Xerxes having halted several days at Therme, to pro cure proper intelligence and guides, resolved to proceed by Upper Macedonia into Thessaly, and reached the neighbourhood of Thermopylae without opposition. I his fleet, after suffering immense loss by a storm in the bay of Casthanzea, entered the Pelasgian gulf ; and the Grecian fleet, which was stationed off Artemisium to sup port the army at Thermopylx, succeeded in capturing fifteen galleys, which had been dispersed by the tempest. This favourable event at once revived their spirits, and added greatly to the strength of their little navy. Xerxes, in the mean time, having fixed his head quarters at the town of Traches, in the Malian plain, waited four days, in expectation that the Greeks would yield to his numbers, and leave him an uninterrupted passage. A herald also was dispatched to Leonidas, who commanded at Thermo pylx, requiring him to deliver up his arms; to whom the Spartan replied, with laconic brevity, " Come and take them:" The Persian monarch, therefore, on the fifth day, ordered the Medes and Cissians of his army to bring Leonidas and his Greeks into his presence. These being quickly iepulsed, the Persian guards, called " the im mortal band," were marched to the attack. Their num bers were unavailing on so narrow a field ; their short spears were very inferior in close fight to the longer wea pons of the Greeks ; and their repeated and courageous efforts, to which Herodotus bears ample testimony, made no impression. The assault was renewed on the follow ing day, in hopes that wounds and fatigue might exhaust the little army of the Greeks; but still.•ithout the smallest prospect of success. A Persian detachment, however, having penetrated during the night by another pass, and surprised the Pnocians, who had been intrusted with its defence, shewed themselves, on the morning of the third day, far in the rear of the Grecian army. Information of this fatal advantage being conveyed to Leonidas, it was immediately resolved that they should all retreat to their respective cities, and preserve their lives for the future wants of their country. 'Leonidas, however, in obedience to a law of Spaita, which forbade its soldiers, under what ever disadvantage, to flee from an enemy, resolved to de vote his life to the honour and service of his country. Animated by his example, every Lacedemonian and Thes pian under his command, determined with him to abide the event. The Thebans also, on account of the disaffec tion of their city to the Grecian cause, were detained, rather indeed as hostages than as auxiliaries.* Leonidas stationed his little band at the wall of Thermopyl, where the pass was scarcely 50 feet wide; and all of 1;iem re solved to sell their lives to the enemy at the dearest rate. With.the fury of men resolved to die, they rushed against the advance of the Persian army, and made a dreadful slaughter of the crowded and ill-disciplined multitude. Numbers of them were forced into the sea, and many of them expired under the pressure of their own people. Leonidas fell early in the fight, at the head of his troops ; but the engagement was continued, with advantage on the side of the Greeks, till the Persian detachment came in sight of their rear. They then retreated to the narrowest part of the pass, where the Thebans began to sue for mercy, and were most of them taken prisoners. The sur viving LacedemOnians and Thespians gained a little rising ground, where they fought in the midst of a surrounding host, till they were utterly cut to pieces. In t .e conduct of the Spartan prince, there was wisdom as well as mag nanimity. His example checked the disposition which among the Greeks, to shrink from the Persian power; and gave a convincing proof to the invaders, at how vast a price of blood they would purchase their con quest. During their trancactions at Thermopylae, the Gre cian fleet gained several advantages over that of the Per sians ; and about two hundred galleys of the latter, at tempting to take the Greeks in the rear by sailing round Eubcea, were totally lost in a storm. Having received in telligence of the fall of Leonidas, and the retreat of the rest of the army, the Grecian fleet retreated from Arte misium, and sought the interior seas of Greece. The Persian army experienced no opposition in their march through Doris and Bceotia, which, excepting the cities of Thespiea and Platen, had always been adverse to the con federacy of Greeks. Phocis alone, of all the provinces between Thessaly and the isthmus, remained faithful to the cause of the Grecian independence. Its territories, therefore, were ravaged without mercy by detachments of the while the main body advanced in a direct course to the devoted city of Athens. The Peloponnesian troops having resolved to confine their operations to the defence of the peninsula, Attica was completely abandon ed to the whole weight of the invading host. Athens was filled witb alarm, and all were convinced that their de struction was inevitable. The oracle at Delphi, however, having recently pronounced, that cc the wooden wall" alone would afford an impregnable refuge to themselves and their children, Themistocles, who had probably himself suggested the response, persuaded his countrymen that they were thus directed to embark on board their fleet. Their families and effects were, in conformity to his ad vice, immediately transported to Salamis, Łgina, and Trxzene ; and all the males who were able to bear arms repaired to the ships. A few of the poorer citizens, who were unable to bear the expence of a removal, and some others, who conceived the answer of the oracle to point out their citadel, which was built of wood, as the place of safety, refused to abandon the city. The Persian army, advancing from Thebes, burned the forsaken cities of Thespix and Platxa ; and experienced no resistance till they reached the citadel of Athens, which was immediately invested; and, being taken by assault, all within its gates were put to the sword. The commanders of the Grecian fleet, which was now assembled in the bay of Salamis, alarmed by the intelligence of the fall of Athens, had re solved in a council of war to retreat