Xerxes by Jacob Abbott (ink book reader .txt) 📖
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Leonidas dismisses the other Greeks.
There is some doubt as to what took place at these councils, though the prevailing testimony is, that Leonidas recommended that they should retire—that is, that all except himself and the three hundred Spartans should do so. "You," said he, addressing the other Greeks, "are at liberty, by your laws, to consider, in such cases as this, the question of expediency, and to withdraw from a position which you have taken, or stand and maintain it, according as you judge best. But by our laws, such a question, in such a case, is not to be entertained. Wherever we are posted, there we stand, come life or death, to the end. We have been sent here from Sparta to defend the pass of Thermopylæ. We have received no orders to withdraw. Here, therefore, we must remain; and the Persians, if they go through the pass at all, must go through it over our graves. It is, therefore, your duty to retire. Our duty is here, and we will remain and do it."
After all that may be said of the absurdity and folly of throwing away the lives of three hundred men in a case like this, so utterly and hopelessly desperate, there is still something in the noble generosity with which Leonidas dismissed the other Greeks, and in the undaunted resolution with which he determined himself to maintain his ground, which has always strongly excited the admiration of mankind. It was undoubtedly carrying the point of honor to a wholly unjustifiable extreme, and yet all the world, for the twenty centuries which have intervened since these transactions occurred, while they have unanimously disapproved, in theory, of the course which Leonidas pursued, have none the less unanimously admired and applauded it.
In dismissing the other Greeks, Leonidas retained with him a body of Thebans, whom he suspected of a design of revolting to the enemy. Whether he considered his decision to keep them in the pass equivalent to a sentence of death, and intended it as a punishment for their supposed treason, or only that he wished to secure their continued fidelity by keeping them closely to their duty, does not appear. At all events, he retained them, and dismissed the other allies. Those dismissed retreated to the open country below. The Spartans and the Thebans remained in the pass. There were also, it was said, some other troops, who, not willing to leave the Spartans alone in this danger, chose to remain with them and share their fate. The Thebans remained very unwillingly.
Terrible combat.
Death of Leonidas.
The next morning Xerxes prepared for his final effort. He began by solemn religious services, in the presence of his army, at an early hour; and then, after breakfasting quietly, as usual, and waiting, in fact, until the business part of the day had arrived, he gave orders to advance. His troops found Leonidas and his party not at their intrenchments, as before, but far in advance of them. They had come out and forward into a more open part of the defile, as if to court and anticipate their inevitable and dreaded fate. Here a most terrible combat ensued; one which, for a time, seemed to have no other object than mutual destruction, until at length Leonidas himself fell, and then the contest for the possession of his body superseded the unthinking and desperate struggles of mere hatred and rage. Four times the body, having been taken by the Persians, was retaken by the Greeks: at last the latter retreated, bearing the dead body with them past their intrenchment, until they gained a small eminence in the rear of it, at a point where the pass was wider. Here the few that were still left gathered together. The detachment which Ephialtes had guided were coming up from below. The Spartans were faint and exhausted with their desperate efforts, and were bleeding from the wounds they had received; their swords and spears were broken to pieces, their leader and nearly all their company were slain. But the savage and tiger-like ferocity which animated them continued unabated till the last. They fought with tooth and nail when all other weapons failed them, and bit the dust at last, as they fell, in convulsive and unyielding despair. The struggle did not cease till they were all slain, and every limb of every man ceased to quiver.
The two invalids.
There were stories in circulation among mankind after this battle, importing that one or two of the corps escaped the fate of the rest. There were two soldiers, it was said, that had been left in a town near the pass, as invalids, being afflicted with a severe inflammation of the eyes. One of them, when he heard that the Spartans were to be left in the pass, went in, of his own accord, and joined them, choosing to share the fate of his comrades. It was said that he ordered his servant to conduct him to the place. The servant did so, and then fled himself, in great terror. The sick soldier remained and fought with the rest. The other of the invalids was saved, but, on his return to Sparta, he was considered as stained with indelible disgrace for what his countrymen regarded a base dereliction from duty in not sharing his comrade's fate.
