2. The king of Sparta, stung with the treachery of his beauteous queen, whom he adored, and enraged at the baseness and perfidy of the Trojan prince, to whom he had shown all the rights of hospitality, loudly complained of the injury, and appealed to the justice of his countrymen. brother Agamemnon, the most powerful prince of Greece, seconded his complaints, and used his influence and authority to rouse the resentment of the whole extensive confederation. He succeeded; for the princes and people of Greece, no less wounded in their pride than stung with a sense of the atrocious villany, determined to extinguish the flames of their resentment in the blood of Priam and his people, who refused to restore the illustrious fugitive.

3. A powerful army was accordingly sent to wage war with the Trojans ; but the enterprise was found to be attended with unforeseen difficulties. The Trojans were a brave and gallant people, of considerable resources, and very great courage. Hector, the son of Priam, equalled only by Achilles, commanded the Trojans, and often disputed the field of victory with invincible bravery and various success; and when, after the death of Hector, the Trojans could no longer keep the field, the city of Troy was defended by lofty towers and impregnable walls.

4. The fortune of Greece prevailed; not however by arms, but by stratagem. The Greeks, worn out by a war of ten years, determined to risk their hopes on one desperate effort, which, if successful, would end the war in victory; if not, would exterminate all hope of conquest for the present, if not for ever. They made preparations for returning home, embarked in their ships, and set sail; but they left near the city a wooden horse of vast size, in which was enclosed a band of their bravest heroes. This image, they pretended as an offering to the goddess Minerva, to be placed in the Trojan citadel. To give effect to this stratagem, Sinon was despatched over to the Trojans, with an artful and fictitious story, pretending he had made his escape from the Greeks. The superstition of the times gave them complete success. The whim struck the Trojans favorably. They laid open their walls, and, by various means, dragged the baneful monster, pregnant with destruction, into the city.

Who commanded the Trojans ?-How was Troy finally taken?

5. That night was spent in festivity through Troy. Every guard was withdrawn; all threw aside their arms; and, dissolved in wine, amusement, pleasure, and repose, gave full effect to the hazardous enterprise of the hardy Greeks. The fleet, in the night time, drew back to the shore; the men landed and approached the city; the heroes in the wooden horse sallied forth, killed what few they met, opened the citygates, and the Greeks entered. The night, which was begun in feasting and carousal, ended in conflagration and blood. The various parts of this daring plan, liable to great uncertainties and embarrassments, were concentrated and made effectual by the signal of a torch shown from a conspicuous tower by Helen herself, the perfidious beauty who had caused the war.

6. Never was national vengeance more exemplary, or ruin more complete. The destruction of Troy took place 1184 years before the Christian era. This fall of the Trojan empire was final. Independence and sovereignty never returned to those delightful shores; nor has that country since made any figure in history. It continued to be possessed and colonized by the Greeks, while they flourished, and followed the fortunes and revolutions of the great empires.

7. If the charms of Helen proved the destruction of Troy, yet the Greeks themselves, though they were able to punish her seducer, had little reason to boast of their conquest, or glory in their revenge. On their return, their fleets were dispersed, and many of their ships wrecked on dangerous coasts. Some of them wandered through long voyages, and settled in foreign parts. Some became pirates, and infested the seas with formidable depredations. A few, and but a few of them, returned to their homes, where fortunes equally disastrous followed them. Their absence, for a course of years, had quite altered the scene of things; as it had opened the way to conspiracies, usurpations, and exterminating revolutions. Their vacant thrones had been filled by usurpers; and their dominions, left defenceless, had fallen a prey to every rapacious plunderer. The states of Greece, which, at the beginning of the Trojan war, were rising fast to pros

When did the destruction of Troy take place?-By whom was it then possessed?-What effect had the Trojan war upon the prosperity of the Greeks?

perity, power, and happiness, were overwhelmed with calamities, and seemed returning rapidly to savage barbarity.

BATTLE OF THERMOPYLÆ.

1. THERMOPYLE is a strait or narrow pass of mount Œta, between Thessaly and Phocis, but 25 feet broad, which therefore might be defended by a small number of forces, and which was the only way through which the Persian army could enter Achaia, and advance to besiege Athens. This was the place where the Grecian army thought fit to wait for the enemy-the person who commanded it was Leonidas, one of the two kings of Sparta. The whole Grecian forces, joined together, amounted only to 11,200 men, of which number 4,000 only were employed at Thermopyla to defend the pass. But these soldiers, says Pausanias the historian, were all determined, to a man, either to conquer or die; and what is there that an army of such resolution is not able to effect!

