Xerxes by Jacob Abbott (ink book reader .txt) 📖
- Author: Jacob Abbott
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The Persian horseman.
His observation.
In the mean time the armies of Xerxes were approaching. Xerxes himself, though he did not think it possible that the Greeks could have a sufficient force to offer him any effectual resistance, thought it probable that they would attempt to make a stand at the pass, and, when he began to draw near to it, he sent forward a horseman to reconnoiter the ground. The horseman rode into the pass a little way, until he came in sight of the enemy. He stopped upon an eminence to survey the scene, being all ready to turn in an instant, and fly at the top of his speed, in case he should be pursued. The Spartans looked upon him as he stood there, but seemed to consider his appearance as a circumstance of no moment, and then went on with their avocations. The horseman found, as he leisurely observed them, that there was an intrenchment thrown across the straits, and that the Spartans were in front of it. There were other forces behind, but these the horseman could not see. The Spartans were engaged, some of them in athletic sports and gymnastic exercises, and the rest in nicely arranging their dress, which was red and showy in color, though simple and plain in form, and in smoothing, adjusting, and curling their hair. In fact, they seemed to be, one and all, preparing for an entertainment.
And yet these men were actually preparing themselves to be slaughtered, to be butchered, one by one, by slow degrees, and in the most horrible and cruel manner; and they knew perfectly well that it was so. The adorning of themselves was for this express and particular end.
The horseman, when he had attentively noticed all that was to be seen, rode slowly back to Xerxes, and reported the result. The king was much amused at hearing such an account from his messenger. He sent for Demaratus, the Spartan refugee, with whom, the reader will recollect, he held a long conversation in respect to the Greeks at the close of the great review at Doriscus. When Demaratus came, Xerxes related to him what the messenger had reported. "The Spartans in the pass," said he, "present, in their encampment, the appearance of being out on a party of pleasure. What does it mean? You will admit now, I suppose, that they do not intend to resist us."
Demaratus shook his head. "Your majesty does not know the Greeks," said he, "and I am very much afraid that, if I state what I know respecting them, I shall offend you. These appearances which your messenger observed indicate to me that the men he saw were a body of Spartans, and that they supposed themselves on the eve of a desperate conflict. Those are the men, practicing athletic feats, and smoothing and adorning their hair, that are the most to be feared of all the soldiers of Greece. If you can conquer them, you will have nothing beyond to fear."
Xerxes thought this opinion of Demaratus extremely absurd. He was convinced that the party in the pass was some small detachment that could not possibly be thinking of serious resistance. They would, he was satisfied, now that they found that the Persians were at hand, immediately retire down the pass, and leave the way clear. He advanced, therefore, up to the entrance of the pass, encamped there, and waited several days for the Greeks to clear the way. The Greeks remained quietly in their places, paying apparently no attention whatever to the impending and threatening presence of their formidable foes.
At length Xerxes concluded that it was time for him to act. On the morning, therefore, of the fifth day, he called out a detachment of his troops, sufficient, as he thought, for the purpose, and sent them down the pass, with orders to seize all the Greeks that were there, and bring them, alive, to him. The detachment that he sent was a body of Medes, who were considered as the best troops in the army, excepting always the Immortals, who, as has been before stated, were entirely superior to the rest. The Medes, however, Xerxes supposed, would find no difficulty in executing his orders.
The detachment marched, accordingly, into the pass. In a few hours a spent and breathless messenger came from them, asking for re-enforcements. The re-enforcements were sent. Toward night a remnant of the whole body came back, faint and exhausted with a long and fruitless combat, and bringing many of their wounded and bleeding comrades with them. The rest they had left dead in the defile.
Xerxes was both astonished and enraged at these results. He determined that this trifling should continue no longer. He ordered the Immortals themselves to be called out on the following morning, and then, placing himself at the head of them, he advanced to the vicinity of the Greek intrenchments. Here he ordered a seat or throne to be placed for him upon an eminence, and, taking his seat upon it, prepared to witness the conflict. The Greeks, in the mean time, calmly arranged themselves on the line which they had undertaken to defend, and awaited the charge. Upon the ground, on every side, were lying the mangled bodies of the Persians slain the day before, some exposed fully to view, ghastly and horrid spectacles, others trampled down and half buried in the mire.
