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."