Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/127

 BATTLES OF THERMOPYLAE AND ARTEIIISIUM. 103 mopylae to survey the field of battle and the dead. Eespecting the number of the dead, Xerxes is asserted to have deliberately imposed upon the spectators : he buried all his own dead, except one thousand, Avhose bodies were left out, — while the total num- ber of Greeks who had perished at Thermopylae, four thousand in number, were all left exposed, and in one heap, so as to create an impression that their loss had been much more severe than their own. Moreover, the bodies of the slain Helots were in- cluded in the heap, all of them passing for Spartans or Thespians in the estimation of the spectators. "We are not surprised to hear, however, that this trick, gi'oss and public as it must have been, really deceived very few.' According to the statement of Herodotus, twenty thousand men were slain on the side of the Persians, — no unreasonable estimate, if we consider that they wore little defensive armor, and that they were three days fight- ing. The number of Grecian dead bodies is stated by the same historian as four thousand : if this be correct, it must include a considerable proportion of Helots, since there w^ere no hoplites present on the last day except the three hundred Spartans, the seven hundred Thespians, and the four hundred Thebans. Some hoplites were of course slain in the first two days' battles, though apparently not many. The number who originally came to the defence of the pass seems to have been about seven thousand '? but the epigram, composed shortly afterwards, and inscribed on the spot by order of the Amphiktyonic assembly, transmitted to posterity the formal boast that four thousand warriors "from Peloponnesus had here fought with three hundi-ed myriads or three million of enemies." 3 Respecting this alleged Persian total, some remarks have already been made : the statement of four thousand warriors from Peloponnesus, must indicate all ravra Trprj^a^ Trepl tovc VEKpovc Toiig euiiTov • Kal yap 6tj kol ye?iolov 7]v, etc. ^ About the numbers of the Greeks at Thermopylae, compare Herodot. vii, 202 ; Diodorus, xi, 4; Pausanias, x, 20, 1 ; and Manso's Sparta, vol. ii, p. 308 ; Beylage 24th. Isokrates talks about one thousand Spartans, with a few allies, Pace- gyric, Or. iv p. 59. He mentions also only sixty Athenian ships of war St Artemisium : in fact, his numerical statements deserve little attention. ' Herodot. vii, 228.
 * Herodot. viii, 24, 25. ov firjv ovd^ eXav&ave tovc 6ia[3e^7]K6Tac "S.ep^rjg