Mosaics of Grecian History

by Marcius Willson; Robert Pierpont Wilson

III. THE SECOND PERSIAN INVASION.

For three years subsequent to the battle of Marathon Darius made great preparations for a second invasion of Greece, intending to lead his forces in person; but death put an end to his plans. Xerxes, his son and successor, was urged by many advisers to carry out his father's intentions. His uncle Artaba'nus alone endeavored to divert him from the enterprise; but Xerxes, having spent four years in collecting a large fleet and a vast body of troops from all quarters of his extensive dominions, set out from Sardis with great ostentation, in the spring of the year 480, to avenge the disgrace of Marathon. HERODOTUS relates that, on reaching Aby'dos, on the Hellespont, Xerxes reviewed his vast host, and wept when he thought of the shortness of human life, and considered that of all his immense host not one man would be alive when a hundred years had passed away. The historian's account is as follows:

Xerxes at Abydos.

"Arrived here, Xerxes wished to look upon his host; so, as there was a throne of white marble upon a hill near the city, which they of Abydos had prepared beforehand, by the king's bidding, for his especial use, Xerxes took his seat on it, and, gazing thence upon the shore below, beheld at one view all his land forces and all his ships. As he looked and saw the whole Hellespont covered with the vessels of his fleet, and all the shore and every plain about Abydos as full as could be of men, Xerxes congratulated himself on his good-fortune; but, after a little while, he wept. Then Artabanus, the king's uncle (the same who at the first so freely spake his mind to the king, and advised him not to lead his army against Greece), when he heard that Xerxes was in tears, went to him, and said:

"'How different, sire, is what thou art now doing from what thou didst a little while ago! Then thou didst congratulate thyself, and now, behold! thou weepest.'

"'There came upon me,' replied he, 'a sudden pity when I thought of the shortness of man's life, and considered that of all this host, so numerous as it is, not one will be alive when a hundred years are gone by.'

"'And yet there are sadder things in life than that,' returned the other. 'Short. as our time is, there is no man, whether it be here among this multitude or elsewhere, who is so happy as not to have felt the wish—I will not say once, but full many a time—that he were dead rather than alive. Calamities fall upon us, sicknesses vex and harass us, and make life, short though it be, to appear long. So death, through the wretchedness of our life, is a most sweet refuge to our race; and God, who gives us the tastes we enjoy of pleasant times, is seen, in his very gift, to be envious.'"
—Trans. by RAWLINSON.

Much that is told about Xerxes—how he cut off Mount Athos from the main-land by a canal; how he made a bridge of boats across the Hellespont, where it is three miles wide, and ordered the waters to be scourged because they destroyed the bridge; how he constructed new bridges, over which his vast army crossed the Hellespont as along a royal road; and how his army drank a whole river dry—all of which is gravely related by Herodotus as fact, is discredited by the Latin poet JUVENAL, who attributes these stories to the imaginations of "browsy poets."

Old Greece a tale of Athos would make out,
Cut from the continent and sailed about;
Seas bid with navies, chariots passing o'er
The channel on a bridge from shore to shore;
Rivers, whose depths no sharp beholder sees,
Drunk, at an army's dinner, to the lees;
With a long legend of romantic things,
Which, in his cups, the browsy poet sings.
—Tenth Satire. Trans. by DRYDEN.

That Xerxes bridged the Hellespont, however, in the manner related by Herodotus, is an accepted fact of history. As MILTON says,

Xerxes, the liberty of Greece to yoke,
From Susa, his Memnonian palace high,
Came to the sea, and over Hellespont
Bridging his way, Europe with Asia joined.
—Paradise Regained.

He crossed to Ses'tus, a city of Thrace, and entered Europe at the head of an army the greatest the world has ever seen, and whose numbers have been estimated at over two millions of fighting men. Having marched along the coast through Thrace and Macedonia, this immense force passed through Thessaly, and arrived, without opposition, at the Pass of Thermop'ylæ, a narrow defile on the western shore of the gulf that lies between Thessaly and Euboea, and almost the only road by which Greece proper, or ancient Greece, could be entered on the north-east by way of Thessaly. In the mean time the Greeks had not been idle. The winter before Xerxes left Asia a general congress of the Grecian states was held at the isthmus of Corinth, at which the differences between Athens and Ægina were first settled, and then a vigorous effort was made by Athens and Sparta to unite the states and cities in one great league against the power of Persia. But, notwithstanding the common danger, only a few of the states responded to the call, and the only people north and east of the isthmus who joined the league were the Athenians, Phocians, Platæans, and Thespians. The command of both the land and naval forces was relinquished by Athens to the Spartans; and it was resolved to make the first stand against Persia at the Pass of Thermopylæ.

