cripple the charge of the Persian horse; besides, the long lances, the heavy arms, the hand to hand valor of the Greeks, must have been no light encounter to the more weakly mailed and less formidably armed infantry of the East. Accustomed themselves to give the charge, it was a novelty and a disadvantage to receive it. 9. Long, fierce, and stubborn was the battle. The centre wing of the barbarians, composed of the Sacians and the pure Persian race, at length pressed hard upon the shallow part of the Greeks, drove them back into the country, and eager with pursuit, left their own wings to the charge of Callimachus on the one side, and the Platæan forces on the other. The brave polemarch, after the most signal feats of valor, fell fighting in the field; but his troops, undismayed, smote on with spear and sword. The barbarians retreated backward to the sea, where swamps and marshes encumbered their movements, and here (though the Athenians did not pursue them far) the greater portion were slain, hemmed in by morasses, and probably ridden down by their own disordered cavalry. 10. Meanwhile, the two tribes that had formed the centre, one of which was commanded by Aristides, retrieved themselves with a mighty effort, and the two wings having routed their antagonists, now inclining toward each other, intercepted the barbarian centre, which, thus attacked front and rear (large trees felled and scattered over the plain obstructing the movements of their cavalry), was defeated with prodigious slaughter. Evening came on;-confused and disorderly, the Persians now only thought of flight; the whole army retired to their ships, hard chased by the Grecian victors, who, amid the carnage, fired the fleet. Cyn-æ-gi'rus, brother to Eschylus (es'ke-lus) the tragic poet (himself highly distinguished for his feats that day), seized one of the vessels by the poop; his hand was severed by an axe; he died gloriously of his wounds. 11. But to none did the fortunes of that field open a more illustrious career than to a youth of the tribe Leontis, in whom, though probably then but a simple soldier in the ranks, was first made manifest the nature and the genius destined to command. The name of that youth was Themistocles. Seven vessels were captured; six thousand four hundred of the barbarians fell in the field; the Athenians and their brave ally lost only one hundred and ninety-two; but among them perished many of their bravest nobles. It was a superstition not uncharacteristic of that imaginative people, and evincing how greatly their ardor was aroused, that many of them (according to Plutarch) fancied they beheld the gigantic shade of their ancestral Theseus (the'suse), completely armed, and bearing down before them upon the foe. 12. So perished the hopes of the unfortunate Hippias;— obscure and inglorious in his last hour, the exiled prince fell confounded amid the general slaughter. Despite the capture of some vessels, and the conflagration of others, the Persians still retained a considerable fleet, and, succeeding in hoarding their Eretrian plunder (which they had left on the Eubæan Isle), they passed thence the promontory of Sunium, with the intention of circumventing the Athenians, and arriving at Athens before them-a design which it was supposed they were induced to form by the treachery of some one suspected, without sufficient proof, to belong to the house of the Alcma'onids, who held up a shield as a signal to the Persians while they were under sail. 13. But the Athenians were under a prompt and vigilant commander; and while the barbarian fleet doubled the Cape of Sunium, they reached their city, and effectually prevented the designs of the foe. Aristides, with the tribe under his command, was left on the field to guard the prisoners and the booty, and his scrupulous honesty was evinced by his jealous care over the scattered and uncounted treasure. The painter of the nobler schools might find, perhaps, few subjects worthier of his art than Aristides watching at night, amid the torches of his men, over the plains of Marathon, in sight of the blue Ægean, no longer crowded with the barbarian masts;—and the white columns of the temple of Hercules, beside which the Athenians had pitched their camp. The name of a noble family at Athens, descendants from Alemæon. 