Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/99

 BATTLES OF THERMOPYL^ AND ARTEMISIUM. 75 Strait, had been taken, seemingly, not long after the retreat from Tempe, their troops and their fleet did not actually occupy these positions until Xerxes was known to have reached the Thermaic gulf. Both were then put in motion ; the land-force under the Spartan king Leonidas, the naval force under the Spartan commander Eurybiades, apparently about the latter part of the month of June. Leonidas was the younger brother, the successor, and the son-in-law, of the former Eurystheneid king Heomenes, whose only daughter Gorgo he had married. Another brother of the same family — Dorieus, older than Leonidas — had perished, even before the death of Kleomenes, in an un- successful attempt to plant a colony in Sicily ; and room had been thus made for the unexpected succession of the youngest brother. Leonidas now conducted from the Isthmus to Ther- mopylce a select band of three hundred Spartans, — all being citizens of mature age, and persons who left at home sons to supply their places.i Along with them were five hundred hop- lites from Tegea, five hundi-ed from Mantineia, one hundred and twenty from the Arcadian Orchomenus, one thousand from the rest of Arcadia, four hundred from Corinth, two hundred from Phlius, and eighty from Mykenaa. There were also, doubtless, Helots and other light troops, in undefined number, and probably a certain number of Lacedaemonian hoplites, not Spartans. Li their march through Bceotia they were joined by seven hundi'ed hoplites of Thespice, hearty in the cause, and by four hundred Thebans, of more equivocal fidelity, under Leontiades. It ap- pears, indeed, that the leading men of Thebes, at that time under a very narrow oligarchy, decidedly medized, or espoused the Persian interest, as much as they dared before the Persians were actually in the country : and Leonidas, when he made the requi- ' Herodot. vii, 177, 205. i'Kikz^d^izvoq avdpac re rovg KareaTeuTag Tpirj- Kooiov^, Kol Tolat irvyxavov naldeg eovreg. In selecting men for a dangerous service, the Spartans took by preference those who aheady had families : if such a man was slain, he left behind him a son to discharge his duties to the state, and to maintain the continuity of the family sacred rites, the extinction of which was considered as a great mis- fortune. In our ideas, the life of the father of a family in mature age would be considered as of more value, and his death a greater loss, than that of a younger and unmarried man.