Xerxes, by a secret message, pretending treachery, to block up the strait. The news of this Persian move was brought to the Greek chiefs by Aristeides, whose ostracism had been revoked and who now slipped through the hostile fleet in his single ship to join his countrymen.

172. The Battle of Salamis. The Persian fleet more than doubled the Greek, and was itself largely made up of Asiatic Greeks, while the Phoenicians who composed the remainder were redoubtable sailors. The conflict lasted the next day from dawn to night, but the Greek victory was overwhelming. "A king sat on the rocky brow 1 Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis; And ships by thousands lay below, And men in nations, all were his. He counted them at break of day,

And when the sun set, where were they?"

Aeschylus, who fought on board an Athenian ship, gives a noble picture of the battle in his drama, The Persians. The speaker is a Persian recounting the event to the Persian queen mother:

"Not in flight

The Hellenes then their solemn pæans sang,
But with brave spirits hastening on to battle.
With martial sound the trumpet fired those ranks:
And straight with sweep of oars that flew thro' foam,
They smote the loud waves at the boatswain's call;

And swiftly all were manifest to sight.

Then first their right wing moved in order meet;
Next the whole line its forward course began;

And all at once we heard a mighty shout

O sons of Hellenes, forward, free your country;

Free, too, your wives, your children, and the shrines

Built to your fathers' Gods, and holy tombs

Your ancestors now rest in. The fight

Is for our all.' . . .

1 A golden throne had been set up for Xerxes, that he might better view the battle.

And the hulls of ships

Floated capsized, nor could the sea be seen,
Filled as it was with wrecks and carcasses;
And all the shores and rocks were full of corpses,
And every ship was wildly rowed in flight,
All that composed the Persian armament.
And they, as men spear tunnies, or a haul
Of other fishes, with the shafts of oars,

Or spars of wrecks, went smiting, cleaving down;
And bitter groans and wailings overspread
The wide sea waves, till eye of swarthy night
Bade it all cease:- and for the mass of ills,

Not, tho' my tale should run for ten full days,
Could I in full recount them. Be assured

That never yet so great a multitude

Died in a single day as died in this."

173. Iilustrative Incidents. Two incidents in the celebration of the victory throw light upon Greek character.

a. The commanders of the various city contingents in the Greek fleet voted a prize of merit to the city that deserved best in the action. The Athenians had furnished more than half the whole fleet; they were the first to engage, and they had specially distinguished themselves; they had seen their city laid in ashes, too, and only their steady patriotism had made a victory possible. Peloponnesian jealousy passed them by, however, for their rivals of Aegina, who had joined the Spartan league.

b. Another vote was taken to award prizes to the two most meritorious commanders. Each captain voted for himself for the first place, and all voted for Themistocles for the second.1

174. The Temptation of Athens. - On the day of Salamis the Sicilian Greeks won their decisive victory over the Carthaginians at Himera. That battle closed the struggle for a while in the west. In Greece the Fersian chances were still good. Xerxes returned at once to Asia with his shattered fleet, but his general Mardonius remained in Thessaly with three hundred thousand chosen troops to renew the struggle in the spring.

The Athenians began courageously to rebuild their city,

1 Herodotus, viii. 93; Plutarch's Themistocles.

which Xerxes had laid in ashes. In the early spring, Mardonius sent them an offer of favorable alliance, with the restoration of their city at Persian expense-a compliment which showed that he at least knew where lay the soul of the Greek resistance. The terrified Spartans sent in haste to beg the Athenians, with many promises, not to desert the cause of Hellas. There was no need of such anxiety. The Athenians sent back the Persian messenger: "Tell Mardonius that so long as the sun holds on his way in heaven the Athenians will come to no terms with Xerxes." They courteously declined the Spartan offer of aid in rebuilding their city, but did urge them to take the field early enough so that Athens need not be again abandoned. Mardonius approached rapidly. The Spartans found another sacred festival before which it would not do to leave their homes, and the Athenians in bitter disappointment a second time took refuge at Salamis. With their city in his hands, Mardonius offered them again the same favorable terms of honorable alliance. Only one of the Athenian Council favored even submitting the matter to the people, and he was instantly stoned by the enraged populace while the women inflicted a like cruel fate upon his wife and children. We may regret that the nobility of the Athenian policy should have been sullied by such violence, but nothing can seriously obscure their heroic self-sacrifice, unparalleled in history. Mardonius burned Athens a second time, laid waste the farms over Attica, cut down the olive groves, and then retired to the level plains of Boeotia.

175. Plataea, 479 B.C. Athenian envoys had been at Sparta for weeks entreating instant action, but had been put off with meaningless delays. The fact was, Sparta still clung to the stupid plan of defending only the Isthmus. Some of her keener allies, however, at last made the ephors see the uselessness of the wall at Corinth if the Athenians should be forced to join Persia with their fleet; then Sparta finally acted with. energy, and gave a striking proof of her resources. One morn

ing the Athenian envoys, who were about to announce their wrathful departure, were told, to their amazement, that fifty thousand Peloponnesian troops had been put in motion during the night. The Athenian forces and other reënforcements raised the total to about one hundred thousand. The final contest with Mardonius was fought near the little town of Plataea. Spartan generalship blundered sadly, and most of the allies were not brought into the fight; but the stubborn Spartan valor and the Athenian skill and dash won a victory 1 which became a massacre. It is said that of the two hundred and sixty thousand Persians engaged, only three thousand escaped. The Greeks lost in the battle itself only one hundred and fifty-four men.

1

176. The Meaning of the Greek Victory. Plataea closed the first period of the Persian War. The Persians and Carthaginians were not barbarians in our sense of the word. In some respects they stood for at least as high a civilization as the Greeks then did. They possessed refinement and high moral ideals. Ancient Greece as a Persian province would have had an infinitely happier and more prosperous fate than modern Greece has had for many centuries as a Turkish province. But, none the less, a Persian victory would have meant the extinction of the world's best hope. The victory of the Greeks decided that the despotism of the East should not crush the individuality of the West in this first home until it had been transplanted into other European lands.

To the Greeks themselves their victory opened a new epoch. It was not only that they were cast back upon themselves for a more European development (§ 152); they were victors over the greatest of world empires. It was a victory of intellect and spirit over matter. Unlimited confidence gave them still greater power. New energies stirred in their veins and found expression in manifold forms. The matchless bloom of Greek

1 Special report: Herodotus, ix. 12-89, and modern critics.

art and thought, in the next two generations, had its roots in the soil of Marathon and Plataea.

REFERENCES. - Herodotus, vi.-ix.; Plutarch, Themistocles and Aristeides; Cox, Greeks and Persians; Holm; Grote ; Abbott; Curtius. For the Carthaginian Attack: Freeman, Story of Sicily, chs. v., vi. EXERCISE.1. Summarize the causes of the Persian wars. 2. Devise and memorize a series of catch-words and phrases for rapid statement, that shall bring out the outline of the story quickly. Thus :

Persian demands for "earth and water": compliance of the islandstates; reception at Sparta and Athens. First expedition, through Thrace: Mount Athos. Second expedition, across the Aegean, two years later: capture of Eretria; landing at Marathon; excuses of Sparta; arrival of Plataeans; Miltiades and battle of Marathon, 490.

Let the student continue the series through the war.