THE BATTLE OF THERMOPYLÆ.

When the Persian monarch reached Thermopylæ, he found a body of but eight thousand men, commanded by the Spartan king Leonidas, prepared to dispute his passage. A herald was sent to the Greeks commanding them to lay down their arms; but Leonidas replied, with true Spartan brevity, "Come and take them!" When it was remarked that the Persians were so numerous that their darts would darken the sun, "Then," replied Dien'eces, a Spartan, "we shall fight in the shade." Trained from youth to the endurance of all hardships, and forbidden by their laws ever to flee from an enemy, the sons of Sparta were indeed formidable antagonists for the Persians to encounter.

Stern were her sons. Upon Euro'tas' bank,
Where black Ta-yg'etus o'er cliff and peak
Waves his dark pines, and spreads his glistening snows,
On five low hills their city rose: no walls,
No ramparts closed it round; its battlements
And towers of strength were men—high-minded men,
Who heard the cry of danger with more joy
Than softer natures listen to the voice
Of pleasure; who, with unremitting toil
In chase, in battle, or athletic course,
To fierceness steeled their native hardihood;
Who sunk in death as tranquil as in sleep,
And, hemmed by hostile myriads, never turned
To flight, but closer drew before their breasts
The massy buckler, firmer fixed the foot,
Bit the writhed lip, and, where they struggled, fell.
—HAYGARTH.

Xerxes, astonished that the Greeks did not disperse at the sight of his vast army, waited four days, and then ordered a body of his troops to attack them, and lead them captive before him; but the barbarians fell in heaps in the very presence of the king, and blocked the narrow pass with their dead. Xerxes now thought the contest worthy of the superior prowess of his own guards, the ten thousand Immortals. These were led up as to a certain victory; but the Greeks stood their ground as before. The combat lasted a whole day, and the slaughter of the enemy was terrible. Another day of combat followed, with like results, and the confidence of the Persian monarch was changed into despondence and perplexity.

While in the uncertainty caused by these repeated failures to force a passage, Xerxes learned, from a Greek traitor, of a secret path over the mountains, by which he was able to throw a force of twenty thousand men into the rear of the brave defenders of the pass. Leonidas, seeing that his post was no longer tenable, now dismissed all his allies that desired to retire, and retained only three hundred fellow-Spartans, with some Thespians and Thebans—in all about one thousand men. He would have saved two of his kinsmen, by sending them with messages to Sparta; but the one said he had come to bear arms, not to carry letters, and the other that his deeds would tell all that Sparta desired to know. Leonidas did not wait for an attack, but sallying forth from the pass, and falling suddenly upon the Persians, he penetrated to the very center of their host, where the battle raged furiously, and two of the brothers of Xerxes were slain. Then the surviving Greeks, with the exception of the Thebans, fell back within the pass and took their final stand upon a hillock, where they fought with the valor of desperation until every man was slain. The Thebans, however, who from the first had been distrusted by Leonidas, threw down their arms early in the fight, and begged for quarter.

The conflict itself, and the glory of the struggle on the part of the Spartans, have been favorite themes with the poets of succeeding ages. The following description is by HAYGARTH:

Long and doubtful was the fight;
Day after day the hostile army poured
Its choicest warriors, but in vain; they fell,
Or fled inglorious. Foul treachery
At last prevailed; a steep and dangerous path,
Known only to the wandering mountaineers,
By difficult ascent led to the rear
Of the heroic Greeks. The morning dawned,
And the brave chieftain, when he raised his head
From the cold rock on which he rested, viewed
Banner and helmet, and the waving fire
From lance and buckler, glancing high amidst
Each pointed cliff and copse which stretch along
Yon mountain's bosom. Then he saw his fate;
But saw it with an unaverted eye:
Around his spear he called his countrymen,
And with a smile that o'er his rugged cheek
Pass'd transient, like the momentary flash
Streaking a thunder-cloud—"But we will die"
(He cried) "like Grecians; we will leave our sons
A bright example. Let each warrior bind
Firmly his mail, and grasp his lance, and scowl
From underneath his helm a frown of death
Upon his shrinking foe; then let him fix
His firm, unbending knee, and where he fights
There fall." They heard, and, on their shields
Clashing the war-song with a noble rage,
Rushed headlong in the conflict of the fight,
And died, as they had lived, triumphantly.

The Greek historian Diodorus, followed by the biographer Plutarch and the Latin historian Justin, states that Leonidas made the attack on the Persian camp during the night, and in the darkness and in the confusion of the struggle nearly penetrated to the royal tent of Xerxes. On this basis of supposed facts the poet CROLY wrote his stirring poem descriptive of the conflict; but the statement of Diodorus, which is irreconcilable with Herodotus, is generally discredited by modern writers.

