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[2] Accordingly the king, believing the man because what he reported was in itself plausible, made haste to prevent the naval forces of the Greeks from making contact with their armies on land. Therefore he at once dispatched the Egyptian fleet with orders to block the strait which separates Salamis from the territory of Megaris.1 The main body of his ships he dispatched to Salamis, ordering it to establish contact with the enemy and by fighting there decide the issue. The triremes were drawn up by peoples one after another, in order that, speaking the same language and knowing one another, the several contingents might assist each other with alacrity.

1 This closed the route by which the Greeks could move west and south to the Peloponnesus; the Persian fleet already blocked the straits to the east.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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