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CHAPTER V.

Greece-Darius-Xerxes-Leonidas, King of Sparta-Thermopylæ -Artemision-Battle of Salamis-Final Abandonment of Greece by the Persians.

WHILST Athens was thus engaged in subduing the neighbouring islands and increasing her naval experience, Darius, King of Persia, was preparing another armament intended to revenge the unusual disgrace to which his arms had been subjected. In spite of his former reverses, his hopes of ultimate success were great, for he had conquered the Asiatic Greeks, and forced the kingdom of Macedon to pay him tribute. His death did not relieve Greece from the apprehension of a new Persian invasion; for Xerxes, the son and successor of Darius, inherited with the crown all the hostile feelings of his father. The most skilful artisans of the East had been engaged for some years in preparing an immense armament; workmen from the Grecian colonies, shipwrights from Phoenicia, and the most ingenious artificers from all parts of the Persian dominions were employed in fitting out the largest fleet that the ancient world had yet beheld; and nine years after the battle of Marathon, Xerxes set out to attempt the conquest of Greece. We are told that his vessels of war numbered twelve hundred, each of which was manned by two hundred and thirty

men; that there were three thousand transports capable of conveying between seventy and eighty soldiers, and that when the whole of this monstrous armament was in complete order, there were nearly five thousand. vessels, and an army of two millions of fighting men. So luxurious were the habits of the Asiatic commanders, that each was attended moreover by several slaves, and carried with him a large quantity of baggage, so that the numbers actually on the march were nearly doubled. It was in the spring of the year 480 B.C., that the Persian force was put in motion, and having crossed the Hellespont by a bridge of boats, constructed for the purpose, it marched into Thrace, and deployed on the plains of Trachis. A narrow pass, that of Thermopylæ, intervened between the Persian army and Greece; and as this strait was looked on as the gate or entrance to that country, it was resolved to defend it to the utmost. Leonidas, the Spartan king, with three hundred picked men, here took his stand, and after performing such acts of valour as have made their name, and the spot where they fought, famous for all time, fell one by one, literally buried beneath heaps of slaughtered enemies. The desperate valour of the Greeks, and the havoc they caused to the Persian host considerably damped the ardour of the invading army; but it was only the commencement of Xerxes' misfortunes.

The Grecian fleet, commanded by Eurybiades, the Spartan, was stationed at Artemision, a promontory of the island of Euboea (Negropont). The Persian vessels were anchored on the shores of Thessaly; for they were too numerous to enter any of the harbours of Greece. At the same time that the military operations were

Engagements at Artemision.

37

proceeding, a strong gale of wind sprang up, with a terrific storm of thunder and rain, which, as is usual in the Mediterranean, soon raised a tremendous sea. As we have before observed, the vessels of the ancients. were only fitted for fair weather-four hundred Persian galleys were driven from their anchors, and foundered, and the rest with difficulty escaped a similar fate; when the storm blew over, they abandoned their dangerous moorings, and cast anchor opposite Artemision, in the Pagasaan bay. As soon as the Persians recovered from their confusion, they despatched two hundred of their swiftest vessels to engage the Grecian fleet; but by false intelligence, the detachment steered in a contrary direction, whilst the Greeks, considering themselves more on an equality with the present reduced state of the Persian force, quitted their anchorage, and offered battle: the challenge was accepted-the Asiatics were still superior in numbers, but the Greeks had greater discipline and skill. Forming themselves into a circle, the better to meet their foes, they avoided with address the shock of the Persian vessels, and driving their pointed prows into the unwieldy hulls of their antagonists, they clambered boldly on to the decks of the Persians, and by desperate fighting, struck a panic-terror to their hearts. The Persians gave way on all sides, lost thirty of their ships to the Greeks, who sunk many more; and, but for the approach of night, would probably have achieved even more signal successes. As it happened, circumstances most singularly assisted the Greeks, and gave a finishing stroke to the events of the day, -for the scattered vessels of the Persians, in flying from the scene of engagement, were encountered by another

storm, which drove them on the coasts of Thessaly, and added more victims to the list of disasters; the same tempest fell, likewise, with fury on the two hundred ships that had been separated from the main body ere the engagement began, and dashed them to pieces on the inhospitable shore. A second and a third skirmish, alike terminated in favour of the Greeks, and the engagements at Artemision are among the many brilliant annals which mark the superiority of the Grecian navy at that remote period.

The advance of the main body of the Persians, however, convinced the Greeks that their present position would soon be no longer tenable, so, abandoning their moorings, they coasted the shores of Attica, and entered the straits of the Saronicus, which separate the isle of Salamis from the Athenian harbours, where they again dropped anchor.

The country behind them being thus left unguarded, was ravaged, in the march of Xerxes, with all the destruction and cruelty of a barbarous host. Three months had elapsed since the Persian monarch had crossed the Hellespont, and he now stood in the Attic territory-having laid waste every city in his progress. The Athenians too clearly saw that nothing could now save their country. Sparta had retired to the Peloponnesus, and begun to strengthen the Isthmus of Corinth, by erecting a wall across it; and the other powers of Greece had yielded to the conqueror. In this sad posture of affairs, the Athenians, acting on the advice of Themistocles, abandoned to the enemy their territory and their beloved city, and, transporting their wives and families to a place of temporary security, joined the

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