Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/151

Rh advantage. The Persians fought valiantly until Mardonius fell, with the flower of his troops round him. The rest of the panic-stricken crowd fled in great confusion to the camp of refuge on the Asopus. Here they were followed by the Spartans, who attempted to pull down the wooden palisade and enter the camp. They were never so good at such operations as at fighting in the open, and according to Herodotus it was not till the Athenians arrived that the camp was taken. Then the unhappy and disheartened crowd were slaughtered like sheep, with hardly a show of resistance. The only part of the Persian army that escaped was a division of forty thousand men led by Artabazos. That cautious commander seems to have felt a sure foreboding of the result of the battle, and had therefore purposely loitered behind when Mardonius marched out of camp on that fatal morning. He was met by the first fugitives from the field, and promptly wheeling round, he hastened along the shortest road that led to the north. By persuading the Thessalians and Macedonians that he was only leading an advanced guard of a victorious army, he obtained a safe and honourable passage through the country; and though in this forced march he lost many men from disease and from the attacks of Thracian tribes, he arrived safely with the rest at Byzantium, and thence took ship for Asia.

This was the end of the Persian invasion. The grand army was annihilated, and there was no fear of further molestation. The Athenians returned to their devastated country and dismantled city, and set