A Victor of Salamis
of the wretches as possible, but drag them prisoners before his outraged
presence.
A noble charge. A terrible repulse. For the first time those Asiatics who
had forgotten Marathon discovered the overwhelming superiority that the
sheathing of heavy armour gave the Greek hoplites over the lighter armed
Median spearmen. The short lances and wooden targets of the attackers were
pitifully futile against the long spears and brazen shields of the
Hellenes. In the narrow pass the vast numbers of Barbarians went for
nothing. They could not use their archers, they could not charge with
their magnificent cavalry. The dead lay in heaps. The Medes attacked again
and again. At last an end came to their courage. The captains laid the
lash over their mutinous troops. The men bore the whips in sullen silence.
They would not charge again upon those devouring spears.
White with anger, Xerxes turned to Hydarnes and his “Immortals,” the
infantry of the Life Guard. The general needed no second bidding. The
charge was driven home with magnificent spirit. But what the vassal Medes
could not accomplish, neither could the lordly Persians. The repulse was
bloody. If once Leonidas’s line broke and the Persians rushed on with
howls of triumph, it was only to see the Hellenes’ files close in a
twinkling and return to the onset with their foes in confusion. Hydarnes
led back his men at last. The king sat on the ivory throne just out of
arrow shot, watching the ebb and flow of the battle. Hydarnes approached
and prostrated himself.
“Omnipotence, I the least of your slaves put my life at your bidding.
Command that I forfeit my head, but my men can do no more. I have lost
hundreds. The pass is not to be stormed.”
Only the murmur of assent from all the well-tried generals about the
throne saved Hydarnes from paying the last penalty. The king’s rage was
fearful; men trembled to look on him. His words came so thick, the rest
could never follow all his curses and commands. Only Mardonius was bold
enough to stand up before his face.
“Your Eternity, this is an unlucky day. Is it not sacred to Angra-Mainyu
the Evil? The arch-Magian says the holy fire gives forth sparks of
ill-omen. Wait, then, till to-morrow. Verethraghna, the Angel of Victory,
will then return to your servants.”
The bow-bearer led his trembling master to the royal tent, and naught more
of Xerxes was seen till the morning. All that night Mardonius never slept,
but went unceasingly the round of the host preparing for battle. Glaucon
saw little of him. The Athenian himself had been posted among the guard of
nobles directly about the person of the king, and he was glad he was set
nowhere else, otherwise he might have been ordered to join in the attack.
Like every other in the host, he slept under arms, and never returned to
Mardonius’s pavilion. His heart had been in his eyes all that day. He had
believed Leonidas would be swept from the pass at the first onset. Even he
had underrated the Spartan prowess. The repulse of the Medes had
astonished him. When Hydarnes reeled back, he could hardly conceal his
joy. The Hellenes were fighting! The Hellenes were conquering! He forgot
he stood almost at Xerxes’s side when the last charge failed; and barely
in time did he save himself from joining in the shout of triumph raised by
the defenders when the decimated Immortals slunk away. He had grown
intensely proud of his countrymen, and when he heard the startled Persian
lords muttering dark forbodings of the morrow, he all but laughed his
gladness in their faces.
So the night passed for him: the hard earth for a bed, a water cruse
wrapped in a cloak for a pillow. And just as the first red blush stole
over the green Malian bay and the mist-hung hills of Eubœa beyond, he woke
with all the army. Mardonius had used the night well. Chosen contingents
from every 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 Nikē 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 drifted back in defeat, Xerxes the king “leaped from the
throne whereon he sat, in anguish for his army.”
At noon new contingents from the rear took the place of the exhausted
attackers. The sun beat down with unpitying heat. The wounded lay
sweltering in their agony whilst the battle roared over them. Mardonius
never stopped to count his dead. Then at last came nightfall. Man could do
no more. As the shadows from Œta grew long over the close scene of combat,
even the proudest Persians turned away. They had lost thousands. Their
defeat was absolute. Before them and to westward and far away ranged the
jagged mountains, report had it, unthreaded by a single pass. To the
eastward was only the sea,—the sea closed to them by the Greek fleet at
the unseen haven of Artemisium. Was the triumph march of the Lord of the
World to end in this?
