ery corps were ready. Cavalrymen had been dismounted. Heavy masses
of Assyrian archers and Arabian slingers were advanced to prepare for the
attack by overwhelming volleys. The Persian noblemen, stung to madness by
their king's reproaches and their own sense of shame, bound themselves by
fearful oaths never to draw from the onset until victorious or dead. The
attack itself was led by princes of the blood, royal half-brothers of the
king. Xerxes sat again on the ivory throne, assured by every obsequious
tongue that the sacred fire gave fair omens, that to-day was the day of
victory.

The attack was magnificent. For an instant its fury seemed to carry the
Hellenes back. Where a Persian fell two stepped over him. The defenders
were swept against their wall. The Barbarians appeared to be storming it.
Then like the tide the battle turned. The hoplites, locking shields,
presented an impenetrable spear hedge. The charge spent itself in empty
promise. Mardonius, who had been in the thickest, nevertheless drew off
his men skilfully and prepared to renew the combat.

In the interval Glaucon, standing by the king, could see a short, firm
figure in black armour going in and out among the Hellenes, ordering their
array--Leonidas--he needed no bird to tell him. And as the Athenian stood
and watched, saw the Persians mass their files for another battering
charge, saw the Great King twist his beard whilst his gleaming eyes
followed the fate of his army, an impulse nigh irresistible came over him
to run one short bow-shot to that opposite array, and cry in his own Greek
tongue:--

"I am a Hellene, too! Look on me come to join you, to live and die with
you, with my face against the Barbarian!"

Cruel the fate that set him here, impotent, when on that band of
countrymen Queen Nike was shedding bright glory!

But he was "Glaucon the Traitor" still, to be awarded the traitor's doom
by Leonidas. Therefore the "Lord Prexaspes" must stand at his post,
guarding the king of the Aryans.

The second charge was as the first, the third was as the second. Mardonius
was full of recourses. By repeated attacks he strove to wear the stubborn
Hellenes down. The Persians proved their courage seven times. Ten of them
died gladly, if their deaths bought that of a single foe. But few as were
Leonidas's numbers, they were not so few as to fail to relieve one another
at the front of the press,--which front was fearfully narrow. And three
times, as his men