p all
this terrible invasion, attempted though it be by nearly the whole human
race. Though the laws of nature may give way to you, and enable you to
pass from Europe to Asia, yet you will stop short in a bypath; consider
what your losses will be afterwards, when you have reckoned up the price
which you have to pay for the pass of Thermopylae; when you learn that
your march can be stayed, you will discover that you may be put to
flight. The Greeks will yield up many parts of their country to you, as
if they were swept out of them by the first terrible rush of a mountain
torrent; afterwards they will rise against you from all quarters and
will crush you by means of your own strength. What people say, that
your warlike preparations are too great to be contained in the
countries which you intend to attack, is quite true; but this is to our
disadvantage. Greece will conquer you for this very reason, that she
cannot contain you; you cannot make use of the whole of your force.
Besides this, you will not be able to do what is essential to
victory--that is, to meet the manoeuvres of the enemy at once, to
support your own men if they give way, or to confirm and strengthen
them when their ranks are wavering; long before you know it, you will
be defeated. Moreover, you should not think that because your army is
so large that its own chief does not know its numbers, it is therefore
irresistible; there is nothing so great that it cannot perish; nay,
without any other cause, its own excessive size may prove its ruin."
What Demaratus predicted came to pass. He whose power gods and men
obeyed, and who swept away all that opposed him, was bidden to halt by
three hundred men, and the Persians, defeated in every part of Greece,
learned how great a difference there is between a mob and an army. Thus
it came to pass that Xerxes, who suffered more from the shame of his
failure than from the losses which he sustained, thanked Demaratus for
having been the only man who told him the truth, and permitted him to
ask what boon he pleased. He asked to be allowed to drive a chariot into
Sardis, the largest city in Asia, wearing a tiara erect upon his head,
a privilege which was enjoyed by kings alone. He deserved his reward
before he asked for it, but how wretched must the nation have been, in
which there was no one who would speak the truth to the king except one
man who did not speak it to himself.

XXXII. The late Emperor Augustus banished his da