67 ([return])
[ Justin, ii., ix.
68 ([return])
[ Another Spartan, who had been sent into Thessaly, and was therefore absent from the slaughter of Thermopylae, destroyed himself.
69 ([return])
[ The cross was the usual punishment in Persia for offences against the king’s majesty or rights. Perhaps, therefore, Xerxes, by the outrage, only desired to signify that he considered the Spartan as a rebel.
70 ([return])
[ “Thus fought the Greeks at Thermopylae,” are the simple expressions of Herodotus, lib. vii., c. 234.
71 ([return])
[ Thus the command of the Athenian forces was at one time likely to fall upon Epicydes, a man whose superior eloquence had gained an ascendency with the people, which was neither due to his integrity nor to his military skill. Themistocles is said to have bribed him to forego his pretensions. Themistocles could be as severe as crafty when occasion demanded: he put to death an interpreter who accompanied the Persian envoys, probably to the congress at the Isthmus [Footnote Plutarch implies that these envoys came to Athens, but Xerxes sent none to that city.:, for debasing the language of free Greeks to express the demands of the barbarian enemy.