Xerxes spoke no word when they took him to his tent that night, a sign of
indescribable anger. Fear, humiliation, rage—all these seemed driving him
mad. His chamberlains and eunuchs feared to approach to take off his
golden armour. Mardonius came to the royal tent; the king, with curses he
had never hurled against the bow-bearer before, refused to see him. The
battle was ended. No one was hardy enough to talk of a fresh attack on the
morrow. Every captain had to report the loss of scores of his best. As
Glaucon rode back to Mardonius’s tents, he overheard two infantry
officers:—
“A fearful day—the bow-bearer is likely to pay for it. I hope his Majesty
confines his anger only to him.”
“Yes—Mardonius will walk the Chinvat bridge to-morrow. The king is turning
against him. Megabyzus is the bow-bearer’s enemy, and already is gone to
his Majesty to say that it is Mardonius’s blunders that have brought the
army to such a plight. The king will catch at that readily.”
At the tents Glaucon found Artazostra and Roxana. They were both pale. The
news of the great defeat had been brought by a dozen messengers. Mardonius
had not arrived. He was not slain, that was certain, but Artazostra feared
the worst. The proud daughter of Darius found it hard to bear up.
“My husband has many enemies. Hitherto the king’s favour has allowed him
to mock them. But if my brother deserts him, his ruin is speedy. Ah!
Ahura-Mazda, why hast Thou suffered us to see this day?”
Glaucon said what he could of comfort, which was little. Roxana wept
piteously; he was fain to soothe her by his caress,—something he had never
ventured before. Artazostra was on the point of calling her eunuchs and
setting forth for Xerxes’s tent to plead for the life of her husband, when
suddenly Pharnuches, Mardonius’s body-servant, came with news that
dispelled at least the fears of the women.
“I am bidden to tell your Ladyships that my master has silenced the
tongues of his enemies and is restored to the king’s good favor. And I am
bidden also to command the Lord Prexaspes to come to the royal tent. His
Majesty has need of him.”
Glaucon went, questioning much as to the service to be required. He did
not soon forget the scene that followed. The great pavilion was lit by a
score of resinous flambeaux. The red light shook over the green and purple
hangings, the silver plating of the tent-poles. At one end rose the golden
throne of the king; before it in a semicircle the stools of a dozen or
more princes and commanders. In the centre stood Mardonius questioning a
coarse-featured, ill-favoured fellow, who by his sheepskin dress and
leggings Glaucon instantly recognized as a peasant of this Malian country.
The king beckoned the Athenian into the midst and was clearly too eager to
stand on ceremony.
“Your Greek is better than Mardonius’s, good Prexaspes. In a matter like
this we dare not trust too many interpreters. This man speaks the rough
dialect of his country, and few can understand him. Can you interpret?”
“I am passing familiar with the Locrian and Malian dialect, your Majesty.”
“Question this man further as to what he will do for us. We have
understood him but lamely.”
Glaucon proceeded to comply. The man, who was exceeding awkward and ill at
ease in such august company, spoke an outrageous shepherd’s jargon which
even the Athenian understood with effort. But his business came out
speedily. He was Ephialtes, the son of one Eurydemus, a Malian, a
dull-witted grazier of the country, brought to Mardonius by hope of
reward. The general, partly understanding his purpose, had brought him to
the king. In brief, he was prepared, for due compensation, to lead the
Persians by an almost unknown mountain path over the ridge of Œta and to
the rear of Leonidas’s position at Thermopylæ, where the Hellenes,
assailed front and rear, would inevitably be destroyed.
As Glaucon interpreted, the shout of relieved gladness from the Persian
grandees made the tent-cloths shake. Xerxes’s eyes kindled. He clapped his
hands.
“Reward? He shall have ten talents! But where? How?”
The man asserted that the path was easy and practicable for a large body
of troops. He had often been over it with his sheep and goats. If the
Persians would start a force at once—it was already quite dark—they could
fall upon Leonidas at dawn. The Spartan would be completely trapped, or
forced to open the defile without another spear thrust.
“A care, fellow,” warned Mardonius, regarding the man sharply; “you speak
glibly, but if this is a trick to lead a band of the king’s servants to
destruction, understand you play with deadly dice. If the troops march,