Dardanelles str.

Dardanelles str.

 

Herodotus tells us that, circa 482 BC, Xerxes I (the son of Darius) had two pontoon bridges built across the width of the Hellespont at Abydos,

 

A pontoon bridge

 

 is a collection of specialized, shallow-draft floats or boats, pinned together end-to-end to provide rigid connections, and covered with a continuous deck to provide a path for pedestrians or road for vehicles. The boats or pontoons are lifted by buoyancy, limiting the maximum load to the total and point buoyancy of the pontoons or boats.

 

 in order that his huge army could cross from Persia into Greece. This crossing was named by Aeschylus in his tragedy The Persians as the cause of divine intervention against Xerxes.^[3]

 

According to Herodotus (vv.34), both bridges were destroyed by a storm and Xerxes had those responsible for building the bridges beheaded and the strait itself whipped. The Histories of Herodotus vii.33–37 and vii.54–58 give details of building and crossing of Xerxes' Pontoon Bridges. Xerxes is then said to have thrown fetters into the strait, given it three hundred lashes and branded it with red-hot irons as the soldiers shouted at the water.^[4]