which runs thus:

"Here once, facing in fight three hundred myriads of foemen,
Thousands four did contend, men of the Peloponnese."

This is the inscription for the whole body; and for the Spartans
separately there is this:

"Stranger, report this word, we pray, to the Spartans, that lying
Here in this spot we remain, faithfully keeping their laws." 229

This, I say, for the Lacedemonians; and for the soothsayer as follows:

"This is the tomb of Megistias renowned, whom the Median foemen,
Where Sperchios doth flow, slew when they forded the stream;
Soothsayer he, who then knowing clearly the fates that were coming,
Did not endure in the fray Sparta's good leaders to leave."

The Amphictyons it was who honoured them with inscriptions and
memorial pillars, excepting only in the case of the inscription to
the soothsayer; but that of the soothsayer Megistias was inscribed by
Simonides the son of Leoprepes on account of guest-friendship.

229. Two of these three hundred, it is said, namely Eurystos and
Aristodemos, who, if they had made agreement with one another, might
either have come safe home to Sparta together (seeing that they had
been dismissed from the camp by Leonidas and were lying at Alpenoi with
disease of the eyes, suffering extremely), or again, if they had not
wished to return home, they might have been slain together with the
rest,--when they might, I say, have done either one of these two
things, would not agree together; but the two being divided in opinion,
Eurystos, it is said, when he was informed that the Persians had gone
round, asked for his arms and having put them on ordered his Helot to
lead him to those who were fighting; and after he had led him thither,
the man who had led him ran away and departed, but Eurystos plunged into
the thick of the fighting, and so lost his life: but Aristodemos was
left behind fainting. 230 Now if either Aristodemos had been ill 231
alone, and so had returned home to Sparta, or the men had both of
them come back together, I do not suppose that the Spartans would have
displayed any anger against them; but in this case, as the one of them
had lost his life and the other, clinging to an excuse which the first
also might have used, 232 had not been willing to die, it necessarily
happened that the Spartans had great indignation against Aristodemos.

230. Some say that Aristodemos came safe to Sparta in this manner, and
on a pretext such