King Leonidas I of Sparta

“ And while she sat mid the windowless walls there happened without her knowledge the most glorious single deed of Greece.
Sparta was ever grudging. She did not much care to bar the Persians out of all Greece. She would have preferred to meet them on the borders of her own Lakonia. If all her sister states should then perish why should Sparta care?
But one Spartan cared supremely to keep them out of Greece. Her king, Leonidas. So Leonidas, with the few soldiers which the Ephors grudgingly allowed him, marched for Thermopylæ. ”

“ At this point, in accordance with the decision of the Corinthian Congress, was offered the first resistance to the progress of the Persian army. Leonidas, king of Sparta, with three hundred Spartan soldiers and about six thousand allies from different states of Greece, held the pass. As the Greeks were about to celebrate the Olympian games, which their religious scruples would not allow them to postpone, they left this handful of men unsupported to hold in check the army of Xerxes until the festival days should be past. ”

“ Chelonis, then, pointing to her mourning habit and her dishevelled hair thus addressed Leonidas. ‘It was not my dear father compassion for Cleombrotos which put me in this habit and gave me this look of misery. My sorrows took their date with your misfortune and your banishment, and have ever since remained my familiar companions. Now you have conquered your enemies and are again king of Sparta should I still retain these ensigns of affliction or assume festival and royal ornaments, while the husband of my youth whom you yourself bestowed upon me falls a victim to your vengeance? ”

“ Only a small force of Greeks was defending the Pass, the main part of the Greek army was kept back further to the south to defend the Isthmus. A small body of about three hundred Spartans had been sent under their King Leonidas to defend the Pass of Thermopylae, and, if possible, to prevent the Persians from advancing further into Greece. These three hundred men were the picked body-guard of the King, a force in which only fathers of sons might serve, so that their families might not die out of Sparta. ”

“ Leonidas is witness, Sparta's king, who hath left a mighty crown of valor and undying fame."
The antitheses are wrought with consummate skill; the fate of the heroes is glorious, their doom honorable. So far the eulogy is commonplace; then the same thought receives a bolder turn: their grave is an altar. We do not lament for them so much as hold them in eternal memory; our very songs of sorrow become pæans of praise. What follows is a still further expansion of the leading theme: rust and time cannot affect their fame; Hellas confides her glory to their tomb. ”

“ King of Sparta, of the line of the Agids, was the son and successor of the heroic Leonidas, who was killed at Thermopylae, b. c. 489. He was a mere child at the time of his father's death, on which account the regency was assumed by his cousin Pausanias, who commanded the Greeks at Plataea. ”

“ CLEO′MBROTUS(Κλεόμβροτος) , son of Anaxandrides, king of Sparta, brother of Dorieus and Leonidas, and half-brother of Cleomenes. (Herod. v. 41.) He became regent after the battle of Thermopylae, B. C. 480, for Pleistarchus, infant son of Leonidas, and in this capacity was at the head of the Peloponnesian troops who at the time of the battle of Salamis were engaged in fortifying the isthmus (Herod. viii. 71.) ”

“ Leonidas had already made up his mind that the expedition would probably be his death, perhaps because a prophecy had been given at the Temple at Delphi that Sparta should be saved by the death of one of her kings of the race of Hercules. He was allowed by law to take with him 300 men, and these he chose most carefully, not merely for their strength and courage, but selecting those who had sons, so that no family might be altogether destroyed. These Spartans, with their helots or slaves, made up his own share of the numbers, but all the army was under his generalship. ”

“ In addition to these, were one thousand Phocians, and a band of the Opuntian Locrians, unnumbered by Herodotus, but variously estimated, by Diodorus at one thousand, and, more probably, by Pausanias at no less than seven thousand.
The chief command was intrusted, according to the claims of Sparta, to Leonidas, the younger brother of the frantic Cleomenes 62, by a different mother, and his successor to the Spartan throne.
There are men whose whole life is in a single action. Of these, Leonidas is the most eminent. ”

