ins landward were steep
and inaccessible; the sea was shoal. The passage between them was narrow
for many miles along the shore, being narrowest at the ingress and
egress. In the middle the space was broader. The place was celebrated
for certain warm springs which here issued from the rocks, and which had
been used in former times for baths.

The position had been considered, long before Xerxes's day, a very
important one in a military point of view, as it was upon the frontier
between two Greek states that were frequently at war. One of these
states, of course, was Thessaly. The other was Phocis, which lay south
of Thessaly. The general boundary between these two states was
mountainous, and impassable for troops, so that each could invade the
territories of the other only by passing round between the mountains
and the shore at Thermopylae.

The Phocaeans, in order to keep the Thessalians out, had, in former
times, built a wall across the way, and put up gates there, which they
strongly fortified. In order still further to increase the difficulty of
forcing a passage, they conducted the water of the warm springs over the
ground without the wall, in such a way as to make the surface
continually wet and miry. The old wall had now fallen to ruins, but the
miry ground remained. The place was solitary and desolate, and overgrown
with a confused and wild vegetation. On one side the view extended far
and wide over the sea, with the highlands of Euboea in the distance, and
on the other dark and inaccessible mountains rose, covered with forests,
indented with mysterious and unexplored ravines, and frowning in a wild
and gloomy majesty over the narrow passway which crept along the shore
below.

The Greeks, when they retired from Thessaly, fell back upon Thermopylae,
and established themselves there. They had a force variously estimated,
from three to four thousand men. These were from the different states of
Greece, some within and some without the Peloponnesus--a few hundred
men only being furnished, in general, from each state or kingdom. Each
of these bodies of troops had its own officers, though there was one
general-in-chief, who commanded the whole. This was Leonidas the
Spartan. He had brought with him three hundred Spartans, as the quota
furnished by that city. These men he had specially selected himself, one
by one, from among the troops of the city, as men on whom he could rely.

It will be seen from the map that Th