Unless it were the insignificant Phocis, no hostile country seemed to intervene between the place where his army lay and the great object of the expedition, Attica.
Xerxes, therefore, having first viewed the pass of Tempe, and seen with his own eyes that no enemy lay encamped beyond, passed over the Olympic range by a road cut through the woods by his army, and proceeded southwards across Thessaly and Achaea Phthiotis into Malis, the fertile plain at the mouth of the Spercheius river.

Here, having heard that a Greek force was in the neighborhood, he pitched his camp not far from the small town of Trachis.
Thus far had the Greeks allowed the invader to penetrate their country without offering him any resistance.

Originally there had been an intention of defending Thessaly, and an army under Evsenetus, a Spartan polemarch, and Themistocles, the great Athenian, had proceeded to Tempe, in order to cooperate with the Thessalians in guarding the pass.

But the discovery that the Olympic range could be crossed in the,place where the army of Xerxes afterwards passed it had shown that the position was untenable; and it had been then resolved that the stand should be made at the next defensible position, Thermopylae.

[PLATE LXII.] Here, accordingly, a force was found--small, indeed, if it be compared with the number of the assailants, but sufficient to defend such a position as that where it was posted against the world in arms.