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 130 A Short History of The World Sparta, sending a herald, a swift runner, imploring the Spartans not to let Greeks become slaves to barbarians. This runner (the prototype of all " Marathon " runners) did over a hundred miles of broken country in less than two days. The Spartans responded promptly and generously ; but when, in three days, the Spartan force reached Athens, there was nothing for it to do but to view the battlefield and the bodies of the defeated Persian soldiers. The Persian fleet had returned to Asia. So ended the first Persian attack on Greece. "- -, -- -" - The next was much more impressive. Darius died soon after the news of his defeat at Marathon reached him, and for four years his son and successor, Xerxes, prepared a host to crush the Greeks. For a time terror united all the Greeks. The army of Xerxes was certainly the greatest that had hitherto been assembled in the world. It was a huge assembly of discordant elements. It crossed the Dardanelles, 480 b.c, by a bridge of boats ; and along the coast as it advanced moved an equally miscellaneous fleet carrying sup- plies. At the narrow pass of Thermopylae a small force of 1400 men under the Spartan Leonidas resisted this multitude, and after a fight of unsurpassed heroism was completely destroyed. Every man was killed. But the losses they inflicted upon the Persians were enormous, and the army of Xerxes poured on to Thebes* and Athens in a chastened mood. Thebes surrendered and made terms. The Athenians abandoned their city and it was burnt. Greece seemed in the hands of the conqueror, but again came victory against the odds and all expectations. The Greek fleet, though not a third the size of the Persian, assailed it in the bay of Salamis and destroyed it. Xerxes found himself and his immense army cut off from supplies and his heart failed him. He retreated to Asia with one half of his army, leaving the rest to be defeated at Platea (479 b.c.) what time the remnants of the Persian fleet were hunted down by the Greeks and destroyed at Mycale in Asia Minor. The Persian danger was at an end. Most of the Greek cities in Asia became free. All this is told in great detail and with much picturesqueness in the first of written histories, the History of Hero- dotus. This Herodotus was born about 484 B.C. in the Ionian city of Halicarnassus in Asia Minor, and he visited Babylon and Egypt in his search for exact particulars. From Mycale onward Persia sank into a confusion of dynastic troubles. Xerxes was murdered
 * A Greek city not to be confused with the great city of the same name in Egypt.