THE THREE HUNDRED—AND ONE
As Glaucon slept he found himself again in Athens. He was on the familiar
way from the cool wrestling ground of the Academy and walking toward the
city through the suburb of Ceramicus. Just as he came to the three tall
pine trees before the gate, after he had passed the tomb of Solon, behold!
a fair woman stood in the path and looked on him. She was beyond mortal
height and of divine beauty, yet a beauty grave and stern. Her gray eyes
cut to his heart like swords. On her right hand hovered a winged Victory,
on her shoulder rested an owl, at her feet twined a wise serpent, in her
left hand she bore the ægis, the shaggy goat-skin engirt with
snakes—emblem of Zeus’s lightnings. Glaucon knew that she was Athena
Polias, the Warder of Athens, and lifted his hands to adore her. But she
only looked on him in silent anger. Fire seemed leaping from her eyes. The
more Glaucon besought, the more she turned away. Fear possessed him. “Woe
is me,” he trembled, “I have enraged a terrible immortal.” Then suddenly
the woman’s countenance was changed. The ægis, the serpent, the Victory,
all vanished; he saw Hermione before him, beautiful as on the day she ran
to greet him at Eleusis, yet sad as was his last sight of her the moment
he fled from Colonus. Seized with infinite longing, he sprang to her. But
lo! she drifted back as into the air. It was even as when Odysseus
followed the shade of his mother in the shadowy Land of the Dead.
“Yearned he sorely then to clasp her,
Thrice his arms were opened wide:
From his hands so strong, so loving,
Like a dream she seemed to glide,
And away, away she flitted,
Whilst he grasped the empty space,
And a pain shot through him, maddening,
As he strove for her embrace.”
He pursued, she drifted farther, farther. Her face was inexpressibly
sorrowful. And Glaucon knew that she spoke to him.
“I have believed you innocent, though all Athens calls you ‘traitor.’ I
have been true to you, though all men rise up against me. In what manner
have you kept your innocence? Have you had love for another, caresses for
another, kisses for another? How will you prove your loyalty to Athens and
return?”
“Hermione!” Glaucon cried, not in his dream, but quite aloud. He awoke
with a start. Outside the tent sentry was calling to sentry, changing the
watch just before the dawning. It was perfectly plain to him what he must
do. His dream had only given shape to the ferment in his brain, a ferment
never ceasing while his body slept. He must go instantly to the Greek camp
and warn Leonidas. If the Spartan did not trust him, no matter, he had
done his duty. If Leonidas slew him on the spot, again no matter, life
with an eternally gnawing conscience could be bought on too hard terms. He
knew, as though Zeus’s messenger Iris had spoken it, that Hermione had
never believed him guilty, that she had been in all things true to him. He
could never betray her trust.
His head now was clear and calm. He arose, threw on his cloak, and buckled
about his waist a short sword. The Nubian boy that Mardonius had given him
for a body-servant awoke on his mat, and asked wonderingly “whither his
Lordship was going?” Glaucon informed him he must be at the front before
daybreak, and bade him remain behind and disturb no one. But the Athenian
was not to execute his design unhindered. As he passed out of the tent and
into the night, where the morning stars were burning, and where the first
red was creeping upward from the sea, two figures glided forth from the
next pavilion. He knew them and shrank from them. They were Artazostra and
Roxana.
“You go forth early, dearest Prexaspes,” spoke the Egyptian, throwing back
her veil, and even in the starlight he saw the anxious flash of her eyes,
“does the battle join so soon that you take so little sleep?”
“It joins early, lady,” spoke Glaucon, his wits wandering. In the
intensity of his purpose he had not thought of the partings with the
people he must henceforth reckon foes. He was sorely beset, when Roxana
drew near and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
“Your Greeks will resist terribly,” she spoke. “We women dread the battle
more than you. Yours is the fierce gladness of the combat, ours only the
waiting, the heavy tidings, the sorrow. Therefore Artazostra and I could
not sleep, but have been watching together. You will of course be near
Mardonius my brother. You will guard him from all danger. Leonidas will
resist fearfully when at bay. Ah! what is this?”
In pressing closer she had discovered the Athenian wore no cuirass.
“You will not risk the battle without armour?” was her cry.
“I shall not need it, lady,” answered he, and only half conscious what he
did, stretched forth as if to put her away. Roxana shrank back, grieved
and wondering, but Artazostra seized his arm quickly.
“What is this, Prexaspes? All is not well. Your manner is strange!”
He shook her off, almost savagely.
“Call me not Prexaspes,” he cried, not in Persian, but in Greek. “I am
Glaucon of Athens; as Glaucon I must live, as Glaucon die. No man—not
though he desire it—can disown the land that bore him. And if I dreamed I
was a Persian, I wake to find myself a Greek. Therefore forget me forever.
I go to my own!”
“Prexaspes, my lover,”—Roxana, strong in fear and passion, clung about his
girdle, while again Artazostra seized him,—“last night I was in your arms.
Last night you kissed me. Are we not to be happy together? What is this
you say?”
He stood one instant silent, then shook himself and put them both aside
with a marvellous ease.
“Forget my name,” he commanded. “If I have given you sorrow, I repent it.
I go to my own. Go you to yours. My place is with Leonidas—to save him, or
more like to die with him! Farewell!”
He sprang away from them. He saw Roxana sink upon the ground. He heard
Artazostra calling to the horse-boys and the eunuchs,—perhaps she bade
them to pursue. Once he looked back, but never twice. He knew the
watchwords, and all the sentries let him pass by freely. With a feverish
stride he traced the avenues of sleeping tents. Soon he was at the
outposts, where strong divisions of Cissian and Babylonian infantrymen
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
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.