14. The Persian fleet anchored off Phale'rum, the Athenian harbor, and remaining there, menacing but inactive, a short time, sailed back to Asia. The moon had passed her full, when two thousand Spartans arrived at Athens; the battle was over and the victory won; but so great was their desire to see the bodies of the formidable Medes, that they proceeded to Marathon, and, returning to Athens, swelled the triumph of her citizens by their applause and congratulations. The marble which the Persians had brought with them, in order to erect as a trophy of the victory they anticipated, was, at a subsequent period, wrought by Phidias into a statue of Nemesis. A picture of the battle, representing Miltiades in the foremost place, and solemnly preserved in public, was deemed no inadequate reward to that great captain; and yet, conspicuous above the level plain of Marathon, rises a long barrow, fifteen feet in height, the supposed sepulchre of the Athenian heroes. 15. Still does a romantic legend, not unfamiliar with our traditions of the north, give a supernatural terror to the spot. Nightly along the plain are yet heard by superstition the neighings of chargers and the rushing shadows of spectral war. And still, throughout the civilized world (civilized how much by the arts and lore of Athens!) men of every clime, of every political persuasion, feel as Greeks at the name of Marathon. Later fields have presented the spectacle of an equal valor, and almost the same disparities of slaughter; but never, in the annals of earth, were united so closely in our applause admiration for the heroism of the victors, and sympathy for the holiness of their cause. It was the first great victory of OPINION! and its fruits were reaped, not by Athens only, but by all Greece, then, as by all time thereafter, in a mighty and imperishable harvest, the invisible not less than the actual force of despotism was broken. 16. Nor was it only that the dread which had hung upon the Median name was dispelled-nor that free states were taught their pre-eminence over the unwieldy empires which the Persian conquerors had destroyed,-a greater lesson was taught to Greece, when she discovered that the monarch of Asia could not force upon a petty state the fashion of its government or the selection of its rulers. The defeat of Hippias was of no less value than that of Darius; and the same blow which struck down the foreign invader smote also the hopes of domestic tyrants. One successful battle for liberty quickens and exalts that proud and emulous spirit from which are called forth the civilization and arts that liberty should prcduce, more rapidly than centuries of repose. Death of Leonidas.-Croly. [About ten years after the defeat of the Persians at Marathon, Xerxes, the successor of Darius, renewed the attempt to conquer Greece. Having collected one of the largest armies the world has ever known, and an immense fleet, he invaded the country. At the Pass of Thermopyle he was met by a small army of Spartans under Leonidas, who successfully kept back the Persian host until a traitor made known to the enemy a path across the mountain. Seeing then no hope of victory, but being forbidden by the laws of Sparta to flee from the enemy, Leonidas dismissed his allies, and fell upon the Per sians with his little band of three hundred, who, after making immense slaughter, all perished (480 B.C.). The following lines are from a poem by Rev. George Croly.] Ir was the wild midnight,- -a storm was in the sky; Swift from the deluged ground three hundred took the shield; And foremost from the pass, among the slumbering band, Anon, a trumpet blew, and a fiery sheet burst high, The air was all a yell, and the earth was all a flame, Where the Spartan's bloody steel on the silken turbans came; They found a royal feast, his midnight banquet there; That feast must be their last-that spot must be their grave! Up rose the glorious rank, to Greece one cup poured high, But down swept all his power, with chariot and with charge; The Plague at Athens.-Grote. [At the commencement of the Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.), the Spartans invaded Attica, and committed the most merciless depredations and ravages, the population having retired within the walls of Athens. To add to the miseries of the people, a violent plague broke out the next year, some of the incidents of which are described in the following extract from Grote's "History of Greece."] 1. Ir appears that this terrific disorder had been raging for some time throughout the regions round the Mediterranean; having begun, as it was believed, in Æthiopia,-thence passing into Egypt and Lybia, and overrunning a considerable portion of Asia under the Persian government. About sixteen years before, too, there had been a similar calamity in Rome and in various parts of Italy. Recently it had been felt in Lemnos and some other islands of the Ægean, yet seemingly not with such intensity as to excite much notice generally in the Grecian world. At length it passed to Athens, and first showed itself in the Piræus. 2. The progress of the disease was as rapid and destructive as its appearance had been sudden whilst the extraordinary |