“We will stay.”
“Stay? A handful against a million? Do I hear aright? What can you do?”
“Die.”
“The gods forbid! Suicide is a fearful end. No man should rush on destruction. What requires you to perish?”
“Honour.”
“Honour! Have you not won glory enough by holding Xerxes’s whole power at bay two days? Is not your life precious to Hellas? What is the gain?”
“Glory to Sparta.”
Then in the red morning half-light, folding his big hands across his mailed chest, Leonidas looked from one to another of the little circle. His voice was still in unemotional gutturals when he delivered the longest speech of his life.
“We of Sparta were ordered to defend this pass. The order shall be obeyed. The rest of you must go away—all save the Thebans, whose loyalty I distrust. Tell Leotychides, my colleague at Sparta, to care for Gorgo my wife and Pleistarchus my young son, and to remember that Themistocles the Athenian loves Hellas and gives sage counsel. Pay Strophius of Epidaurus the three hundred drachmæ I owe him for my horse. Likewise—”
A second breathless scout interrupted with the tidings that Hydarnes was on the last stretches of his road. The [pg 239]chief arose, drew the helmet down across his face, and motioned with his spear.