[48] Pausanias stales, with implicit belief, that the battle-field was haunted at night by supernatural beings, and that the noise of combatants and the snorting of horses were heard to resound on it. The superstition has survived the change of creeds, and the shepherds of the neighborhood still believe that spectral warriors contend on the plain at midnight, and they say that they have heard the shouts of the combatants and the neighing of the steeds.
[49] It is probable that the Greek light-armed irregulars were active in the attack on the Persian ships, and it was in this attack that the Greeks suffered their principal loss.
[50] Greece.
INVASION OF GREECE BY PERSIANS UNDER XERXES
DEFENCE OF THERMOPYLÆ
B.C. 480
HERODOTUS
The invasion of Greece by Xerxes is the subject of the great history written in nine books by Herodotus. His object is to show the preëminence of Greece, whose fleets and armies defeated the forces of the Persians after these latter had triumphed over the most powerful nations of the earth. Xerxes collected a vast army from all parts of the empire. The Phoenicians furnished him with an enormous fleet, and he made a bridge of a double line of boats across the Hellespont and cut a canal through the peninsula of Mount Athos. He reached Sardis in the autumn of B.C. 481, and the next year his army crossed the bridge of boats, taking seven days and seven nights for the transit. The number of his fighting men was over two millions and a half. His ships of war were twelve hundred and seven in number, and he had three thousand smaller vessels for carrying his land forces and supplies. At the narrow pass of Thermopylæ, in the northeast of Greece, this immense army was checked for a while by the heroic Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans, who, however, perished in their attempt to prevent the Persian's attack on Athens, which city was almost entirely destroyed by the invaders. The sea-fight of Salamis was won by the Greeks against enormous odds; and in the battle of Platæa, B.C. 479, the defeat of the Persians by the Greek land forces was made more complete by the death of Mardonius, the most renowned general of Xerxes.