2. Xerxes, in the mean time, was upon his march; and as he advanced near the straits of Thermopylæ, he was strangely surprised to find that they were prepared to dispute his passage. He had always flattered himself, that on the first hearing of his arrival, the Grecians would betake themselves to flight; nor could he ever be persuaded to believe, what Demaratus had told him from the beginning of his project, that at the first pass he came to, he would find his whole army stopped by a handful of men. He sent out

a spy to take a view of the enemy. The spy brought him word, that he found the Lacedæmonians out of their entrenchments, and that they were diverting themselves with military exercises, and combing their hair-this was the Spartan manner of preparing themselves for battle.

3. Xerxes, still entertaining some hopes of their flight, waited four days on purpose to give them time to retreat; and in this interval of time, he used his utmost endeavors to gain Leonidas, by making him magnificent promises, and

What is Thermopyla ?--Who commanded the Grecian forces at this strait?-How many men had he left with him to defend this strait ?

assuring him that he would make him master of all Greece, if he would come over to his party. Leonidas rejected his proposal with scorn and indignation. Xerxes, having afterwards wrote to him to deliver up his arms, Leonidas, in a style and spirit truly laconical, answered him in these words, Come and take them." Nothing remained but to prepare themselves to engage the Lacedæmonians. Xerxes first commanded his Median forces to march against them, with orders to take them all alive, and bring them all to him. These Medes were not able to stand the charge of the Grecians; and being shamefully put to flight, they showed, says Herodotus, that Xerxes had a great many men, and but few soldiers. The next that were sent to face the Spartans, were those Persians called the Immortal Band, which consisted of 10,000 men, and were the best troops in the whole army. But these had no better success than the former.

4. Xerxes, out of all hopes of being able to force his way through troops so determined to conquer or die, was extremely perplexed, and could not tell what resolution to take; when an inhabitant of the country came to him, and discovered a secret path to the top of an eminence, which overlooked and commanded the Spartan forces. He quickly despatched a detachment thither; which, marching all night, arrived there at break of day, and possessed themselves of that advantageous spot. The Greeks were soon apprised of this misfortune; and Leonidas, seeing that it was now impossible to repulse the enemy, obliged the rest of the allies to retire, but staid himself with his 300 Lacedæmonians, all resolved to die with their leader; who being told by the oracle, that either Lacedæmon or her king must necessarily perish, determined, without least difficulty or hesitation, to sacrintry.

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5. The Spartast all hopes either of conquering or escaping, and lou upon Thermopyle as their burying place. The king exhorting his men to take some nourishment, and telling them that they should sup together with old Pluto, they set up a shout of joy, as if they had been invited to a banquet; and, full of ardor, advanced with their

What reply did Leonidas make when Xerxes wrote to him to deliver up his arms?-How did Xerxes, with the Persians, succeed in reaching an eminence that overlooked and commanded the Spartan forces?-How many of his forces remained to perish with Leonidas?

king to battle. The shock was exceedingly violent and bloody. Leonidas himself was one of the first that fell. The endeavors of the Lacedæmonians to defend his dead body, were incredible. At length, not vanquished, but oppressed by numbers, they all fell except one man, who escaped to Sparta, where he was treated as a coward and traitor to his country, and nobody would keep company or converse with him. But soon afterwards, he made a glorious amend for his fault, at the battle of Platea, where he distinguished himself in an extraordinary manner.— -Xerxes, enraged to the last degree against Leonidas, for daring to make head against him, caused his dead body to be hung upon a gallows, and made the intended dishonor of his enemy his own immortal disgrace.

6. Xerxes lost in that affair above 20,000 men, among whom were two of the king's brothers. He was very sensible, that so great a loss, which was a manifest proof of the courage of their enemies, was capable of alarming and discouraging his soldiers. In order, therefore, to conceal the knowledge of it from them, he caused all his men that were killed in that action, except 1,000, whose bodies he ordered to be left upon the field, to be thrown together into large holes, which were secretly made, and covered over afterwards with earth and herbs. This stratagem succeeded very ill; for when the soldiers in the fleet, being curious to see the field of battle, obtained leave to come thither for that purpose, it served rather to discover his own littleness of soul, than to conceal the number of the slain.

7. Dismayed with a victory that had cost him so dear, he asked Demaratus, if the Lacedæmonians had many such soldiers. That prince told him, that the Spartan republic had a great many cities belonging to it, of which all the inhabitants were exceeding brave; but that the inhabitants of Lacedæmon, who were properly called Spartans, and who were about 8,000 in number, surpassed all the rest in valor, and were all of them such as those who had fought under Leonidas.

8. The action of Leonidas, with his 300 Spartans, was not the effect of rashness or despair; but was a wise and noble conduct, as Diodorus Siculus has taken care to observe, in

What did Xerxes cause to be done with the dead body of Leonidas? -How many men had Xerxes slain in the battle of Thermopyla ?