time came down so near to the gulf as to leave space for a single
carriage-road only, is now separated from it by more than a mile of
plain. Each visit to Thermopylae has, however, deepened my conviction
that Herodotus exaggerated the impregnability of this pass. The mountain
spur which formed it did not rise so abruptly from the sea as to form an
impassable barrier to the advance of a determined antagonist. It is of
course difficult ground to operate on, but certainly not impossible.

The other narrow place, nearly two miles to the east of this, is still
more open, a fact that is to be emphasized, because many topographers,
including Colonel Leake, hold that the battle actually took place
there, as the great battle between the Romans and Antioches certainly
did. This eastern pass is, to be sure, no place where "a thousand may
well be stopt by three," and there can not have taken place any great
transformation here since classical times, inasmuch as this region is
practically out of reach of the Spercheios, and the deposit from the hot
sulfur streams, which has so broadened the theater-shaped area enclosed
by the two horns, can hardly have contributed to changing the shape of
the eastern horn itself.

Artificial fortification was always needed here; but it is very
uncertain whether any of the stones that still remain can be claimed as
parts of such fortification. It is a fine position for an inferior force
to choose for defense against a superior one; but while it can not be
declared with absolute certainty that this is not the place where the
fighting took place, yet the western pass fits better the description of
Herodotus. Besides this, if the western pass had been abandoned to the
Persians at the outset the fact would have been worth mentioning.

As to the heroic deed itself, the view that Leonidas threw away his own
life and that of the four thousand, that it was magnificent but not
strategy, not war, does not take into account the fact that Sparta had
for nearly half a century been looked to as the military leader of
Greece. It was audacious in the Athenians to fight the battle of
Marathon without them, and they did so only because the Spartans did not
come at their call. Sparta had not come to Thermopylae in force, it is
true; but her king was there with three hundred of her best men. Only
by staying and fighting could he show that Sparta held by right the
place she had won. It had to be done. "So the glory of