Monuments to the memory of the Greeks who fell were erected on the battle-ground, and many were the epitaphs written to commemorate the heroism of the famous three hundred; but the oldest, best, and most celebrated of these is the inscription that was placed on their altar-tomb, written by the poet SIMON'IDES, of Ce'os. It consists of only two lines in the Original Greek. [Footnote: The following is the original Greek of the epitaph: "O xeiu hangeddeiy Dakedaimouiois hoti taede keimetha, tois keiuoy hraemasi peithomeuoi.">[ All Greece for centuries had them by heart; but in the lapse of time she forgot them, and then, in the language of "Christopher North," "Greece was living Greece no more." There have been no less than three Latin and eighteen English versions of this epitaph; and herewith we give three of the latter:

Go, stranger, and to Laç-e-dæ'mon tell
That here, obedient to her laws, we fell.

Stranger, to Sparta say that here we rest
In death, obedient to her high behest.

Go, tell the Spartans, thou who passest by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

Another inscription, said to have been written by Simonides for the tombs of the heroes of Thermopylæ, is as follows:

Happy they, the chosen brave,
Whom Destiny, whom Valor led
To their consecrated grave
'Mid Thessalia's mountains dread.
Their sepulchre's a holy shrine,
Their epitaph, the engraven line
Recording former deeds divine;
And Pity's melancholy wail
Is changed to hymns of praise that load the evening gale.

Entombed in noble deed's they're laid—
Nor silent rust, nor Time's inexorable hour,
Shall e'er have power
To rend that shroud which veils their hallowed shade.
Hellas mourns the dead
Sunk in their narrow grave;
But thou, dark Sparta's chief, whose bosom bled
First in the battle's wave,
Bear witness that they fell as best beseems the brave.

Leonidas himself fell in the plain, and his body was carried into the defile by his followers. He was buried at the north entrance to the pass, and over his grave was erected a mound, on which was placed the figure of a lion sculptured in stone. The sculptured lion marked the grave of the hero down to the time Of Herodotus.

On Phocis' shores the cavern's gloom
Imbrowns yon solitary tomb:
There, in the sad and silent grave
Repose the ashes of the brave
Who, when the Persian from afar
On Hellas poured the stream of war,
At Freedom's call, with martial pride,
For his loved country fought and died.
Seek'st thou the place where, 'midst the dead
The hero of the battle bled?
Yon sculptured lion, frowning near,
Points out Leonidas's bier.
—ANON.

The poet BYRON, who was peculiarly the friend of Greece, and an earnest admirer of both the genius and the heroic deeds of her sons, has written the following lines commemorating the glory of those who fell at Thermopylæ:

They fell devoted, but undying;
The very gale their names seemed sighing:
The waters murmured of their name;
The woods were peopled with their fame;
The silent pillar, lone and gray,
Claimed kindred with their sacred clay:
Their spirits wrapped the dusky mountain,
Their memory sparkled o'er the fountain;
The meanest rill, the mightiest river
Rolled mingling with their fame forever.

THE ABANDONMENT OF ATHENS.

While fighting was in progress at Thermopylæ, a Greek fleet, under the command of the Spartan Eurybi'ades, that had been sent to guard the Euboean Sea, encountered the Persian ships at Artemis'ium. In several engagements that occurred, the Athenian vessels, commanded by Themistocles, were especially distinguished; and although the contests with the enemy were not decisive, yet, says PLUTARCH, "they were of great advantage to the Greeks, who learned by experience that neither the number of ships, nor the beauty and splendor of their ornaments, nor the vaunting shouts and songs of the Persians, were anything dreadful to men who know how to fight hand-to-hand, and are determined to behave gallantly. These things they were taught to despise when they came to close action and grappled with the foe. Hence in this respect, and for this reason, Pindar's sentiments appear just, when he says of the fight at Artemisium,

"'Twas then that Athens the foundation laid
Of Liberty's fair structure.'"

Although the Greeks were virtually the victors in these engagements, at least one-half of their vessels were disabled; and, hearing of the defeat of Leonidas at Thermopylæ, they resolved to retreat. Having sailed through the Euboean Sea, the fleet kept on its way until it reached the Island of Salamis, in the Saron'ic Gulf. Here Themistocles learned that no friendly force was guarding the frontier of Attica, although the Peloponnesian states had promised to send an army into Bœotia; and he saw that there was nothing to prevent the Persians from marching on Athens. He therefore advised the Athenians to abandon the city to the mercy of the Persians, and commit their safety and their hopes of victory to the navy. The advice was adopted, though not without a hard struggle; and those of the inhabitants who were able to bear arms retired to the Island of Salamis, while the old and infirm, the women and children, found shelter in a city of Argolis.