without delay, when Themistocles, addressing Eurybiades the Lacedemonian, who had the chief command, threatened, if such a resolu tion were adopted, to withdraw the whole of the Athenian ships, which composed nearly one-half of the allied fleet, and either to make peace with the enemy, or seek some distant settlement for his deserted people. His advice prevailed, and it was determined to await the approach of the enemy in the straits.of Salamis. This Athenian chief, however, still fearful lest some of the squadrons should depart, is said to have accelerated the approach of the Persians, by causing their monarch to be privately inform ed, that the Greeks were planning a retreat, and that he would thus lose the most favourable opportunity of de stroying their whole navy at one blow. His stratagem was attended with entire success. The Persian fleet hastened to make a general attack ; while their army lined the adjacent shores, and their monarch himself was seat ed upon an eminence to view the approaching battle. His fleet amounted to 1200 galleys, and that of the confeder ated Greeks to 300 ; but the narrow strait prevented the numerous ships of the Persians from being regularly brought into action, and the crowded situation rendered it impossible for the Phenician squadron to avail themselves of the superior swiftness of their galleys, and skill of their seamen. The very zeal of the Persian commanders to distinguish themselves in the presence of their monarch, tended to increase the confusion. The resolute and per severing attacks of the Greeks, aided by the united talents of Themistocles and Aristides, allowed not a moment's respite to the enemy to restore order, or recover from alarm. The confusion soon became so general, that even flight was impracticable, and the sea itself (according to the description of the scene by the poet Eschylus, who fought on board the Athenian fleet) became scarcely visi ble from the quantity of wreck and corpses floating on its suaace. Forty Grecian galleys are said to have been sunk or destroyed; but most of the crews saved them selves on board of the other ships, or on the neighbouring shore of Salamis. But the Persians had no refuge ; and their defeat was attended with immense loss. Still the remains of their fleet were so large, that the principal port of Attica could not admit half its numbers ; and the Greeks were expecting a renewal of the action on the fol lowing day. But the Persian commanders appear to have concerted no measures on the supposition of a retreat ; and a hasty order during the night, directed the whole fleet to steer immediately for the Hellespont. The army, thus destitute of the supplies derived from the ships, and unprovided with sufficient magazines on land, fell back upon the friendly province of Bceotia, and speedily retreat ed into Thessaly. Three hundred thousand men were chosen to remain, under the command of Mardonius, to complete the conquest of Greece in the following sum mer. Of this number, 60,000 of the best troops were selected as a royal guard, to accompany their monarch as far as the Hellespont on his return to Persia. The
rest of the immense multitude which he had led into Greece, left to their own resources, suffered beyond description, from the haste of their march, and the want of magazines. They subsisted by rapine from friends as well as foes; and were reduced at last to eat the very grass from the ground, and the bark from the trees. Disease destroyed whom famine had spared ; and the towns of Thessaly, Macedonia, and Thrace, were crowded with the sick and the dying. Upon reaching the Helles pont, the bridges were found to have been destroyed by the violence of the current and the storms ; but the fleet had arrived to transport the wretched remains of the Persian host ; and its discomfited monarch proceeded to Sardis, not indeed entirely unattended, as some of the Greek historians relate, but with such a diminished reti nue as might almost be called nothing, when compared with the incalculable numbers who formerly surrounded his person, and obeyed his command.
Early in the following spring, the Persian fleet assem bled at Samos., and Mardonius, having attempted without success to detach the Athenians from the Grecian confede racy, compelled•them again hastily to abandon their coun try ; and, without opposition, regained possession of Athens. The Athenian people, under the protection of their fleet, withdrew to Salimas; and there, though deprived of their country, and disappointed of the timely assistance which they ought to have received from the Peloponnesian states, still rejected, with the most enthusiastic magnanimity, all the conciliatory proposals of Persia. The Lacedemonians, who were at the head of the allies, at length ashamed of their ungenerous and dastardly delays, dispatched an army of 5000 Spartans and 35,000 Helots, under the command of Pausanias. These were joined at the isthmus by the other Peloponnesian troops, and by the Athenian army under Aristides. Mardonius, secretly apprized of their march, gave up the city of Athens and Its surrounding territories to be pillaged by his troops, and fell back upon his magazines in Bceotia, where he extended his camp along the course of the Asopus to the frontiers of Platxa. The confederated Greeks, .Atimated by the propitious omens which had been indicated at their solemn sacrifices, advanced with confidence to meet the Persians, and pitch ed their camp at the foot of Mount Cithieron, on the oppo site side of the river Asopus, composing a force of 110,000 men. Alardonius, who appears front the account given by Herodotus (the most impartial historian of the Persian in vasion) to have been deficient neither in courage or policy, anxious to draw the Greeks from their advantageou, posi tion, harassed them greatly with incessant charges by his cavalry; and more than ten days were spent in various evolutions, on both sides, to gain the superiority of the ground, and to induce each other to commence the attack. In one of these movements, the greater pait of the Grecian troops, excepting only the Tegearas, Lacedemonians, and Athenians, actually fled to the walls of Platxa ; and the rsian