[In the year 480 B. C., ten years after the Battle of Marathon, Xerxes, the son and successor of Dari"us, opened the Second Persian War by invading Greece in person, at the head of the greatest army the world has ever seen. Their numbers have been estimated at more than two millions of fighting men. This immense host, proceeding by the way of Thessaly, had arrived without opposition at the narrow defile of Thermopyl?,① between the mountains and the sea, where the Spartan② Leonidas was posted with three hundred of his countrymen and some Thespian③ allies-in all fewer than a thousand men.
The Spartans were forbidden by their laws ever to fleefrom an enemy; they had taken an oath never to desert their standards; and Leonidas and his countrymen, and their few allies, prepared to sell their lives as dearly as possible. Bravely meeting the attack of the Persian host, and retreating into the narrowest part of the pass as their numbers were thinnedPASS OF THERMOPYL?, WITH TOMBS OF THE SPARTANSby the storm of arrows, and by the living mass that was hurled upon them, they fought with the valour of desperation until every one of their number had fallen. A monument was afterwards erected on the spot, bearing the following inion: -"Go, stranger, and tell at Laced?mon that we died here in obedience to her laws."]
THEY fell devoted, but undying;
The very gale their name seemed sighing; The waters murmured of their name, The woods were peopled with their fame; The silent pillar, lone and gray,Claimed kindred with their sacred clay; Their spirits wrapped the dusky mountain, Their memory sparkled o"er the fountain; - The meanest rill, the mightiest river,Rolls mingling with their fame for ever. Despite of every yoke she bears,That land is glory"s still, and theirs!
"Tis still a watch-word to the earth; - When man would do a deed of worth, He points to Greece, and turns to tread, So sanctioned, on the tyrant"s head;He looks to her, and rushes on, Where life is lost, or freedom won.
- BYRON
NOTES
① Thermopyl?, a pass between Thes"saly and Lo"cris, provinces of ancient Greece, and between Mount ?ta and the sea.
② Spartan, a native of Sparta, the Capital of Laco"nia, or Laced?mo"nia, in thePeloponne"sus (the Morea). The Spartans were a race of soldiers, and cultivated neither commerce nor any of the peaceful arts; hence the modern word Spartan , meaning hardy, enduring, dauntless.
③ Thespian, belonging to Thespi?, a city of B?otia (Northern Greece), south-west ofThebes. Between 600 and 700 of its citizens are said to have perished with the Spartans atThermopyl?.