THE BATTLE OF SALAMIS.

Xerxes pursued his march through Greece unopposed except by Thespiæ and Platæa, which towns he reduced, and spread desolation over Attica until he arrived at the foot of the Cecropian hill, which he found guarded by a handful of desperate citizens who refused to surrender. But the brave defenders were soon put to the sword, and Athens was plundered and then burned to the ground. About this time the Persian fleet arrived in the Bay of Phale'rum, and Xerxes immediately dispatched it to block up that of the Greeks in the narrow strait of Salamis. Eurybiades, the Spartan, who still commanded the Grecian fleet, was urged by Themistocles, and also by Aristides, who had been recalled from exile, to hazard an engagement at once in the narrow strait, where the superior numbers of the Persians would be of little avail. The Peloponnesian commanders, however, wished to move the fleet to the Isthmus of Corinth, where it would have the aid of the land forces. At last the counsel of Themistocles prevailed, and the Greeks made the attack. The engagement was a courageous and persistent one on both sides, but the Greeks came off victorious. Xerxes had caused a royal throne to be erected on one of the neighboring heights, where, surrounded by his army, he might witness the naval conflict in which he was so confident of victory. But he had the misfortune to see his magnificent navy almost utterly annihilated. Among the slain was the brother of Xerxes, who commanded the navy, and many other Persians of the highest rank.

A king sate on the rocky brow
Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
And ships, by thousands, lay below,
And men in nations—all were his!
He counted them at break of day—
And when the sun set, where were they?
—BYRON.

Anxious now for his own personal safety, the Persian monarch's whole care centered on securing his retreat by land. He passed rapidly into Thessaly, and, after a march of forty-five days, reached the shores of the Hellespont to find his bridges washed away.

But how returned he? Say; this soul of fire,
This proud barbarian, whose impatient ire
Chastised the winds that disobeyed his nod
With stripes ne'er suffered by the Æolian god—
But how returned he? say; his navy lost,
In a small bark he fled the hostile coast,
And, urged by terror, drove his laboring prore
Through floating carcasses and fields of gore.
So Xerxes sped; so sped the conquering race:
They catch at glory, and they clasp disgrace.
—JUVENAL, Satire X. Trans. by GIFFORD.

The ignominious retreat of Xerxes was in marked contrast to the pomp and magnificence of his advance into Greece. Death from famine and distress spread its ravages among his troops, and the remnant that returned with him to Asia was but "a wreck, or fragment, rather than a part of his huge host."

O'er Hellespont and Athos' marble head,
More than a god he came, less than a man he fled.
—LUIGI ALAMANNI. Trans. by AUBREY DE VERE.

A Celebrated Description of the Battle.

Among the Athenians who nobly fought at Marathon, and who also took part in the battle of Salamis, was the tragedian Æschylus; and so much did he distinguish himself in the capacity of soldier, that, in the picture which the Athenians caused to be painted representing the former battle, the figure of Æschylus held so prominent a place as to be at once recognized, even by a casual observer. Eight years after the latter battle Æschylus composed his tragedy of The Persians, which portrays, in vivid colors, the defeat of Xerxes, and gives a fuller, and, indeed, better account of that memorable sea-fight than is found even in the pages of Herodotus.

Says MITFORD, "It is matter of regret, not indeed that Æschylus was a poet; but that prose-writing was yet in his age so little common that his poetical sketch of this great transaction is the most authoritative, the clearest, and the most consistent of any that has passed to posterity." In the famous tragedy of Æschylus the account of the destruction of the Persian fleet is supposed to be given by a Persian messenger, escaped from the fight, to Atos'sa, the mother of Xerxes. The scene is laid at Susa, the Persian capital, near the tomb of Darius. The whole drama may be considered as a proud triumphal song in favor of Liberty.

Atossa, appearing with her attendants, and anxious for news of her son, first inquires in what clime are the towers of Athens— the conquest of which her son had willed—and what mighty armies, what arms, and what treasures the Athenians boast, and what mighty monarch rules over them; and is told, to her surprise, that instead of the strong bow, like the Persians, they have stout spears and massy bucklers; and although their rich earth is a copious fount of silver, yet the people, "slaves to no lord, own no kingly power." Then enters the messenger, who exclaims:

Woe to the towns of Asia's peopled realms!
Woe to the land of Persia, once the port
Of boundless wealth! All, at a blow, has perished!
Ah me! How sad his task who brings ill tidings!
But, to my tale of woe—I needs must tell it.
Persians—the whole barbaric host has fallen!

At this astounding news the chorus breaks out in, concert:

Oh horror, horror, what a train of ills!
Alas! Is Hellas then unscathed? And has
Our arrowy tempest spent its force in vain?
Raise the funereal cry—with dismal notes
Wailing the wretched Persians. Oh, how ill
They planned their measures! All their army perished!