“ As to the heroic deed itself, the view that Leonidas threw away his own life and that of the four thousand, that it was magnificent but not strategy, not war, does not take into account the fact that Sparta had for nearly half a century been looked to as the military leader of Greece. It was audacious in the Athenians to fight the battle of Marathon without them, and they did so only because the Spartans did not come at their call. Sparta had not come to Thermopylæ in force, it is true ”

“ THERMOPYLAE (Gr. θερμός, hot, and πύλη, gate) , a Greek pass leading from Locris into Thessaly between Mount Oeta and the sea. (Maliac Gulf) . It is chiefly famous for the heroic defence made by Leonidas, the Spartan king, with 300 Spartan soldiers against the Persian army of Xerxes advancing upon Greece in 480 (see Leonidas and authorities there quoted) . ”

“ The deity, in making you the instrument of Greece’s freedom, has placed you far above all your predecessors in glory: in concluding this business so conduct yourself that your reputation may be still increased, and that no barbarian may ever again attempt to perpetrate atrocious actions against Greece. When Leonidas was slain at Thermopylæ, Mardonius and Xerxes cut off his head, and suspended his body from a cross. Do the same with respect to Mardonius, and you will deserve the applause of Sparta and of Greece, and avenge the cause of your uncle Leonidas. ”

“ Far below he caught a glimpse of the plain, where miles of troops, horse and foot, were crawling like ants toward the pass. The enemy gave him no time to see more. They raised an exultant shout and dashed upon him with lowered lances. Although Leonidas and his men fought with desperation, the Spartan realized that they were not strong enough to hold their ground. The mere weight of their opponents forced them back, inch by inch, until their horses were struggling on the brink of the slope to the bed of the stream.
"Let us die where we stand!" Leonidas shouted. "Remember that we are Greeks! ”

“ Leonidas did not like the plan of equality, and soon openly opposed it, although his son-in-law Cleombrotus sided with Agis, and upheld it.
But the people were eager for the new division which would make them all equal as of old; and they were so angry with Leonidas for his resistance, that they rose up against him, and proposed to depose him by reviving an old law which forbade the ruling of a king who married a foreign wife.
Leonidas had time to flee to the Temple of Athene; and when the ephors called him to appear before them, he refused to do so, because he feared for his life. ”

“ Leonidas cried. "Memnon! Memnon!"
He drew his sword and rushed into the conflict, with Clearchus and Chares behind him, shouting at the top of their lungs. The Greeks, encouraged by their unexpected succor, made a stand, while the Persians, not knowing how large a force was upon them, ceased to follow up their advantage.
"Drive in the sheep with the cattle," Chares cried, catching up a heavy stake from a hayrick and swinging it around his head with both hands. "Don't let them escape!" He brought the stake down upon the Persian heads like a gigantic flail. ”

“ Leonidas shook his head and sipped the wine that a slave had brought for his refreshment. He knew that she referred to the site that they had reserved for Chares and Thais.
"It is too late," he replied, half regretfully. "As we have lived, so we must die."
Artemisia slipped her hand within that of Clearchus, while the Spartan followed with his eyes the glancing sails of a vessel whose prow was turned toward the north and the rugged hillsides of his native land. Their reflections were interrupted by the children, who had tired of their play and were seeking new diversion. ”

“ Leonidas was willing enough to assist the richer class, but he feared the people, who were eager for reform, and would not openly oppose Agis, although he endeavoured secretly to ruin his scheme, and to prejudice the Ephors against him, by imputing to him the design of hiring the poor to make him despot with the plunder of the rich, and insinuating that by his redistribution of lands and remission of debts he meant to obtain more adherents for himself instead of more citizens for Sparta. ”

“ He paused, and Azemilcus made no reply; but his smile came back and his eyes wandered toward a table where a great flagon of wine had been set.
"There may yet be time to save ourselves and you," Leonidas continued. "If you can get rid of us for the present, you will have nothing to fear. You can deny your son's story and it will be attributed to a clumsy plot to overthrow you. Is there no way out of the palace that is not guarded?"
"None that I know," the king replied.
The chancellor uttered a clucking sound in his throat that seemed involuntary. Leonidas gripped him by the shoulder. ”