There was also a story of another man, who had been sent away on some mission into Thessaly, and who did not return until all was over; and also of two others who had been sent to Sparta, and were returning when they heard of the approaching conflict. One of them hastened into the pass, and was killed with his companions. The other delayed, and was saved. Whether any or all of these rumors were true, is not now certain; there is, however, no doubt that, with at most a few exceptions such as these, the whole three hundred were slain.
The Thebans, early in the conflict, went over in a body to the enemy.
His treatment of the body of Leonidas.
Xerxes came after the battle to view the ground. It was covered with many thousands of dead bodies, nearly all of whom, of course, were Persians. The wall of the intrenchment was broken down, and the breaches in it choked up by the bodies. The morasses made by the water of the springs were trampled into deep mire, and were full of the mutilated forms of men and of broken weapons. When Xerxes came at last to the body of Leonidas, and was told that that was the man who had been the leader of the band, he gloried over it in great exaltation and triumph. At length he ordered the body to be decapitated, and the headless trunk to be nailed to a cross.
Xerxes then commanded that a great hole should be dug, and ordered all the bodies of the Persians that had been killed to be buried in it, except only about a thousand, which he left upon the ground. The object of this was to conceal the extent of the loss which his army had sustained. The more perfectly to accomplish this end, he caused the great grave, when it was filled up, to be strewed over with leaves, so as to cover and conceal all indications of what had been done. This having been carefully effected, he sent the message to the fleet, which was alluded to at the close of the last chapter, inviting the officers to come and view the ground.
The operations of the fleet described in the last chapter, and those of the army narrated in this, took place, it will be remembered, at the same time, and in the same vicinity too; for, by referring to the map, it will appear that Thermopylæ was upon the coast, exactly opposite to the channel or arm of the sea lying north of Eubœa, where the naval contests had been waged; so that, while Xerxes had been making his desperate efforts to get through the pass, his fleet had been engaged in a similar conflict with the squadrons of the Greeks, directly opposite to him, twenty or thirty miles in the offing.
Conversation with Demaratus.
After the battle of Thermopylæ was over, Xerxes sent for Demaratus, and inquired of him how many more such soldiers there were in Greece as Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans. Demaratus replied that he could not say how many precisely there were in Greece, but that there were eight thousand such in Sparta alone. Xerxes then asked the opinion of Demaratus as to the course best to be pursued for making the conquest of the country. This conversation was held in the presence of various nobles and officers, among whom was the admiral of the fleet, who had come, with the various other naval commanders, as was stated in the last chapter, to view the battle-field.
Demaratus said that he did not think that the king could easily get possession of the Peloponnesus by marching to it directly, so formidable would be the opposition that he would encounter at the isthmus. There was, however, he said, an island called Cythera, opposite to the territories of Sparta, and not far from the shore, of which he thought that the king could easily get possession, and which, once fully in his power, might be made the base of future operations for the reduction of the whole peninsula, as bodies of troops could be dispatched from it to the main land in any numbers and at any time. He recommended, therefore, that three hundred ships, with a proper complement of men, should be detached from the fleet, and sent round at once to take possession of that island.
To this plan the admiral of the fleet was totally opposed. It was natural that he should be so, since the detaching of three hundred ships for this enterprise would greatly weaken the force under his command. It would leave the fleet, he told the king, a miserable remnant, not superior to that of the enemy, for they had already lost four hundred ships by storms. He thought it infinitely preferable that the fleet and the army should advance together, the one by sea and the other on the land, and complete their conquests as they went along. He advised the king, too, to beware of Demaratus's advice. He was a Greek, and, as such, his object was, the admiral believed, to betray and ruin the expedition.
After hearing these conflicting opinions, the king decided to follow the admiral's advice. "I will adopt your counsel," said he, "but I will not hear any thing said against Demaratus, for I am convinced that he is a true and faithful friend to me." Saying this, he dismissed the council.
Chapter X. The Burning of Athens. B.C. 480The Greek fleet retire to Salamis.
When the officers of the Persian fleet had satisfied themselves with examining the battle-field at Thermopylæ, and had heard the narrations given by the soldiers of the terrible combats that had been
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