“What a number of battles you have mentioned!”
“Remember, boys, I am an old soldier, and am therefore at home in speaking of them. From time immemorial there have been battles, and, so long as men are what they are, there will be; but for all that it becomes us to encourage a spirit of peace and good-will to all men. It is only when the oppressed are to be protected, when injuries are to be redressed and rights defended, that the sword ought ever to be drawn from its scabbard, nor even then if those ends can be obtained by more peaceable means. In an unworthy cause battle becomes murder, and victory a polluted and unholy thing.
“As the battle of Marathon is so often alluded to in the pages of history, I will just tell you, in a few words, the particulars of the fight. Marathon was a village of Attica, about ten miles from Athens, in Greece; and Miltiades, an Athenian general, with ten thousand men, though some say twenty-thousand, defeated, in the adjacent plain, the Persian army, under Datis, of one hundred thousand infantry, and ten thousand horse. By this victory the terror of the Persian power was dispelled, and the enthusiastic valour of the Greeks called forth.”
“How long is it since the battle of Marathon?”
“More than two thousand years. The Grecian orators, whenever they wanted to excite their countrymen to warlike deeds, always reminded them of what ten thousand Athenians achieved on the plains of Marathon. The famous siege of Troy took place almost a thousand years before then.”
“Why, then it is three thousand years since the siege of Troy?”
“It is, boys. You know, I dare say, that Homer composed two poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, on the subject; but poets are not often the most correct historians. After a siege of ten years, the Greeks took Troy from the Trojans, it is supposed by stratagem, and then burnt it to the ground.”
“Ay! Did they not send a wooden horse into the place?”
“So the tale goes. It is said, that the Greeks caused a large wooden horse to be made, and hid in it a number of their bravest warriors. They then pretended to give up the siege. At night, after the wooden horse had been taken into the city, the inclosed warriors rushed out, and opened the gates to their companions.”
“But do you not think the tale is true?”