Then the messenger exclaims:

I speak not from report; but these mine eyes
Beheld the ruin which my tongue would utter.
In heaps the unhappy dead lie on the strand
Of Salamis, and all the neighboring shores.
Oh, Salamis—how hateful is thy name!
Oh, how my heart groans but to think of Athens!

Atossa at length finds words to say:

Astonished with these ills, my voice thus long
Hath wanted utterance: griefs like these exceed
The power of speech or question: yet e'en such,
Inflicted by the gods, must mortal man,
Constrained by loud necessity endure.
But tell me all: without distraction, tell me
All this calamity, though many a groan
Burst from thy laboring heart. Who is not fallen?
What leader must we wail? What sceptred chief,
Dying, hath left his troops without a lord?

The messenger tells her that Xerxes himself lives, and still beholds the light, and then gives her a general summary of the disasters that befell the Persians, the names of the chiefs that were slain, the numbers of the horsemen, and the spearmen, and the seamen that lay "slaughtered on the rocks," "buried in the waters," or "mouldering on the dreary shore." At the request of Atossa he then proceeds to give the following more detailed account, which, as we have said, is the best history that we have of this memorable naval conflict:

Our evil genius, lady, or some god
Hostile to Persia, led to every ill.
Forth from the troops of Athens came a Greek,
And thus addressed thy son, the imperial Xerxes:
"Soon as the shades of night descend, the Grecians
Shall quit their station: rushing to their oars,
They mean to separate, and in secret flight
Seek safety." At these words the royal chief,
Little dreaming of the wiles of Greece,
And gods averse, to all the naval leaders
Gave his high charge: "Soon as yon sun shall cease
To dart his radiant beams, and dark'ning night
Ascends the temple of the sky, arrange
In three divisions your well-ordered ships,
And guard each pass, each outlet of the seas:
Others enring around this rocky isle
Of Salamis. Should Greece escape her fate,
And work her way by secret flight, your heads
Shall answer the neglect." This harsh command
He gave, exulting in his mind, nor knew
What Fate designed. With martial discipline
And prompt obedience, snatching a repast,
Each manner fixed well his ready oar.

Soon as the golden sun was set, and night
Advanced, each, trained to ply the dashing oar,
Assumed his seat; in arms each warrior stood,
Troop cheering troop through all the ships of war.
Each to the appointed station steers his course,
And through the night his naval force each chief
Fix'd to secure the passes. Night advanced,
But not by secret flight did Greece attempt
To escape. The morn, all beauteous to behold,
Drawn by white steeds, bounds o'er the enlighten'd earth:

At once from every Greek, with glad acclaim,
Burst forth the song of war, whose lofty notes
The echo of the island rocks returned,
Spreading dismay through Persia's host, thus fallen
From their high hopes; no flight this solemn strain
Portended, but deliberate valor bent
On daring battle; while the trumpet's sound
Kindled the flames of war. But when their oars
(The pæan ended) with impetuous force
Dash'd the surrounding surges, instant all
Rush'd on in view; in orderly array
The squadron of the right first led, behind
Rode their whole fleet; and now distinct was heard
From every part this voice of exhortation:

"Advance, ye sons of Greece, from thraldom save
Your country—save your wives, your children save,
The temples of your gods, the sacred tomb
Where rest your honor'd ancestors; this day
The common cause of all demands your valor."
Meantime from Persia's hosts the deep'ning shout
Answer'd their shout; no time for cold delay;
But ship 'gainst ship its brazen beak impell'd.

First to the charge a Grecian galley rush'd;
Ill the Phoenician bore the rough attack—
Its sculptured prow all shatter'd. Each advanced,
Daring an opposite. The deep array
Of Persia at the first sustain'd the encounter;
But their throng'd numbers, in the narrow seas
Confined, want room for action; and deprived
Of mutual aid, beaks clash with beaks, and each
Breaks all the other's oars: with skill disposed,
The Grecian navy circled them around
In fierce assault; and, rushing from its height,
The inverted vessel sinks.

The sea no more
Wears its accustomed aspect, with foul wrecks
And blood disfigured; floating carcasses
Roll on the rocky shores; the poor remains
Of the barbaric armament to flight
Ply every oar inglorious: onward rush
The Greeks amid the ruins of the fleet,
As through a shoal of fish caught in the net,
Spreading destruction; the wide ocean o'er
Wailings are heard, and loud laments, till night,
With darkness on her brow, brought grateful truce.
Should I recount each circumstance of woe,
Ten times on my unfinished tale the sun
Would set; for be assured that not one day
Could close the ruin of so vast a host.

