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It was obvious that it was a great common hall or barracks for warriors, and Bright Sun's simile of the Spartans was correct. More warriors came in, all splendid, athletic young men of a high and confident bearing. A few were dressed in the white man's costume, but most of them were in blankets, leggings, and moccasins, and had magnificent rows of feathers in their hair.
Philopœmen listened to him without anger, and sent him back to the Spartans with the advice that they should not corrupt their friends, whose services they could obtain gratis, but keep their money to bribe those who endeavoured to countermine their city in the public assembly of the Achæan league, as, if muzzled in this way, they would cease to oppose them.
Xerxes led against this little territory an army of 5,280,000 men. They drank up rivers, and cut their way through giant-mountains. They were first stopped at Thermopylae by Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans. They fought for a country too narrow to contain the army by which the question was to be tried.
The Athenian reply is one of the great things in historical literature. "It was a base surmise in men like the Spartans who know our mettle. Not all the gold in the world would tempt us to enslave our own countrymen. We have a common brotherhood with all Greeks, a common language, common altars and sacrifices, common nationality; it would be unseemly to betray these.
And so, when a battle was agreed on, and they encamped in front of the Spartans at Leuctra, Pelopidas saw a vision, which much discomposed him. In that plain lie the bodies of the daughters of one Scedasus, called from the place Leuctridae, having been buried there, after having been ravished by some Spartan strangers.
There were but 700 old Dorian Spartans left, and only about 100 of these still had their family estates, while the others were starving; and most of the property was in the hands of women.
The Spartans were busy keeping the feast of Hyacinthia; only an Athenian threat to come to terms with the foe prevailed on them to move. Mardonius soon evacuated Attica, the ground being too stony for cavalry, and encamped near Plataea. The Greeks followed, taking the high ground on Mount Cithaeron. A brave exploit of the Athenian infantry in defeating cavalry heartened the whole army.
The enemy beginning to move by break of day, they brought their arms to the young men, and giving them also in charge the trench, exhorted them to defend and keep it bravely, as it would be happy for them to conquer in the view of their whole country, and glorious to die in the arms of their mothers and wives, falling as became Spartans.
The news of the occupation of Pylos soon reached the Spartans, but at first they paid little heed, thinking that they could expel the audacious intruders whenever they chose to exert themselves. Moreover, they were just then engaged in keeping one of those religious festivals of which the Spartan calendar was so full, and a good part of their army was absent in Attica.
Cyrus asked with polite astonishment of the Greeks about him, "Who these Spartans were?" and having ascertained as much as he could comprehend concerning their military force and their social habits, replied, "That men who had a large space in the middle of their city for the purpose of cheating one another, could not be to him an object of terror:" so little respect had the hardy warrior for the decent frauds of oratory and of trade.