“Famous Megistias here is recorded as one whom the Persians,
Crossing Spercheius’s stream, slew on a day that is gone.
He was the seer, who, though knowing as certain the Fates that were on them,
Could not endure to desert leaders of Sparta in war.”
A dramatic story is selected by Herodotus to embellish his account of the battle. Two Spartan soldiers, Eurytus and Aristodemus, lay at the headquarters at Alpeni, suffering with severe ophthalmia. When the news came in of the final crisis, Eurytus, putting on his armour with the help of his helot squire, was led on his blind way into the thick of the battle and fell fighting with the rest, while the helot made good his escape. Aristodemus, as might indeed seem natural in the case of a man thus incapacitated for service, remained behind and returned home. But his fellow citizens at Sparta, incensed at the contrast between the two, refused him light to kindle fire and nicknamed him the “Trembler.” Nor did any subsequent bravery wipe out his disgrace. Even when, in the closing scene of the great drama at Platæa, he surpassed all others in the reckless daring with which he fought and died, he was still excluded from his country’s roll of honour. Thus imperative did it seem that Spartan courage and love of liberty should be proclaimed to all as the rule that knew no exception.
CHAPTER XVI
ARGOLIS
“Few for our eyes are the homes of the heroes,
Lowly these few, they scarce lift from the plain;
So once I marked thee, O luckless Mycenæ,
Then, as I passed thee, a desert’s domain.