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Updated: June 26, 2025
While much boasting of this sort was going on around him, raising his already overweening self-confidence to a frantic pitch, Demaratus, the Lacedaemonian, alone told him that the disorganized and unwieldy multitude in which he trusted, was in itself a danger to its chief, because it possessed only weight without strength; for an army which is too large cannot be governed, and one which cannot be governed, cannot long exist.
Demaratus by this speech gained great favour with the king, but lived but a short time to enjoy it, as he was soon carried off by sickness.
THE WAR WITH XERXES: THERMOPYLAE. Darius died while he was preparing another grand expedition against Greece. This proud monarch drew together from his immense dominions an army which tradition, as given in Herodotus, made to number one million seven hundred thousand men and a fleet of twelve hundred large vessels. He had for a counselor, Demaratus, a fugitive king of Sparta.
Hostilities between Aegina and Athens. Conduct of Cleomenes. Demaratus deposed. Death of Cleomenes. New Persian Expedition. I. We have seen that Darius rewarded with a tributary command the services of Grecian nobles during his Scythian expedition. The most remarkable of these deputy tyrants was Histiaeus, the tyrant of Miletus.
A long series of civil dissensions arose, and at length the claims of Demaratus were defeated, his enemies triumphed, and he fled from the country to save his life. He arrived at Susa near the close of Darius's reign, and it was his counsel which led the king to decide the contest among his sons for the right of succession, in favor of Xerxes, as described at the close of the first chapter.
The king was very angry with Demaratus because of this request, but Themistokles by his entreaties restored him to favour. It is also said that the later Persian kings, whose politics were more mixed up with those of Greece, used to promise any Greek whom they wished to desert to them that they would treat him better than Themistokles.
LVI. This, however, took place after the period of which we write. At this time Demaratus of Corinth, although an elderly man, was induced to travel as far as the court of Alexander: and when he beheld him, said that the Greeks who had died before they saw Alexander sitting upon the throne of Darius, had lost one of the greatest pleasures in the world.
Now, Xerxes had in his camp an exiled Spartan Prince, named Demaratus, who had become a traitor to his country, and was serving as counsellor to the enemy.
The magistrates, however, who had heard the declaration of his father at the time of his birth, remembered it, and reported it to others; and when Ariston died and Demaratus assumed the supreme power, the next heir denied his right to the succession, and in process of time formed a strong party against him.
We shall, however, often call them kings, in these narratives, in conformity with the general usage. Demaratus, who had fled from Sparta to seek refuge with Darius, and who was now accompanying Xerxes on his march to Greece, was one of these kings.
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