If we turn to the map of the Old World [see map for this century] to test the comparative territorial resources of the two states whose armies were now about to come into conflict, the immense preponderance of the material power of the Persian King over that of the Athenian republic is more striking than any similar contrast which history can supply. Nor was there any power to the westward of Greece that could have offered an effectual opposition to Persia, had she once conquered Greece and made that country a basis for future military operations. Rome was at this time in her season of utmost weakness. Had Persia beaten Athens at Marathon, she could have found no obstacle to prevent Darius from advancing his sway over all the known Western races of mankind. The infant energies of Europe would have been trodden out beneath universal conquest, and the history of the world, like the history of Asia, would have become a mere record of the rise and fall of despotic dynasties, of the incursions of barbarous hordes, and of the mental and political prostration of millions beneath the diadem, the tiara, and the sword. CREASY.

Hitherto the very name of Medes had struck terror into the hearts of the Greeks; and the Athenians were the first to endure the sight of their armor, and to look them in the face on the field of battle. HERODOTUS.

Nulla unquam tam exigua manus tantas opes prostravit.

CORNELIUS NEPOS.

The most remarkable [victory] for the disproportion of the parties engaged that history has recorded. - COLONEL LEAKE.

There fell in this battle of Marathon, on the side of the barbarians, about six thousand and four hundred men; on that of the Athenians, one hundred and ninety-two. — HERODOTUS.

The disproportion between the two armies was far less than has generally been imagined. The Persian combatants were to the Greek as five to one, or possibly as six to one . . . and victories have often been gained against equal or greater odds, both in ancient and modern times. RAWLINSON.

Nor was the number of combatants confined to men then living in the flesh. The old heroes of the land rose to mingle in the fray; and every night from that time forth might be heard the neighing of phantom horses and the clashing of swords and spears. Thus were prolonged the echoes of the old, mysterious battle; and the peasants

would have it that the man who went to listen from mere motives of prying curiosity would get no good to himself, while the Daimones or presiding deities of the place bore no grudge against the wayfarer who might find himself accidentally belated in the field.-G. W. Cox. Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon.

The battle-field, where Persia's victim horde
First bowed beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword,
As on the morn to distant glory dear,
When Marathon became a magic word;
Which uttered, to the hearer's eye appear

The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror's career.

The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow;
The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear;
Mountains above, Earth's, Ocean's plain below,
Death in the front, Destruction in the rear!
Such was the scene.

I could believe that under such a sky,

BYRON.

Thus grave, thus streakt with thunderlight of yore,
The small Athenian troop rushed onward, more

As Bacchanals than men about to die.

How weak that massive, motley enemy

Seemed to those hearts, full-fed on that high lore,
Which for their use, in his melodious store,

Old Homer had laid up immortally.

Thus Marathon was Troy, - thus here again

They were at issue with the barbarous East,

And favoring Gods spoke out, and walkt the plain;
And every man was an anointed priest

Of Nemesis, empoweréd to chastise

The rampant insolence that would not be made wise.

LORD HOUGHTON.

When the traveller pauses on the plains of Marathon, what are the emotions which most strongly agitate his breast? Not, I imagine, that Grecian skill and Grecian valor were here most signally displayed; but that Greece herself was here saved. It is because to this spot, and to the event which has rendered it immortal, he refers all the succeeding glories of the republic. It is because if that day had gone otherwise, Greece had perished. It is because he perceives that her philosophers and orators, her poets and painters, her sculptors

and architects, her governments and free institutions, point backward to Marathon, and that their future existence seems to have been suspended on the contingency, whether the Persian or the Greek banner should wave victorious in the beams of that day's setting DANIEL WEBSTER.

sun.

Miltiades, thy victories

Must every Persian own,
And hallowed by thy prowess lies

The field of Marathon.

(From the Greek.) Tr. Anon.

The mountains look on Marathon,

And Marathon looks on the sea;

And musing there an hour alone,

I dreamed that Greece might still be free;
For, standing on the Persians' grave,

I could not deem myself a slave.

