Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/116

 92 fflSTORY OF GREECE. sidered, it seems probable tbat the Thebans remained, but re- mained by their own oflfer, — being citizens of the anti-Persian party, as Diodorus represents them to have been, or perhaps because it may have been hardly less dangerous for them to retire with the Peloponnesians, than to remain, suspected as they were of medism : but when the moment of actual crisis arrived, their courage not standing so firm as that of the Spartans and Thes- pians, they endeavored to save their lives by taking credit for medism, and pretending to have been forcibly detained by Leonidas. The devoted band thus left with Leonidas at Thermopylse con- sisted of the three hundred Spartans, with a certain number of Helots attending them, together with seven hundred Thespians and apparently four hundred Thebans. If there had been before any Lacedgemoniaus, not Spartans, present, they must have re- tired Avith the other Peloponnesians. By previous concert with the guide, Ephialtes, Xerxes delayed his attack upon them until near noon, when the troops under Hydames might soon be ex- pected in the rear. On this last day, however, Leonidas, knowing that all which remained was to seU the lives of his detachment dearly, did not confine himself to the defensive,! but advanced into the wider space outside of the pass ; becoming the aggressor and di'iving before him the foremost of the Persian host, many of whom perished as well by the spears of the Greeks as in the neighboring sea and morass, and even trodden down by their the battle of Thermopylae were essentially double-faced and equivocal : not daring to ^^ke any open part against tbe Greeks before the arrival of Xerxes. The eighty Mykenajans, like the other Peloponnesians, had the isthmus of Corinth behind them as a post which presented good chances of defence. > The story of Diodorus (xi, 10) that Leonidas maae an attack upon the Persian camp during the night, and very nearly penetrated to the regal tent, from which Xei-xes was obliged to flee suddenly, in order to save his life, while the Greeks, after having caused immense slaughter in the camp, were at length overpowered and slain, — is irreconcilable with Herodotus and decidedly to be rejected. Justin, however (ii, 11), and Plutarch (De Herodot. Malign, p. 866), follow it. The rhetoric of Diodorus is not cal- culated to strengthen the evidence in its favor. Plutarch had wiittcn, or intended to write, a biography of Leonidas (De Herodot. Mai. ibid.) ; boi it is not preserved.