures, prosperous and adverse, which it would be foreign to our purpose here to detail, he was at last defeated in a great battle, and killed on the field. The Persian army was now obliged to give up the contest, and was expelled from Greece finally and forever.
When Xerxes reached Susa, he felt overjoyed to find himself once more safe, as he thought, in his own palaces. He looked back upon the hardships, exposures, and perils through which he had passed, and, thankful for having so narrowly escaped from them, he determined to encounter no such hazards again. He had had enough of ambition and glory. He was now going to devote himself to ease and pleasure. Such a man would not naturally be expected to be very scrupulous in respect to the means of enjoyment, or to the character of the companions whom he would select to share his pleasures, and the life of the king soon presented one continual scene of dissipation, revelry, and vice. He gave himself up to such prolonged carousals, that one night was sometimes protracted through the following day into another. The administration of his government was left wholly to his ministers, and every personal duty was neglected, that he might give himself to the most abandoned and profligate indulgence of his appetites and passions.