wreck during the
passage. Even in Asia disaster pursued him. Between Abydos and Sardis
his army suffered almost as much from over-indulgence as it had
previously suffered from want; and of the mighty host which had gone
forth from the Lydian capital in the spring not very many thousands can
have re-entered it in the autumn.

Still, however, there was a possibility that the success which his
own arms had failed to achieve might reward the exertions of his
lieutenants. Mardonius had expressed himself confident that with 300,000
picked soldiers he could overpower all resistance, and make Greece
a satrapy of Persia. Xerxes had raised his forces to that amount by
sending Artabazus back from Sestos at the head of a _corps d'armee_
numbering 40,000 men. The whole army of 300,000 wintered in Thessaly;
and Mardonius, when spring came, having vainly endeavored to detach the
Athenians from the Grecian ranks, marched through Boeotia in Attica, and
occupied Athens for the second time. Hence he proceeded to menace the
Peloponnese, where he formed an alliance with the Argives, who promised
him that they would openly embrace the Persian cause. At the same time
the Athenians, finding that Sparta took no steps to help them, began to
waver in their resistance, and to contemplate accepting the terms which
Mardonius was still willing to grant them. The fate of Greece trembled
in the balance, and apparently was determined by the accident of a death
and a succession, rather than by any wide-spread patriotic feeling or
any settled course of policy. Cleombrotus, regent for the young son
of Leonidas, died, and his brother Pausanias--a brave, clever, and
ambitious man--took his place. We can scarcely be wrong in ascribing--at
least in part--to this circumstance the unlooked-for change of policy,
which electrified the despondent ambassadors of Athens almost as soon as
Pausanias was installed in power. It was suddenly announced that
Sparta would take the offensive. Ten thousand hoplites and 400,000
light-armed--the largest army that she ever levied--took the field,
and, joined at the isthmus by above 25,000 Peloponnesians, and soon
afterwards by almost as many Athenians and Megarians, proceeded to seek
the foreigners, first in Attica, and then in the position to which they
had retired in Boeotia. On the skirts of Citheeron, near Platsea, a
hundred and eight thousand Greeks confronted more than thrice their
number of Persians and Persian subjects; a