After some farther account, by the messenger, of the magnitude of the ruin that had overwhelmed the Persian host, the mother of Xerxes thus apostrophizes and laments that "invidious fortune" which had pulled down this ruin on her son's devoted head:

Invidious fortune, how thy baleful power
Hath sunk the hopes of Persia! Bitter fruit
My son hath tasted from his purposed vengeance
On Athens, famed for arms; the fatal field
Of Marathon, red with barbaric blood,
Sufficed not: that defeat he thought to avenge,
And pulled this hideous ruin on his head!
Ah me! what sorrows for our ruined host
Oppress my soul! Ye visions of the night,
Haunting my dreams, how plainly did you show
These ills! You set them in too fair a light.

In the Epode, or closing portion of the tragedy, the following "Lament" may be considered as expressing the feelings with which the Persians bewailed this defeat, with reference to its effects upon Persian authority over the Asiatic nations:

With sacred awe
The Persian law
No more shall Asia's realm revere:
To their lord's hand,
At his command,
No more the exacted tribute bear.
Who now falls prostrate at the monarch's throne?
His regal greatness is no more.
Now no restraint the wanton tongue shall own,
Free from the golden curb of power;
For on the rocks, washed by the beating flood,
His awe-commanding nobles lie in blood.
—POTTER'S trans.

Among the modern poems on Xerxes and the battle of Salamis, is one by the Scotch poet and translator, JOHN STUART BLACKIE, from which we take the following extracts:

Seest thou where, sublimely seated on a silver-footed throne,
With a high tiara crested, belted with a jewelled zone,
Sits the king of kings, and, looking from the rocky mountain-side,
Scans, with masted armies studded far, the fair Saronic tide?
Looks he not with high hope beaming? looks he not with pride elate?
Seems he not a god? The words he speaks are big with instant fate.

He hath come from far Euphrates, and from Tigris' rushing tide,
To subdue the strength of Athens, to chastise the Spartan's pride;
He hath come with countless armies, gathered slowly from afar,
From the plain, and from the mountain, marshalled ranks of motley war;
From the land and from the ocean, that the burdened billows groan,
That the air is black with banners, which great Xerxes calls his own.

Soothly he hath nobly ridden o'er the fair fields, o'er the waste,
As the earth might bear the burden, with a weighty-footed haste;
He hath cut in twain the mountain, he hath bridged the rolling main,
He hath lashed the flood of Hel'le, bound the billow with a chain;
And the rivers shrink before him, and the sheeted lakes are dry,
From his burden-bearing oxen, and his hordes of cavalry;
And the gates of Greece stand open; Ossa and Olympus fail;
And the mountain-girt Æmo'nia spreads the river and the gale.

Stood nor man nor god before him; he hath scoured the Attic land,
Chased the valiant sons of Athens to a barren island's strand;
He hath hedged them round with triremes, lines on lines of bristling war;
He hath doomed the prey for capture; he hath spread his meshes far;
And he sits sublimely seated on a throne with pride elate,
To behold the victim fall beneath the sudden swooping Fate.

Then follows an account of the nations which formed the Persian hosts, their arrangement to entrap the Greeks, who were thought to be meditating flight, the patriotic enthusiasm of the latter, the naval battle which followed, and the disastrous defeat of the Persians, the poem closing with the following satirical address to Xerxes:

Wake thee! wake thee! blinded Xerxes! God hath found thee out at last;
Snaps thy pride beneath his judgment, as the tree before the blast.
Haste thee! haste thee! speed thy couriers—Persian couriers travel lightly—
To declare thy stranded navy, that by cruel death unsightly
Dimmed thy glory. Hie thee! hie thee! hence, even by what way thou camest,
Dwarfed to whoso saw thee mightiest, and where thou wert fiercest, tamest!

Frost and fire shall league together, angry heaven to earth respond,
Strong Poseidon with his trident break thy impious-vaunted bond;
Where thou passed, with mouths uncounted, eating up the famished land,
With few men a boat shall ferry Xerxes to the Asian strand.
Haste thee! haste thee! they are waiting by the palace gates for thee;
By the golden gates of Susa eager mourners wait for thee.
Haste thee! where the guardian elders wait, a hoary-bearded train;
They shall see their king, but never see the sons they loved, again.

Where thy weeping mother waits thee, Queen Atossa waits to see
Dire fulfilment of her troublous, vision-haunted sleep in thee.
She hath dreamt, and she shall see it, how an eagle, cowed with awe,
Gave his kingly crest to pluck before a puny falcon's claw.
Haste thee! where the mighty shade of great Darius through the gloom
Rises dread, to teach thee wisdom, couldst thou learn it, from the tomb.
There begin the sad rehearsal, and, while streaming tears are shed,
To the thousand tongues that ask thee, tell the myriads of thy dead!

