Their tomb an altar; men from tears refrain
To honour them and praise but mourn them not.
Such sepulchre nor drear decay
Nor all-destroying time shall waste; this right have they.
Within their graves the home-bred glory
Of Greece was laid: this witness gives
Leonidas the Spartan in whose story
A wreath of famous virtue ever lives.”
In addition to Leonidas there was also singled out for individual honour and remembrance the seer Megistias of Acarnania, who claimed descent, proud as that of the Levitical priesthood, from the Homeric seer Melampus. From sacrifices made before sunrise on that last day, the priest gave out in advance the certainty of their impending doom. Presently deserters and scouts came in saying that the Persians had forced the heights. Leonidas, recognizing that when they were attacked in the rear also death was a foregone conclusion, commanded Megistias and the greater part of the allies to withdraw while there was still time. But the priest, refusing to depart, remained to die with Leonidas and set the seal of religious sanction on the struggle for liberty, as the modern priesthood of Greece, in the war with the Turks, by their words and blood inspired and sanctioned the patriotism of the people.
The epitaph for the priest was written by Simonides, not by public commission as poet laureate, but, as Herodotus states, by reason of guest-friendship. Even this special inscription, however, on the tomb of the Acarnanian seer, closes with a complimentary reference to Sparta. It was Sparta’s day.