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Then on the fifth day either Xerxes’s patience was exhausted or Mardonius felt ready. Strong regiments of Median infantry were ordered to charge Leonidas’s position, Xerxes not failing to command that they slay as few of the wretches as possible, but drag them prisoners before his outraged presence. A noble charge. A terrible repulse.
Three or four Thespians were still breathing, a few more of the helots who had attended Leonidas’s Spartans, but not one of the three hundred but seemed dead, and that too with many wounds. Snofru, Mardonius’s Egyptian body-servant, rose from the ghastly work and grinned with his ivories at his master. “All the rest are slain, Excellency.” “You have not searched that pile yonder.”
If once Leonidas’s line broke and the Persians rushed on with howls of triumph, it was only to see the Hellenes’ files close in a twinkling and return to the onset with their foes in confusion. Hydarnes led back his men at last. The king sat on the ivory throne just out of arrow shot, watching the ebb and flow of the battle. Hydarnes approached and prostrated himself.
The general, partly understanding his purpose, had brought him to the king. In brief, he was prepared, for due compensation, to lead the Persians by an almost unknown mountain path over the ridge of Œta and to the rear of Leonidas’s position at Thermopylæ, where the Hellenes, assailed front and rear, would inevitably be destroyed.
But few as were Leonidas’s numbers, they were not so few as to fail to relieve one another at the front of the press,—which front was fearfully narrow. And three times, as his men drifted back in defeat, Xerxes the king “leaped from the throne whereon he sat, in anguish for his army.” At noon new contingents from the rear took the place of the exhausted attackers.
A second breathless scout interrupted with the tidings that Hydarnes was on the last stretches of his road. The chief arose, drew the helmet down across his face, and motioned with his spear. “Go!” he ordered. The Corinthian would have seized his hand. He shook him off. At Leonidas’s elbow was standing the trumpeter for his three hundred from Lacedæmon. “Blow!” commanded the chief.
Glaucon sprang away from him and addressed the silent general. “Shall not Athens remain by Sparta, if Sparta will accept?” He could see Leonidas’s cold eyes gleam out through the slits in his helmet. The general reached forth his hand. “Sparta accepts,” called he; “they have lied concerning your Medizing! And you, Euboulus, do not filch from him his glory.”
Honour’s cheaply sold for life, Press the charge, and join the strife: Let the coward cling to breath, Let the base shrink back from death, Press the charge, let cravens flee!” Leonidas’s spear pointed to the ivory throne, around which and him that sat thereon in blue and scarlet glittered the Persian grandees. “Onward!” Immortal ichor seemed in the veins of every Greek. They burst into one shout.
For plainly the Olympians have destined that I should see and do great things in Hellas, otherwise they would not have kept me back from Leonidas’s glory.” The Athenian’s voice rang confidently. None of the halting weakness remained that had made it falter once when Mardonius asked him, “Will your Hellenes fight?” He spoke as might one returned crowned with the victor’s laurel.
As the question was repeated, the scrutiny grew yet closer. The soldiers were pressing around, one comrade leaning over another’s shoulder. Twenty saw the fugitive’s form straighten as he stood in the morning twilight. “I am Glaucon of Athens, Isthmionices!” “Ah!” Leonidas’s jaw dropped for an instant. He showed no other astonishment, but the listening Spartans raised a yell. “Death!
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