THE BATTLE OF PLATÆ'A.

When Xerxes returned to his own dominions he left his general, Mardo'nius, with three hundred thousand men, to complete, if possible, the conquest of Greece. Mardonius passed the winter in Thessaly, but in the following summer his army was totally defeated, and himself slain, in the battle of Platæa. Two hundred thousand Persians fell here, and only a small remnant escaped across the Hellespont. We extract from BULWER'S Athens the following eloquent description of this battle, both for the sake of its beauty and to show the effect of the religion of the Greeks upon the military character of the people. Mardonius had advanced to the neighbor-hood of Platæa, when he encountered that part of the Grecian army composed mostly of Spartans and Lacedæmonians, commanded by Pausa'nias, and numbering about fifty thousand men. The Athenians had previously fallen back to a more secure position, where the entire army had been ordered to concentrate; and Pausanias had but just commenced the retrograde movement when the Persians made their appearance.

BULWER says: "As the troops of Mardonius advanced, the rest of the Persian armament, deeming the task was now not to fight but to pursue, raised their standards and poured forward tumultuously, without discipline or order. Pausanias, pressed by the Persian line, lost no time in sending to the Athenians for succor. But when the latter were on their march with the required aid, they were suddenly intercepted by the Greeks in the Persian service, and cut off from the rescue of the Spartans.

"The Spartans beheld themselves thus unsupported with considerable alarm. Committing himself to the gods, Pausanias ordained a solemn sacrifice, his whole army awaiting the result, while the shafts of the Persians poured on them near and fast. But the entrails presented discouraging omens, and the sacrifice was again renewed. Meanwhile the Spartans evinced their characteristic fortitude and discipline—not one man stirring from the ranks until the auguries should assume a more favoring aspect; all harassed, and some wounded by the Persian arrows, they yet, seeking protection only beneath their broad bucklers, waited with a stern patience the time of their leader and of Heaven. Then fell Callic'rates, the stateliest and strongest soldier in the whole army, lamenting not death, but that his sword was as yet undrawn against the invader.

"And still sacrifice after sacrifice seemed to forbid the battle, when Pausanias, lifting his eyes, that streamed with tears, to the Temple of Juno, that stood hard by, supplicated the goddess that, if the fates forbade the Greeks to conquer, they might at least fall like warriors; and, while uttering this prayer, the tokens waited for became suddenly visible in the victims, and the augurs announced the promise of coming victory. Therewith the order of battle ran instantly through the army, and, to use the poetical comparison of Plutarch, the Spartan phalanx suddenly stood forth in its strength like some fierce animal, erecting its bristles, and preparing its vengeance for the foe. The ground, broken into many steep and precipitous ridges, and intersected by the Aso'pus, whose sluggish stream winds over a broad and rushy bed, was unfavorable to the movements of cavalry, and the Persian foot advanced therefore on the Greeks.

"Drawn up in their massive phalanx, the Lacedæmonians presented an almost impenetrable body—sweeping slowly on, compact and serried—while the hot and undisciplined valor of the Persians, more fortunate in the skirmish than the battle, broke itself in a thousand waves upon that moving rock. Pouring on in small numbers at a time, they fell fast round the progress of the Greeks —their armor slight against the strong pikes of Sparta—their courage without skill, their numbers without discipline; still they fought gallantly, even when on the ground seizing the pikes with their naked hands, and, with the wonderful agility that still characterizes the Oriental swordsmen, springing to their feet and regaining their arms when seemingly overcome, wresting away their enemies' shields, and grappling with them desperately hand to hand.

"Foremost of a band of a thousand chosen Persians, conspicuous by his white charger, and still more by his daring valor, rode Mardonius, directing the attack—fiercer wherever his armor blazed. Inspired by his presence the Persians fought worthily of their warlike fame, and, even in falling, thinned the Spartan ranks. At length the rash but gallant leader of the Asiatic armies received a mortal wound—his skull was crushed in by a stone from the hand of a Spartan. His chosen band, the boast of the army, fell fighting around him, but his death was the general signal of defeat and flight. Encumbered by their long robes, and pressed by the relentless conquerors, the Persians fled in disorder toward their camp, which was secured by wooden intrenchments, by gates, and towers, and walls. Here, fortifying themselves as they best might, they contended successfully, and with advantage, against the Lacedæmonians, who were ill skilled in assault and siege.

