LEO'NIDAS, King of Sparta, commanded the Grecian troops sent to maintain the pass of Thermopylea against the invading army of the Persians under Xerxes, B.O. 480. The force under his command amounted to 4200 men, besides the Opuntian Locri and 1000 Phocians. With these, during two days' fight, he defended the narrow defile which was the usual passage from Thessaly to the southern parts of Greece ; and probably he would have frustrated the utmost efforts of the invader but for the discovery, by some renegades, of a circuitous and unfrequented pass by which a body of the invaders crossed Mount (Eta. On receiving intelligence that his position was thus turned, Leonidas dismissed all his soldiers except 300 Spartaus; the Thebans, whose fidelity to the common cause was suspected ; and the Thespians, 700 in number, who resolved to share the fate and the glory of the Spartans,—for the laws of Sparta forbade her citizens to turn their backs upon any odds; and in this great emergency, when many states seemed inclined to yield to Persia, Leonidas probably thought that the effect to be produced by a great example of self-devotion and obedience was of more importance to the cause of Greece than the preservation of a certain number of her best soldiers. Being sur
rounded and attacked in front and rear, the Spartans and Thespians fell to a man after making vast slaughter: the Thehans asked and received quarter. The corpse of Leonidas was mutilated and exposed on a cross by Xerxes. A stone lion was afterwards raised near the spot where he fell. The slain were buried where they fell, and their memory was honoured by monumental pillars. Two of the inscriptions ran thus :—"Here 4000 men from Peloponuesus once fought three millions:" "Stranger, tell the Lacedxmonians that we lie Isere, obeying their laws." This self-devotion of Leonidas, the begiuniug of the grandest war related in history, has ever been held to be among the noblest recorded instances of heroism and patriotism.
We have followed the account of Herodotres (vii, 202, &c.). Diodorus and Plutarch relate it somewhat differently.