“ Upon the death of his father Leonidas, he succeeded, and observing the citizens of all sorts to be debauched, the rich neglecting the public good, and intent on their private gain and pleasure, and the poor distressed in their own homes, and therefore without either spirit for war or ambition to be trained up as Spartans, that he had only the name of king, and the ephors all the power, he was resolved to change the present posture of affairs. ”

“ As the two friends proceeded they now began to meet other bands of fugitives straggling along the road. Most of them fled silently, often looking back over their shoulders as if in dread of pursuit.
"Cowards!" said Leonidas, scornfully.
"Life is sweet to all of us," Clearchus remonstrated, thinking of Artemisia.
"To such as these it should be bitter!" the Spartan replied.
They were rounding a turn in the road as he spoke, and before the words were well out of his mouth they found themselves entangled in a rabble of horsemen, who were retreating before a fierce attack. ”

“ This celebrated battle, which happened 480 years before the christian era, taught the Greeks to despise the number of the Persians, and to rely upon their own strength, and intrepidity. Temples were raised to the fallen hero, and festivals, called Leonidea, yearly celebrated at Sparta, in which free-born youths contended. Leonidas, as he departed for the battle from Lacedæmon, gave no other injunction to his wife but, after his death, to marry a man of virtue and honour, to raise from her children deserving of the name and greatness of her first husband. Herodotus, bk. ”

“ Now if Leonidas had given way to impulse and retired, like Demaratus the son of Ariston, either to the king of Macedonia or to the Egyptian king, he would have profited nothing even by the Spartans changing their minds. But as it was, when the citizens sentenced him to exile, he went to Arcadia, whence not many years later he was recalled by the Lacedemonians, who made him king again.
3.6.9 Now how Cleomenes the son of Leonidas performed daring feats of valor, and how after him the Spartans ceased to be ruled by kings, I have already shown in my account of Aratus of Sicyon. ”

“ The eternal sower, who is never mistaken, has not opened for those ungrateful lands his hand full of men of genius. Such wheat is not to be confided to the rock.
Heroism, however, is not refused to them; they will have, if necessary, either the martyr or the captain. Leonidas is possible for Sparta, Hannibal for Carthage; but neither Sparta nor Carthage is capable of Homer. Some indescribable tenderness in the sublime, which causes the poet to gush from the very entrails of a people, is wanting in them. That latent tenderness, that flebile nescio quid, England possesses ”

“ Now the manner of the Spartans was this: to die rather than yield. However sorely defeated, or overwhelmed by numbers, they never left the ground alive and unvictorious, and as this was well known, their enemies were seldom eager to attack such resolute fighters.
Besides the Spartans, Leonidas led some three or four thousand men from other cities, and he was joined at Thermopylæ by the Locrians and a thousand Phocians. Perhaps he may have had six or eight thousand soldiers under him, while the Persians may have outnumbered them by the odds of a hundred to one. ”

“ While Demosthenes spoke, not a word was uttered in the group around Clearchus. The young man sat with flushed cheeks and shining eyes, tingling with a desire to sacrifice life itself, if need there were, to revenge the wrongs of Athens and crush the insolent Macedonian. Leonidas listened with hands clenched and with every nerve at tension, like a hound of pure race straining at his leash toward the quarry. Aristotle was gravely attentive, and even Chares, though he could not be aroused from his lazy pose, followed the oration with evident enjoyment. ”

“ Only by staying and fighting could he show that Sparta held by right the place she had won. It had to be done. "So the glory of Sparta was not blotted out."
One may have read, and read often, the description of the battle in the school-room, but he reads it with different eyes on the spot, when he can look up at the hillock crowned with a ruined cavalry barrack just inside the western pass and say to himself: "Here on this hill they fought their last fight and fell to the last man. Here once stood the monuments to Leonidas, to the three hundred, and to the four thousand." ”