BATTLE OF THERMOPYLAE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 13 September 1924, Page 13

BATTLE OF THERMOPYLAE.

SIR WALTFR RALEIGH’S STORY

After such time as Xerxes had transported the army over the Hellespont, and landed in Thrace (leaving the description of his passage alongst that coast, and - how the river of Lissus was drunk dry by his multitudes, and the take near rto P'issyrus by his cattle, with other accidents in Ins marches towards Greece), I will speak (Sir Walter Raleigh wrote in his History of the World, penned in the Tower) of the encounters he had, and the' shameful and incredible overthrows which he ieceived. At first at Thermopylae, a narrow, passage of half an acre of ground, lying between the mountains which divide • Thessaly from. Greece, where sometime the Phocians had raised a wall which was then for the most part ruined. At this entrance Leonidas, one of the kings of Sparta, with 3(X) Lacedaemonians, assisted with 1000 Tegealae and Martineans, and 1000 Arcadians, and other Peoloponnesiaus, to the number of 3100 in tne whole; besides 100 Phocians, 400 Thebans, 700 Thespians, and all the forces (such as they were) of the bordering Locrians, defended the passage two whole days together against that huge army of the Persians.

The valour of the Greeks appeared so excellent in phis defence that, in the first day’s fight, Xerxes is said to have three times leaped out of his throne, fearing the destruction of liis army by one handful of those men whom not long before he had utterly despised; and -when the second day’s attempt upon the Greeks had proved vain, he was altogether ignorant how to proceed further, and so might have continued had not a runagate Grecian taught him a secret way, by which part of his army might ascend the ledge of mountains, and set upon the backs of those who kept the straits. But when the most valiant of the Persian army had almost enclosed the small forces of the Greeks, then did Leonidas, king of the, Lacedaemonians, with his 300, and 700 Thespians, which were all that abode by him, refuse to quit the place which they had undertaken to make good, and with admirable courage, not only resist that world of men which charged them on all sides, but, issuing out of their strength, made so great a. slaughter of their enemies that they might well be called vanquishers, though all of them were slain upon the place. Xerxes, having last in this last fight, together with 20,000 other soldiers and captains, two of his own'brethren, began to doubt what inconvenience might befall him by the virtue of such as had been present at these battles, with whom he knew he was shortly to deal, especially of the Spartans, he stood in groat fear, whose manhood had appeared singular in this trial, which caused him very carefully to' inquire what numbers they could bring into tlie field. It is reported of Dieneces, the Spartan, that when one thought to have terrified him by saying that the flight of the Persian arrows was so thick as would hide the sun. he answered thus: “It is very good news, for then shall we fight in the cool shade.”