"Meanwhile the Athenians gained the victory on the plains over the Greek allies of Mardonius, and now joined the Spartans at the camp. The Athenians are said to have been better skilled in the art of siege than the Spartans; yet at that time their experience could scarcely have been greater. The Athenians were at all times, however, of a more impetuous temper; and the men who had 'run to the charge' at Marathon were not to be baffled by the desperate remnant of their ancient foe. They scaled the walls; they effected a breach through which the Tege'ans were the first to rush; the Greeks poured fast and fierce into the camp. Appalled, dismayed, stupefied by the suddenness and greatness of their loss, the Persians no longer sustained their fame; they dispersed in all directions, falling, as they fled, with a prodigious slaughter, so that out of that mighty armament scarce three thousand effected an escape."

But the final overthrow of the Persian hosts on the battle-field of Platæa has an importance far greater than that of the deliverance of the Greeks from immediate danger. Perhaps no other event in ancient history has been so momentous in its consequences; for what would have been the condition of Greece had she then become a province of the Persian empire? The greatness which she subsequently attained, and the glory and renown with which she has filled the earth, would never have had an existence. Little Greece sat at the gates of a continent, and denied an entrance to the gorgeous barbarism of Asia. She determined that Europe should not be Asiatic; that civilization should not sink into the abyss of unmitigated despotism. She turned the tide of Persian encroachment back across the Hellespont, and Alexander only followed the refluent wave to the Indus.

"'Twas then," as SOUTHEY says,

"The fate
Of unborn ages hung upon the fray:
T'was at Platæa, in that awful hour
When Greece united smote the Persian's power.
For, had the Persian triumphed, then the spring
Of knowledge from that living source had ceased;
All would have fallen before the barbarous king—
Art, Science, Freedom: the despotic East,
Setting her mark upon the race subdued,
Had stamped them in the mould of sensual servitude."

Furthermore, on this subject we subjoin the following reflections from the author previously quoted:

"When the deluge of the Persian arms rolled back to its Eastern bed, and the world was once more comparatively at rest, the continent of Greece rose visibly and majestically above the rest of the civilized earth. Afar in the Latian plains the infant state of Rome was silently and obscurely struggling into strength against the neighboring and petty states in which the old Etrurian civilization was rapidly passing into decay. The genius of Gaul and Germany, yet unredeemed from barbarism, lay scarce known, save where colonized by Greeks, in the gloom of its woods and wastes.

"The ambition of Persia, still the great monarchy of the world, was permanently checked and crippled; the strength of generations had been wasted, and the immense extent of the empire only served yet more to sustain the general peace, from the exhaustion of its forces. The defeat of Xerxes paralyzed the East. Thus Greece was left secure, and at liberty to enjoy the tranquillity it had acquired, and to direct to the arts of peace the novel and amazing energies which had been prompted by the dangers and exalted by the victories of war."

On the very day of the battle of Platæa the remains of the Persian fleet which had escaped at Salamis, and which had been drawn up on shore at Myc'a-le, on the coast of Ionia, were burned by the Grecians; and Tigra'nes, the Persian commander of the land forces, and forty thousand of his men, were slain. This was the first signal blow struck by the Greek at the power of Persia on the continent. "Lingering at Sardis," says BULWER, "Xerxes beheld the scanty and exhausted remnants of his mighty force, the fugitives of the fatal days of Mycale and Platæa. The army over which he had wept in the zenith of his power had fulfilled the prediction of his tears; and the armed might of Media and Egypt, of Lydia and Assyria, was now no more!"

In one of the comedies of the Greek poet ARISTOPH'ANES, entitled The Wasps, which is designed principally to satirize the passion of the Athenians for the excitement of the law courts, there occurs the following episode, that has for its basis the activity of the Athenians at the battle of Platæa. We learn from this episode that the appellation, the "Attic Wasp," had its origin in the venomous persistence with which the Athenians, swarming like wasps, stung the Persians in their retreat, after the defeat of Mardonius. Occurring in a popular satirical comedy, it also shows how readily any allusion to the famous victories of Greece could be made to do service on popular occasions—an allusion that the dramatist knew would awaken in the popular heart great admiration for him and his work:

With torch and brand the Persian horde swept on from east to west,
To storm the hives that we had stored, and smoke us from our nest;
Then we laid our hand to spear and targe, and met him on his path;
Shoulder to shoulder, close we stood, and bit our lips for wrath.
So fast and thick the arrows flew, that none might see the heaven,
But the gods were on our side that day, and we bore them back at even.
High o'er our heads, an omen good, we saw the owlet wheel,
And the Persian trousers in their backs felt the good Attic steel.
Still as they fled we followed close, a swarm of vengeful foes,
And stung them where we chanced to light, on cheek, and lip, and nose.
So to this day, barbarians say, when whispered far or near,
More than all else the ATTIC WASP is still a name of fear.
—Trans. by W. LUCAS COLLINS.

CHAPTER X.

THE RISE AND GROWTH OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE.