A Victor of Salamis
were slumbering under arms, ready for the attack the instant the uproar
from the rear of the pass told how Hydarnes had completed his circuit.
Eos—“Rosy-Fingered Dawn”—was just shimmering above the mist-hung peak of
Mt. Telethrius in Eubœa across the bay when Glaucon came to the last
Persian outpost. The pickets saluted with their lances, as he went by
them, taking him for a high officer on a reconnoissance before the onset.
Next he was on the scene of the former battles. He stumbled over riven
shields, shattered spear butts, and many times over ghastlier
objects—objects yielding and still warm—dead men, awaiting the crows of
the morrow. He walked straight on, while the dawn strengthened and the
narrow pass sprang into view, betwixt mountain and morass. Then at last a
challenge, not in Persian, but in round clear Doric.
“Halt! Who passes?”
Glaucon held up his right hand, and advanced cautiously. Two men in heavy
armour approached, and threatened his breast with their lance points.
“Who are you?”
“A friend, a Hellene—my speech tells that. Take me to Leonidas. I’ve a
story worth telling.”
“_Euge!_ Master ‘Friend,’ our general can’t be waked for every deserter.
We’ll call our decarch.”
A shout brought the subaltern commanding the Greek outposts. He was a
Spartan of less sluggish wits than many of his breed, and presently
believed Glaucon when he declared he had reason in asking for Leonidas.
“But your accent is Athenian?” asked the decarch, with wonderment.
“Ay, Athenian,” assented Glaucon.
“Curses on you! I thought no Athenian ever Medized. What business had
_you_ in the Persian camp? Who of your countrymen are there save the sons
of Hippias?”
“Not many,” rejoined the fugitive, not anxious to have the questions
pushed home.
“Well, to Leonidas you shall go, sir Athenian, and state your business.
But you are like to get a bearish welcome. Since your pretty Glaucon’s
treason, our king has not wasted much love even on repentant traitors.”
With a soldier on either side, the deserter was marched within the barrier
wall. Another encampment, vastly smaller and less luxurious than the
Persian, but of martial orderliness, spread out along the pass. The
Hellenes were just waking. Some were breakfasting from helmets full of
cold boiled peas, others buckled on the well-dinted bronze cuirasses and
greaves. Men stared at Glaucon as he was led by them.
“A deserter they take to the chief,” ran the whisper, and a little knot of
idle Spartans trailed behind, when at last Glaucon’s guides halted him
before a brown tent barely larger than the others.
A man sat on a camp chest by the entrance, and was busy with an iron spoon
eating “black broth”(9) from a huge kettle. In the dim light Glaucon could
just see that he wore a purple cloak flung over his black armour, and that
the helmet resting beside him was girt by a wreath of gold foil.
The two guards dropped their spears in salute. The man looked upward.
“A deserter,” reported one of Glaucon’s mentors; “he says he has important
news.”
“Wait!” ordered the general, making the iron spoon clack steadily.
“The weal of Hellas rests thereon. Listen!” pleaded the nervous Athenian.
“Wait!” was the unruffled answer, and still the iron spoon went on plying.
The Spartan lifted a huge morsel from the pot, chewed it deliberately,
then put the vessel by. Next he inspected the newcomer from head to toe,
then at last gave his permission.
“Well?”
Glaucon’s words were like a bursting torrent.
“Fly, your Excellency! I’m from Xerxes’s camp. I was at the Persian
council. The mountain path is betrayed. Hydarnes and the guard are almost
over it. They will fall upon your rear. Fly, or you and all your men are
trapped!”
“Well,” observed the Spartan, slowly, motioning for the deserter to cease,
but Glaucon’s fears made that impossible.
“I say I was in Xerxes’s own tent. I was interpreter betwixt the king and
the traitor. I know all whereof I say. If you do not flee instantly, the
blood of these men is on your head.”
Leonidas again scanned the deserter with piercing scrutiny, then flung a
question.
“Who are you?”
The blood leaped into the Athenian’s cheeks. The tongue that had wagged so
nimbly clove in his mouth. He grew silent.
“Who are you?”
As the question was repeated, the scrutiny grew yet closer. The soldiers
were pressing around, one comrade leaning over another’s shoulder. Twenty
saw the fugitive’s form straighten as he stood in the morning twilight.
“I am Glaucon of Athens, Isthmionices!”
“Ah!” Leonidas’s jaw dropped for an instant. He showed no other
astonishment, but the listening Spartans raised a yell.
“Death! Stone the traitor!”
Leonidas, without a word, smote the man nearest to him with a spear butt.
The soldiers were silent instantly. Then the chief turned back to the
deserter.
“Why here?”
Glaucon had never prayed for the gifts of Peitho, “Our Lady Persuasion,”
more than at that crucial moment. Arguments, supplications, protestations
of innocence, curses upon his unknown enemies, rushed to his lips
together. He hardly realized what he himself said. Only he knew that at
the end the soldiers did not tug at their hilts as before and scowl so
threateningly, and Leonidas at last lifted his hand as if to bid him
cease.
“_Euge!_” grunted the chief. “So you wish me to believe you a victim of
fate, and trust your story? The pass is turned, you say? Masistes the seer
said the libation sputtered on the flame with ill-omen when he sacrificed
this morning. Then you come. The thing shall be looked into. Call the
captains.”
