Xerxes by Jacob Abbott (ink book reader .txt) 📖
- Author: Jacob Abbott
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Her words proved true. The features of the young girl rapidly changed, and her countenance soon became as wonderful for its loveliness as it had been before for its hideous deformity. When she arrived at a proper age, a certain Spartan nobleman named Agetus, a particular friend of the king's, made her his wife.
The agreement.
The name of the king of Sparta at that time was Ariston. He had been twice married, and his second wife was still living, but he had no children. When he came to see and to know the beautiful wife of Agetus, he wished to obtain her for himself, and began to revolve the subject in his mind, with a view to discover some method by which he might hope to accomplish his purpose. He decided at length upon the following plan. He proposed to Agetus to make an exchange of gifts, offering to give to him any one object which he might choose from all his, that is, Ariston's effects, provided that Agetus would, in the same manner, give to Ariston whatever Ariston might choose. Agetus consented to the proposal, without, however, giving it any serious consideration. As Ariston was already married, he did not for a moment imagine that his wife could be the object which the king would demand. The parties to this foolish agreement confirmed the obligation of it by a solemn oath, and then each made known to the other what he had selected. Agetus gained some jewel, or costly garment, or perhaps a gilded and embellished weapon, and lost forever his beautiful wife. Ariston repudiated his own second wife, and put the prize which he had thus surreptitiously acquired in her place as a third.
Demaratus disowned.
His flight.
About seven or eight months after this time Demaratus was born. The intelligence was brought to Ariston one day by a slave, when he was sitting at a public tribunal. Ariston seemed surprised at the intelligence, and exclaimed that the child was not his. He, however, afterward retracted this disavowal, and owned Demaratus as his son. The child grew up, and in process of time, when his father died, he succeeded to the throne. The magistrates, however, who had heard the declaration of his father at the time of his birth, remembered it, and reported it to others; and when Ariston died and Demaratus assumed the supreme power, the next heir denied his right to the succession, and in process of time formed a strong party against him. A long series of civil dissensions arose, and at length the claims of Demaratus were defeated, his enemies triumphed, and he fled from the country to save his life. He arrived at Susa near the close of Darius's reign, and it was his counsel which led the king to decide the contest among his sons for the right of succession, in favor of Xerxes, as described at the close of the first chapter. Xerxes had remembered his obligations to Demaratus for this interposition. He had retained him in the royal court after his accession to the throne, and had bestowed upon him many marks of distinction and honor.
Demaratus had decided to accompany Xerxes on his expedition into Greece, and now, while the Persian officers were looking with so much pride and pleasure on the immense preparations which they were making for the subjugation of a foreign and hostile state, Demaratus, too, was in the midst of the scene, regarding the spectacle with no less of interest, probably, and yet, doubtless, with very different feelings, since the country upon which this dreadful cloud of gloom and destruction was about to burst was his own native land.
After the review was ended, Xerxes sent for Demaratus to come to the castle. When he arrived, the king addressed him as follows:
"You are a Greek, Demaratus, and you know your countrymen well; and now, as you have seen the fleet and the army that have been displayed here to-day, tell me what is your opinion. Do you think that the Greeks will undertake to defend themselves against such a force, or will they submit at once without attempting any resistance?"
Demaratus seemed at first perplexed and uncertain, as if not knowing exactly what answer to make to the question. At length he asked the king whether it was his wish that he should respond by speaking the blunt and honest truth, or by saying what would be polite and agreeable.
Xerxes replied that he wished him, of course, to speak the truth. The truth itself would be what he should consider the most agreeable.
"Since you desire it, then," said Demaratus, "I will speak the exact truth. Greece is the child of poverty. The inhabitants of the land have learned wisdom and discipline in the severe school of adversity, and their resolution and courage are absolutely indomitable. They all deserve this praise; but I speak more particularly of my own countrymen, the people of Sparta. I am sure that they will reject any proposal which you may make to them for submission to your power, and that they will resist you to the last extremity. The disparity of numbers will have no influence whatever on their decision. If all the rest of Greece were to submit to you, leaving the Spartans alone, and if they should find themselves unable to muster more than a thousand men, they would give you battle."