commander, imagining the retreat to be general, hastily advanced with his infantry as to certain victory. A fierce engagement ensued, in which the Persian soldiers, though insufficiently armed for close fight, and unequal to the Greeks in the practice of war, discovered no inferiority in point of courage and enterprise ; and were often seen, in their vigorous assaults, seizing and breaking with their hands the long spears of their opponents. Multitudes perished in these vain attempts to penetrate the Spartan phalanx. Their efforts, after repeated failures, began to relax. The Greeks advanced in their turn ; and confusion soon became general among the Persian infantry. Their commander Mardonius, while leading on a chosen body of cavalry to support his broken troops, received a mortal -wound ; and his fall was the signal for flight to the whole Persian army. Artabazus, next in command, who is said to have dissented from his general in the conduct of the battle, as soon as he was assured of the rout of the main body, retreated with 40,000 men towards Phocis ; but the Persian and Boeotian cavalry still kept the field, and afford ed considerable protection to the flying infantry. The Lacedemonians and Athenians, however, having succeeded in carrying the Persian camp by assault, a dreadful slaugh ter ensued ; and excepting the detachment which had es caped under Artabazus, only 3,000 finally survived of 260,000 Asiatics, who composed the rest of the army of Mardonius. In the mean time, the Grecian fleet, which had remained during the summer inactive at Delos, was encouraged, by a private assurance of the favourable dis position of the Ionians, to attack the Persian fleet at Samos. The Persian admiral, having suffered the Phenician squad ron to depart, in the idea that the season was too far ad vanced for naval operations, as soon as he received intelli gence of the approach of the Greeks, hastily sailed from Samos ; and, passing to the opposite promontory of Mycale, drew his galleys upon the beach, and prepared to defend them on shore. The Greeks, resolving to attack the forti fied camp. disembarked their forces in two divisions, one under the command of Xanthippus the Athenian, and the other led by Leotychides the Lacedemonian. The former arriving first at the Persian entrenchments, immediately commenced the assault ; and, aided by the Greeks in the Persian set vice, had entered tire rampart, before the Lace demonians came up. The other Asiatics instantly fled from the Athenian assailants ; but the native Persians re sisted with the utmost bravery, till the arrival of the Lace demonians, when they were overpowered, and almost entirely cut to pieces. The victorious Greeks, after carrying off the most valuable part of the spoil, set fire to the camp, and consumed the whole of the Persian fleet on the very same day that their army was annihilated at Platx?„ This successful resistance of Greece to the Persian invasion holds out an encouraging example to all free states, to maintain their independency against any power, however formidable; and clearly chews, that an obstinate determination never to submit, accompanied with wise counsels and steady discipline, will rarely fail of ulti mate success. The Persian war, indeed, was not yet ter minated. The Greeks, in their turn, became the assailants and invaders. They prepared to protect the Ionians, who had thrown ofithe Persian yoke, and particularly to restore freedom to those Grecian cities in which the Persians had left garrisons. Under the Spartan general Pausanias, but especially under Cimon the Athenian, they carried their victorious arms to Byzantium, to the island of Cyprus, and even into Egypt. By a double victory gained on the river Eurymedon, under the last mentioned commander, both over the fleet and army of Persia on the same day, its naval strength was so broken, and its land forces so dishearten ed, that offensive operations against Greece were totally intermitted ; and-it became the boast of the Grecian states, that no armed ship of Persia )vas to be seen westward of the Chelidonian islands, or the entrance of the Euxine, and that no Persian troops dared to chew themselves within a day's journey of the Grecian seas. But the ambitious views and political jealousies which arose among the confedera ted states of Greece, during the prosecution of these suc cessful operations, prepared greater evils for their coun try than all that they had endured, while struggling under the pressure of the Persian hosts. The Athenians, though apparently the greatest sufferers by the invasion, derived the greatest benefits from its effects. They found their country laid waste, and their city in ruins ; but, in conse quence chiefly of their naval superiority, and a succession of great commanders, they rapidly attained that suprema cy in Greece, which the Lacedemonians had hitherto en joyed; and by the able conduct of Cimon, the most distin guished of all their leaders, soon reached the summit of their political influence and military power. The Lacede monians had not been inattentive observers or inactive op ponents of the growing consequence of the rival state ; but, usually slow in their counsels, (and weakened by an earth quake which laid their capital in ruins, and by a consequent insurrection of the Helots, which reduced them to the ne cessity of requiring aid from their neighbours,) had long evaded an open rupture with the Athenian republic. The latter people, however, accustomed to war, elated with success, swayed by a turbulent democracy, and unable lon ger to disguise their ambitious designs upon the liberties of Greece, not satisfied with repeated interferences and aggressions against the ancient allies of Lacedemon, pro ceeded at length to make a direct and unjustifiable attack upon its armies, while returning from the protection of Doris, against the inroads of the Phocians. Aided by the Argians and Thessalians, they met the Lacedemonians and their Peloponnesian allies at Tanagra in Bceotia. After a severe action of two days, and great slaughter on both sides, the Athenians were compelled to retreat, and the Spartans pursued their march without farther obstruction.