armed undisciplined Persians, whose bodies were unprotected
by armour, maintained a very unequal combat against the serried ranks,
the long spears, and the mailed bodies of the Spartan phalanx.
Mardonius, at the head of his body-guard of 1000 picked men, and
conspicuous by his white charger, was among the foremost in the fight,
till struck down by the hand of a Spartan. The fall of their general
was the signal for flight to the Persians, already wearied and
disheartened by the fruitless contest; nor did they once stop till they
lad again crossed the Asopus and reached their fortified camp. The
glory of having defeated the Persians at Plataea rests with the
Lacedaemonians, since the Athenians were engaged in another part of the
field with the Thebans. After repulsing the Thebans, the Athenians
joined the Lacedaemonians, who had pursued the Persians as far as their
fortified camp. Upon the arrival of the Athenians the barricades were
stormed and carried, after a gallant resistance on the part of the
Persians. The camp became a scene of the most horrible carnage. The
Persian loss was immense, while that of the Greeks seems not to have
exceeded 1300 or 1400 men.

It remained to bury the dead and divide the booty, and so great was the
task that ten days were consumed in it. The booty was ample and
magnificent. Gold and silver coined, as well as in plate and trinkets,
rich vests and carpets, ornamented arms, horses, camels--in a word, all
the magnificence of Eastern luxury. The failure of the Persian
expedition was completed by the destruction of their naval armament.
Laotychides, the Spartan admiral, having sailed across the AEgean,
found the Persian fleet at Mycale a promontory of Asia Minor near
Miletus. Their former reverses seem completely to have discouraged the
Persians from hazarding another naval engagement. The ships were
hauled ashore and surrounded with a rampart, whilst an army of 60,000
Persians lined the coast for their defence. The Greeks landed on the
very day on which the battle of Plataea was fought. A supernatural
presentiment of that decisive victory, conveyed by a herald's staff
which floated over the AEgean from the shores of Greece, is said to
have pervaded the Grecian ranks at Mycale as they marched to the
attack. The Persians did not long resist: they turned their backs and
fled to their fortifications, pursued by the Greeks, who entered them
almost simultaneously. A large number of the