Xerxes expressed great surprise at this assertion, and thought that Demaratus could not possibly mean what he seemed to say. "I appeal to yourself," said he; "would you dare to encounter, alone, ten men? You have been the prince of the Spartans, and a prince ought, at least, to be equal to two common men; so that to show that the Spartans in general could be brought to fight a superiority of force of even ten to one, it ought to appear that you would dare to engage twenty. This is manifestly absurd. In fact, for any person to pretend to be able or willing to fight under such a disparity of numbers, evinces only pride and insolent presumption. And even this proportion of ten to one, or even twenty to one, is nothing compared to the real disparity; for, even if we grant to the Spartans as large a force as there is any possibility of their obtaining, I shall then have a thousand to one against them.
"Besides," continued the king, "there is a great difference in the character of the troops. The Greeks are all freemen, while my soldiers are all slaves—bound absolutely to do my bidding, without complaint or murmur. Such soldiers as mine, who are habituated to submit entirely to the will of another, and who live under the continual fear of the lash, might, perhaps, be forced to go into battle against a great superiority of numbers, or under other manifest disadvantages; but free men, never. I do not believe that a body of Greeks could be brought to engage a body of Persians, man for man. Every consideration shows, thus, that the opinion which you have expressed is unfounded. You could only have been led to entertain such an opinion through ignorance and unaccountable presumption."
His gratitude to Darius.
"I was afraid," replied Demaratus, "from the first, that, by speaking the truth, I should offend you. I should not have given you my real opinion of the Spartans if you had not ordered me to speak without reserve. You certainly can not suppose me to have been influenced by a feeling of undue partiality for the men whom I commended, since they have been my most implacable and bitter enemies, and have driven me into hopeless exile from my native land. Your father, on the other hand, received and protected me, and the sincere gratitude which I feel for the favors which I have received from him and from you incline me to take the most favorable view possible of the Persian cause.
"I certainly should not be willing, as you justly suppose, to engage, alone, twenty men, or ten, or even one, unless there was an absolute necessity for it. I do not say that any single Lacedæmonian could successfully encounter ten or twenty Persians, although in personal conflicts they are certainly not inferior to other men. It is when they are combined in a body even though that body be small, that their great superiority is seen.
"As to their being free, and thus not easily led into battle in circumstances of imminent danger, it must be considered that their freedom is not absolute, like that of savages in a fray, where each acts according to his own individual will and pleasure, but it is qualified and controlled by law. The Spartan soldiers are not personal slaves, governed by the lash of a master, it is true; but they have certain principles of obligation and duty which they all feel most solemnly bound to obey. They stand in greater awe of the authority of this law than your subjects do of the lash. It commands them never to fly from the field of battle, whatever may be the number of their adversaries. It commands them to preserve their ranks, to stand firm at the posts assigned them, and there to conquer or die.
"This is the truth in respect to them. If what I say seems to you absurd, I will in future be silent. I have spoken honestly what I think, because your majesty commanded me to do so; and, notwithstanding what I have said, I sincerely wish that all your majesty's desires and expectations may be fulfilled."
The ideas which Demaratus thus appeared to entertain of danger to the countless and formidable hosts of Xerxes's army, from so small and insignificant a power as that of Sparta, seemed to Xerxes too absurd to awaken any serious displeasure in his mind. He only smiled, therefore, at Demaratus's fears, and dismissed him.
Division of the army.
Leaving a garrison and a governor in possession of the castle of Doriscus, Xerxes resumed his march along the northern shores of the Ægean Sea, the immense swarms of men filling all the roads, devouring every thing capable of being used as food, either for beast or man, and drinking all the brooks and smaller rivers dry. Even with this total consumption of the food and the water which they obtained on the march, the supplies would have been found insufficient if the whole army had advanced through one tract of country. They accordingly divided the host into three great columns, one of which kept near the shore; the other marched far in the interior, and the third in the intermediate space. They thus exhausted the resources of a very wide region. All the men, too, that were capable of bearing arms in the nations that these several divisions passed on the way, they compelled to join them, so that the army left, as it moved along, a very broad extent of country trampled down, impoverished, desolate, and full of lamentation and woe. The whole march was perhaps the most gigantic crime against the rights and the happiness
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