A Victor of Salamis
others he loved would flush with pride and no more with shame when men
spoke of him. Could a life of a hundred years add to his glory more than
he could win this day?
“Blow!” commanded Leonidas again, and again pealed the trumpet. The line
moved beyond the wall toward Xerxes’s camp in the open beside the Asopus.
Why wait for Hydarnes’s coming? They would meet the king of the Aryans
face to face and show him the terrible manner in which the men of
Lacedæmon knew how to die.
As they passed from the shadow of the mountain, the sun sprang over the
hills of Eubœa, making fire of the bay and bathing earth and heavens with
glory. In their rear was already shouting. Hydarnes had reached his goal
at Alpeni. All retreat was ended. The thin line swept onward. Before them
spread the whole host of the Barbarian as far as the eye could reach,—a
tossing sea of golden shields, scarlet surcoats, silver
lance-heads,—awaiting with its human billows to engulf them. The Laconians
halted just beyond bow shot. The line locked tighter. Instinctively every
man pressed closer to his comrade. Then before the eyes of Xerxes’s host,
which kept silence, marvelling, the handful broke forth with their pæan.
They threw their well-loved charging song of Tyrtæus in the very face of
the king.
“Press the charge, O sons of Sparta!
Ye are sons of men born free:
Press the charge; ’tis where the shields lock,
That your sires would have you be!
Honour’s cheaply sold for life,
Press the charge, and join the strife:
Let the coward cling to breath,
Let the base shrink back from death,
_Press the charge, let cravens flee!_”
Leonidas’s spear pointed to the ivory throne, around which and him that
sat thereon in blue and scarlet glittered the Persian grandees.
“Onward!”
Immortal ichor seemed in the veins of every Greek. They burst into one
shout.
“The king! The king!”
A roar from countless drums, horns, and atabals answered from the
Barbarians, as across the narrow plain-land charged the three hundred—and
one.
CHAPTER XXII
MARDONIUS GIVES A PROMISE
“Ugh—the dogs died hard, but they are dead,” grunted Xerxes, still
shivering on the ivory throne. The battle had raged disagreeably close to
him.
“They are dead; even so perish all of your Eternity’s enemies,” rejoined
Mardonius, close by. The bow-bearer himself was covered with blood and
dust. A Spartan sword had grazed his forehead. He had exposed himself
recklessly, as well he might, for it had taken all the efforts of the
Persian captains, as well as the ruthless laying of whips over the backs
of their men, to make the king’s battalions face the frenzied Hellenes,
until the closing in of Hydarnes from the rear gave the battle its
inevitable ending.
Xerxes was victorious. The gate of Hellas was unlocked. The mountain wall
of Œta would hinder him no more. But the triumph had been bought with a
price which made Mardonius and every other general in the king’s host
shake his head.
“Lord,” reported Hystaspes, commander of the Scythians, “one man in every
seven of my band is slain, and those the bravest.”
“Lord,” spoke Artabazus, who led the Parthians, “my men swear the Hellenes
were possessed by _dævas_. They dare not approach even their dead bodies.”
“Lord,” asked Hydarnes, “will it please your Eternity to appoint five
other officers in the Life Guard, for of my ten lieutenants over the
Immortals five are slain?”
But the heaviest news no man save Mardonius dared to bring to the king.
“May it please your Omnipotence,” spoke the bow-bearer, “to order the
funeral pyres of cedar and precious oils to be prepared for your brothers
Abrocomes and Hyperanthes, and command the Magians to offer prayers for
the repose of their _fravashis_ in Garonmana the Blessed, for it pleased
Mazda the Great they should fall before the Hellenes.”
Xerxes waved his hand in assent. It was hard to be the “Lord of the
World,” and be troubled by such little things as the deaths of a few
thousand servants, or even of two of his numerous half-brethren, hard at
least on a day like this when he had seen his desire over his enemies.
“They shall be well avenged,” he announced with kingly dignity, then
smiled with satisfaction when they brought him the shield and helmet of
Leonidas, the madman, who had dared to contemn his power. But all the
generals who stood by were grim and sad. One more such victory would bring
the army close to destruction.
Xerxes’s happiness, however, was not to be clouded. From childish fears he
had passed to childish exultation.
“Have you found the body also of this crazed Spartan?” he inquired of the
cavalry officer who had brought the trophies.
“As you say, Omnipotence,” rejoined the captain, bowing in the saddle.
“Good, then. Let the head be struck off and the trunk fastened on a cross
that all may see it. And you, Mardonius,” addressing the bow-bearer, “ride
back to the hillock where these madmen made their last stand. If you
discover among the corpses any who yet breathe, bring them hither to me,
that they may learn the futility of resisting my might.”
The bow-bearer shrugged his shoulders. He loved a fair battle and fair
treatment of valiant foes. The dishonouring of the corpse of Leonidas was
displeasing to more than one high-minded Aryan nobleman. But the king had
spoken, and was to be obeyed. Mardonius rode back to the hillock at the
mouth of the pass, where the Hellenes had retired—after their spears were
broken and they could resist only with swords, stones, or naked hands—for
the final death grip.