* * * * * * *
The locharchs and taxiarchs of the Greeks assembled. It was a brief and
gloomy council of war. While Euboulus, commanding the Corinthian
contingent, was still questioning whether the deserter was worthy of
credence, a scout came running down Mt. Œta confirming the worst. The
cowardly Phocians watching the mountain trail had fled at the first arrows
of Hydarnes. It was merely a question of time before the Immortals would
be at Alpeni, the village in Leonidas’s rear. There was only one thing to
say, and the Spartan chief said it.
“You must retreat.”
The taxiarchs of the allied Hellenes under him were already rushing forth
to their men to bid them fly for dear life. Only one or two stayed by the
tent, marvelling much to observe that Leonidas gave no orders to his
Lacedæmonians to join in the flight. On the contrary, Glaucon, as he stood
near, saw the general lift the discarded pot of broth and explore it again
with the iron spoon.
“O Father Zeus,” cried the incredulous Corinthian leader. “Are you turned
mad, Leonidas?”
“Time enough for all things,” returned the unmoved Spartan, continuing his
breakfast.
“Time!” shouted Euboulus. “Have we not to flee on wings, or be cut off?”
“Fly, then.”
“But you and your Spartans?”
“We will stay.”
“Stay? A handful against a million? Do I hear aright? What can you do?”
“Die.”
“The gods forbid! Suicide is a fearful end. No man should rush on
destruction. What requires you to perish?”
“Honour.”
“Honour! Have you not won glory enough by holding Xerxes’s whole power at
bay two days? Is not your life precious to Hellas? What is the gain?”
“Glory to Sparta.”
Then in the red morning half-light, folding his big hands across his
mailed chest, Leonidas looked from one to another of the little circle.
His voice was still in unemotional gutturals when he delivered the longest
speech of his life.
“We of Sparta were ordered to defend this pass. The order shall be obeyed.
The rest of you must go away—all save the Thebans, whose loyalty I
distrust. Tell Leotychides, my colleague at Sparta, to care for Gorgo my
wife and Pleistarchus my young son, and to remember that Themistocles the
Athenian loves Hellas and gives sage counsel. Pay Strophius of Epidaurus
the three hundred drachmæ I owe him for my horse. Likewise—”
A second breathless scout interrupted with the tidings that Hydarnes was
on the last stretches of his road. The chief arose, drew the helmet down
across his face, and motioned with his spear.
“Go!” he ordered.
The Corinthian would have seized his hand. He shook him off. At Leonidas’s
elbow was standing the trumpeter for his three hundred from Lacedæmon.
“Blow!” commanded the chief.
The keen blast cut the air. The chief deliberately wrapped the purple
mantle around himself and adjusted the gold circlet over his helmet, for
on the day of battle a Lacedæmonian was wont to wear his best. And even as
he waited there came to him out of the midst of the panic-stricken,
dissolving camp, one by one, tall men in armour, who took station beside
him—the men of Sparta who had abided steadfast while all others prepared
to flee, waiting for the word of the chief.
Presently they stood, a long black line, motionless, silent, whilst the
other divisions filed in swift fear past. Only the Thespians—let their
names not be forgotten—chose to share the Laconians’ glory and their doom
and took their stand behind the line of Leonidas. With them stood also the
Thebans, but compulsion held them, and they tarried merely to desert and
pawn their honour for their lives.
More couriers. Hydarnes’s van was in sight of Alpeni now. The retreat of
the Corinthians, Tegeans, and other Hellenes became a run; only once
Euboulus and his fellow-captains turned to the silent warrior that stood
leaning on his spear.
“Are you resolved on madness, Leonidas?”
“_Chaire!_ Farewell!” was the only answer he gave them. Euboulus sought no
more, but faced another figure, hitherto almost forgotten in the confusion
of the retreat.
“Haste, Master Deserter, the Barbarians will give you an overwarm welcome,
and you are no Spartan; save yourself!”
Glaucon did not stir.
“Do you not see that it is impossible?” he answered, then strode across to
Leonidas. “I must stay.”
“Are you also mad? You are young—” The good-hearted Corinthian strove to
drag him into the retreating mob.
Glaucon sprang away from him and addressed the silent general.
“Shall not Athens remain by Sparta, if Sparta will accept?”
He could see Leonidas’s cold eyes gleam out through the slits in his
helmet. The general reached forth his hand.
“Sparta accepts,” called he; “they have lied concerning your Medizing! And
you, Euboulus, do not filch from him his glory.”
“Zeus pity you!” cried Euboulus, running at last. One of the Spartans
brought to Glaucon the heavy hoplite’s armour and the ponderous spear and
shield. He took his place in the line with the others. Leonidas stalked to
the right wing of his scant array, the post of honour and of danger. The
Thespians closed up behind. Shield was set to shield. Helmets were drawn
low. The lance points projected in a bristling hedge in front. All was
ready.
The general made no speech to fire his men. There was no wailing, no
crying to the gods, no curses upon the tardy ephors at Lacedæmon who had
deferred sending their whole strong levy instead of the pitiful three
hundred. Sparta had sent this band to hold the pass. They had gone,
knowing she might require the supreme sacrifice. Leonidas had spoken for
all his men. “Sparta demanded it.” What more was to be said?
As for Glaucon he could think of nothing save—in the language of his
people—“this was a beautiful manner and place in which to die.” “Count no
man happy until he meets a happy end,” so had said Solon, and of all ends
what could be more fortunate than this? Euboulus would tell in Athens, in
all Hellas, how he had remained with Leonidas and maintained Athenian
honour when Corinthian and Tegean turned away. From “Glaucon the Traitor”
he would be raised to “Glaucon the Hero.” Hermione, Democrates, and all