t weapons gone, fell
back behind the wall, bearing the body of their chief. Here they still
fought, with daggers, with their unarmed hands, even with their mouths,
until the last man fell dead.

The Thebans alone yielded themselves as prisoners, saying that they had
been kept in the pass against their will. Of the thousand Spartans and
Thespians, not a man remained alive.

Meanwhile the fleets had been engaged, to the advantage of the Greeks,
while another storm that suddenly rose wrecked two hundred more of the
Persian ships on Euboea's rocky coast. When word came that Thermopylae
had fallen the Grecian fleet withdrew, sailed round the Attic coast, and
stopped not again until the island of Salamis was reached.

As for Leonidas and his Spartans, they had died, but had won
imperishable fame. The same should be said for the Thespians as well,
but history has largely ignored their share in the glorious deed. In
after-days an inscription was set up which gave all glory to the
Peloponnesian heroes without a word for the noble Thespian band. Another
celebrated inscription honored the Spartans alone:

"Go, stranger, and to Lacedaemon tell
That here, obeying her behests, we fell,"

or, in plain prose, "Stranger, tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here,
in obedience to their orders."

On the hillock where the last of the faithful band died was erected a
monument with a marble lion in honor of Leonidas, while on it was carved
the following epitaph, written by the poet Simonides:

"In dark Thermopylae they lie.
Oh, death of glory, thus to die!
Their tomb an altar is, their name
A mighty heritage of fame.
Their dirge is triumph; cankering rust,
And time, that turneth all to dust,
That tomb shall never waste nor hide,--
The tomb of warriors true and tried.
The full-voiced praise of Greece around
Lies buried in this sacred mound;
Where Sparta's king, Leonidas,
In death eternal glory has!"

_THE WOODEN WALLS OF ATHENS._

The slaughter of the defenders of Thermopylae exposed Athens to the
onslaught of the vast Persian army, which would soon be on the soil of
Attica. A few days' march would bring the invaders to its capital city,
which they would overwhelm as a flight of locusts destroys a cultivated
field. The states of the Peloponnesus, with a selfish regard for their
own safety, had withdrawn all their soldiers within the peninsula, and
began hastily to build a wall across the isth