The slain Barbarians lay in heaps. The Greeks had been crushed at the end,
not in close strife, but by showers of arrows. Mardonius dismounted and
went with a few followers among the dead. Plunderers were already at their
harpy work of stripping the slain. The bow-bearer chased them angrily
away. He oversaw the task which his attendants performed as quickly as
possible. Their toil was not quite fruitless. Three or four Thespians were
still breathing, a few more of the helots who had attended Leonidas’s
Spartans, but not one of the three hundred but seemed dead, and that too
with many wounds.
Snofru, Mardonius’s Egyptian body-servant, rose from the ghastly work and
grinned with his ivories at his master.
“All the rest are slain, Excellency.”
“You have not searched that pile yonder.”
Snofru and his helpers resumed their toil. Presently the Egyptian dragged
from a bloody heap a body, and raised a yell. “Another one—he breathes!”
“There’s life in him. He shall not be left to the crows. Take him forth
and lay him with the others that are living.”
It was not easy to roll the three corpses from their feebly stirring
comrade. When this was done, the stricken man was still encased in his
cuirass and helmet. They saw only that his hands were slim and white.
“With care,” ordered the humane bow-bearer, “he is a young man. I heard
Leonidas took only older men on his desperate venture. Here, rascals, do
you not see he is smothered in that helmet? Lift him up, unbuckle the
cuirass. By Mithra, he has a strong and noble form! Now the helmet—uncover
the face.”
But as the Egyptian did so, his master uttered a shout of mingled
wonderment and terror.
“Glaucon—Prexaspes, and in Spartan armour!”
What had befallen Glaucon was in no wise miraculous. He had borne his part
in the battle until the Hellenes fell back to the fatal hillock. Then in
one of the fierce onsets which the Barbarians attempted before they had
recourse to the simpler and less glorious method of crushing their foes by
arrow fire, a Babylonian’s war club had dashed upon his helmet. The stout
bronze had saved him from wound, but under the stroke strength and
consciousness had left him in a flash. The moment after he fell, the
soldier beside him had perished by a javelin, and falling above the
Athenian made his body a ghastly shield against the surge and trampling of
the battle. Glaucon lay scathless but senseless through the final
catastrophe. Now consciousness was returning, but he would have died of
suffocation save for Snofru’s timely aid.
It was well for the Athenian that Mardonius was a man of ready devices. He
had not seen Glaucon at his familiar post beside the king, but had
presumed the Hellene had remained at the tents with the women, unwilling
to watch the destruction of his people. In the rush and roar of the battle
the messenger Artazostra had sent her husband telling of “Prexaspes’s”
flight had never reached him. But Mardonius could divine what had
happened. The swallow must fly south in the autumn. The Athenian had
returned to his own. The bow-bearer’s wrath at his protégé’s desertion was
overmastered by the consuming fear that tidings of Prexaspes’s disloyalty
would get to the king. Xerxes’s wrath would be boundless. Had he not
proffered his new subject all the good things of his empire? And to be
rewarded thus! Glaucon’s recompense would be to be sawn asunder or flung
into a serpent’s cage.
Fortunately Mardonius had only his own personal followers around him. He
could count on their discreet loyalty. Vouchsafing no explanations, but
bidding them say not a word of their discovery on their heads, he ordered
Snofru and his companions to make a litter of cloaks and lances, to throw
away Glaucon’s tell-tale Spartan armour, and bear him speedily to
Artazostra’s tents. The stricken man was groaning feebly, moving his
limbs, muttering incoherently. The sight of Xerxes driving in person to
inspect the battle-field made Mardonius hasten the litter away, while he
remained to parley with the king.
“So only a few are alive?” asked Xerxes, leaning over the silver rail of
the chariot, and peering on the upturned faces of the dead which were
nearly trampled by his horses. “Are any sound enough to set before me?”
“None, your Eternity; even the handful that live are desperately wounded.
We have laid them yonder.”
“Let them wait, then; all around here seem dead. Ugly hounds!” muttered
the monarch, still peering down; “even in death they seem to grit their
teeth and defy me. Faugh! The stench is already terrible. It is just as
well they are dead. Angra-Mainyu surely possessed them to fight so! It
cannot be there are many more who can fight like this left in Hellas,
though Demaratus, the Spartan outlaw, says there are. Drive away,
Pitiramphes—and you, Mardonius, ride beside me. I cannot abide those
corpses. Where is my handkerchief? The one with the Sabæan nard on it. I
will hold it to my nose. Most refreshing! And I had a question to ask—I
have forgotten what.”
“Whether news has come from the fleets before Artemisium?” spoke
Mardonius, galloping close to the wheel.
“Not that. Ah! I remember. Where was Prexaspes? I did not see him near me.
Did he stay in the tents while these mad men were destroyed? It was not
loyal, yet I forgive him. After all, he was once a Hellene.”
“May it please your Eternity,”—Mardonius chose his words carefully,—a
Persian always loved the truth, and lies to the king were doubly
impious,—“Prexaspes was not in the tents but in the thick of the battle.”
“Ah!” Xerxes smiled pleasantly, “it was right loyal of him to show his
devotion to me thus. And he acquitted himself valiantly?”
“Most valiantly, Omnipotence.”
“Doubly good. Yet he ought to have stayed near me. If he had been a true
Persian, he would not have withdrawn from the person of the king, even to
display his prowess in combat. Still he did well. Where is he?”
“I regret to tell your Eternity he was desperately wounded, though your
servant hopes not unto death. He is even now being taken to my tents.”
“Where that pretty dancer, your sister, will play the surgeon—ha!” cried