Valor of the Greeks.
The Immortals advanced to the attack, but they made no impression. Their superior numbers gave them no advantage, on account of the narrowness of the defile. The Greeks stood, each corps at its own assigned station on the line, forming a mass so firm and immovable that the charge of the Persians was arrested on encountering it as by a wall. In fact, as the spears of the Greeks were longer than those of the Persians, and their muscular and athletic strength and skill were greater, it was found that in the desperate conflict which raged, hour after hour, along the line, the Persians were continually falling, while the Greek ranks continued entire. Sometimes the Greeks would retire for a space, falling back with the utmost coolness, regularity, and order; and then, when the Persians pressed on in pursuit, supposing that they were gaining the victory, the Greeks would turn so soon as they found that the ardor of pursuit had thrown the enemies' lines somewhat into confusion, and, presenting the same firm and terrible front as before, would press again upon the offensive, and cut down their enemies with redoubled slaughter. Xerxes, who witnessed all these things from among the group of officers around him upon the eminence, was kept continually in a state of excitement and irritation. Three times he leaped from his throne, with loud exclamations of vexation and rage.
All, however, was of no avail. When night came the Immortals were compelled to withdraw, and leave the Greeks in possession of their intrenchments.
Things continued substantially in this state for one or two days longer, when one morning a Greek countryman appeared at the tent of Xerxes, and asked an audience of the king. He had something, he said, of great importance to communicate to him. The king ordered him to be admitted. The Greek said that his name was Ephialtes, and that he came to inform the king that there was a secret path leading along a wild and hidden chasm in the mountains, by which he could guide a body of Persians to the summit of the hills overhanging the pass at a point below the Greek intrenchment. This point being once attained, it would be easy, Ephialtes said, for the Persian forces to descend into the pass below the Greeks, and thus to surround them and shut them in, and that the conquest of them would then be easy. The path was a secret one, and known to very few. He knew it, however, and was willing to conduct a detachment of troops through it, on condition of receiving a suitable reward.
The king was greatly surprised and delighted at this intelligence. He immediately acceded to Ephialtes's proposals, and organized a strong force to be sent up the path that very night.
On the north of Thermopylæ there was a small stream, which came down through a chasm in the mountains to the sea. The path which Ephialtes was to show commenced here, and following the bed of this stream up the chasm, it at length turned to the southward through a succession of wild and trackless ravines, till it came out at last on the declivities of the mountains near the lower part of the pass, at a place where it was possible to descend to the defile below. This was the point which the thousand Phocæans had been ordered to take possession of and guard, when the plan for the defense of the pass was first organized. They were posted here, not with the idea of repelling any attack from the mountains behind them—for the existence of the path was wholly unknown to them—but only that they might command the defile below, and aid in preventing the Persians from going through, even if those who were in the defile were defeated or slain.
The Persian detachment toiled all night up the steep and dangerous pathway, among rocks, chasms, and precipices, frightful by day, and now made still more frightful by the gloom of the night. They came out at last, in the dawn of the morning, into valleys and glens high up the declivity of the mountain, and in the immediate vicinity of the Phocæan encampment. The Persians were concealed, as they advanced, by the groves and thickets of stunted oaks which grew here, but the morning air was so calm and still, that the Phocæan sentinels heard the noise made by their trampling upon the leaves as they came up the glen. The Phocæans immediately gave the alarm. Both parties were completely surprised. The Persians had not expected to find a foe at this elevation, and the Greeks who had ascended there had supposed that all beyond and above them was an impassable and trackless desolation.
There was a short conflict, The Phocæans were driven off their ground. They retreated up the mountain, and toward the southward. The Persians decided not to pursue them. On the other hand, they descended toward the defile, and took up a position on the lower declivities of the mountain, which enabled them to command the pass below; there they paused, and awaited Xerxes's orders.
The Greeks in the defile perceived at once that they were now wholly at the mercy of their enemies. They might yet retreat, it is true, for the
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