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Hellas mourns the dead Sunk in their narrow grave; But thou, dark Sparta's chief, whose bosom bled First in the battle's wave, Bear witness that they fell as best beseems the brave. Leonidas himself fell in the plain, and his body was carried into the defile by his followers.
These imputations are alluded to in the hackneyed lines of Eupolis: "Not a villain beyond measure, Only fond of drink and pleasure; Oft he slept in Sparta's town, And left his sister here alone."
XVII. A wicked life has nothing which we ought to speak of or glory in; nor has that life which is neither happy nor miserable. But there is a kind of life that admits of being spoken of, and gloried in, and boasted of, as Epaminondas saith, The wings of Sparta's pride my counsels clipp'd. And Africanus boasts, Who, from beyond Mæotis to the place Where the sun rises, deeds like mine can trace?
They were portraits of great men of history who had spent their lives in perpetual devotion to a great human ideal: Thaddeus Kosciusko, the hero whose dying words had been Finis Poloniae;* Markos Botzaris, for modern Greece the reincarnation of Sparta's King Leonidas; Daniel O'Connell, Ireland's defender; George Washington, founder of the American Union; Daniele Manin, the Italian patriot; Abraham Lincoln, dead from the bullet of a believer in slavery; and finally, that martyr for the redemption of the black race, John Brown, hanging from his gallows as Victor Hugo's pencil has so terrifyingly depicted.
While other cities were from time to time captured and occasionally destroyed, no foeman had set foot within Sparta's streets. Not until the days of Epaminondas was Laconia invaded by a powerful foe; and even then Sparta remained free from the foeman's tread.
This is mentioned by Tyrtaeus in the following verses: "They heard the god, and brought from Delphi home, Apollo's oracle, which thus did say: That over all within fair Sparta's realm The royal chiefs in council should bear sway, The elders next to them, the people last; If they the holy rhetra would obey."
But, by his own actions, Lycurgus had nevertheless borne witness that it was difficult to change the government without force and fear, in the use of which he himself, he said, had been so moderate as to do no more than put out of the way those who opposed themselves to Sparta's happiness and safety.
Our counsels have proud Sparta's glory clipt; and Stranger, this is his country Rome's great star; and again this, I know not which to guess thee, man or god.
Their dirge is triumph; cankering rust, And time, that turneth all to dust, That tomb shall never waste nor hide, The tomb of warriors true and tried. The full-voiced praise of Greece around Lies buried in this sacred mound; Where Sparta's king, Leonidas, In death eternal glory has!"
The general Demosthenes at Pylos effected the surrender of a Lacedæmonian force, which temporarily shattered Sparta's military prestige, a blow in some degree counteracted by the brilliant operations of Brasidas in the north, where, however, both he and Cleon were killed.
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