BYRON.

Xerxes, the son and successor of Darius, invaded Greece ten years after the battle of Marathon with an immense force by sea and land (2,500,000 men according to Herodotus). Then was fought the memorable battle

Thermopylæ.

of Thermopyla (gates of the hot springs, from hot springs situated there), in which the Spartan Leonidas with a mere handful of men held the whole Persian army at bay in the narrow pass of Thermopyla; but, a way around the pass being shown the Persians by a treacherous Greek, they were able to attack Leonidas in the rear. Part of the Greek forces retreated on learning of this movement of the Persians, but Leonidas with three hundred Spartans and seven hundred Thespians refused to retreat, and, advancing against the overwhelming numbers of the enemy, sold their lives as dearly as possible.

This little “remnant of the Greeks, armed only with a few swords, stood a butt for the arrows, the javelins, and the stones of the enemy, which at length overwhelmed them. Where they fell they were afterwards buried; their

2

tomb, as Simonides sings, was an altar, a sanctuary in which Greece revered the memory of her second founders."

Even Greece can boast but one Thermopylæ.

BYRON.

Suppose the three hundred heroes at Thermopyla had paired off with three hundred Persians; would it have been all the same to Greece, and to history? - EMERSON.

The exact number of the invading army cannot be determined ; but we may safely conclude from all the circumstances of the case, that it was the largest ever assembled at any period of history. W. SMITH.

The Greeks fought with reckless bravery and desperation against this superior host, until at length their spears were broken, and they had no weapons left except their swords. It was at this juncture that Leonidas himself was slain, and around his body the battle became fiercer than ever. They were thus surrounded, overwhelmed with missiles, and slain to a man ; not losing courage even to the last, but defending themselves with their remaining daggers, with their unarmed hands, and even with their mouths. Thus perished Leonidas with his heroic comrades, — three hundred Spartans and seven hundred Thespians. — GROTE.

Leonidas, and his three hundred companions, devoted their lives at Thermopyla; but the education of the infant, the boy, and the man, had prepared, and almost insured, this memorable sacrifice; and each Spartan would approve, rather than admire, an act of duty, of which himself and eight thousand of his fellow-citizens were equally capable. - GIBBON.

Him, who reversed the laws great nature gave,
Sailed o'er the continent, and walked the wave,

Three hundred spears from Sparta's iron plain,

Have stopped-oh blush, ye mountains, and thou main !

Leonidas recalling,

PARMENIO. Tr. Merivale.

And warring with the Persian

To keep his country free;
With his three hundred waging

The battle, long he stood,
And, like a lion raging,

Expired in seas of blood.

RHIGAS. (Greek war-song.) Tr. Byron

Upon their tomb was this inscription:

"Here once, from Pelops' sea-girt region brought,

Four thousand men three hostile millions fought."

This was applied to them all collectively. The Spartans were thus distinguished :

"Go, stranger, and to list'ning Spartans tell,
That here, obedient to their laws, we fell."1

Of those who at Thermopyla were slain,
Glorious the doom, and beautiful the lot;

Their tomb an altar men from tears refrain,

To honor them; and praise, but mourn them not.
Such sepulchre nor drear decay

HERODOTUS.

Nor all-destroying time shall waste; this right have they.
Within their grave the home-bred glory

Of Greece was laid; this witness gives
Leonidas the Spartan, in whose story

A wreath of famous virtue ever lives.

SIMONIDES. Tr. Sterling.

These, too, defenders of their country fell;
Their mighty souls to gloomy death betrayed:
Immortal is their fame who, suffering well,
Of Ossa's dust a glorious garment made.

ESCHYLUS. Tr. Merivale.

Greatly to die, if this be glory's height,
For the fair meed we own our fortune kind;
For Greece and Liberty we plunged to-night,
And left a never-dying name behind.

SIMONIDES. Tr. R. Bland.

1 It is but two lines, — and all Greece, for centuries, had them by heart.

She forgot them, and

"Greece was living Greece no more."

CHRISTOPHER NORTH.