slaves--bound absolutely to do my bidding, without complaint or
murmur. Such soldiers as mine, who are habituated to submit entirely to
the will of another, and who live under the continual fear of the lash,
might, perhaps, be forced to go into battle against a great superiority
of numbers, or under other manifest disadvantages; but free men, never.
I do not believe that a body of Greeks could be brought to engage a
body of Persians, man for man. Every consideration shows, thus, that the
opinion which you have expressed is unfounded. You could only have been
led to entertain such an opinion through ignorance and unaccountable
presumption."

"I was afraid," replied Demaratus, "from the first, that, by speaking
the truth, I should offend you. I should not have given you my real
opinion of the Spartans if you had not ordered me to speak without
reserve. You certainly can not suppose me to have been influenced by a
feeling of undue partiality for the men whom I commended, since they
have been my most implacable and bitter enemies, and have driven me into
hopeless exile from my native land. Your father, on the other hand,
received and protected me, and the sincere gratitude which I feel for
the favors which I have received from him and from you incline me to
take the most favorable view possible of the Persian cause.

"I certainly should not be willing, as you justly suppose, to engage,
alone, twenty men, or ten, or even one, unless there was an absolute
necessity for it. I do not say that any single Lacedaemonian could
successfully encounter ten or twenty Persians, although in personal
conflicts they are certainly not inferior to other men. It is when they
are combined in a body even though that body be small, that their great
superiority is seen.

"As to their being free, and thus not easily led into battle in
circumstances of imminent danger, it must be considered that their
freedom is not absolute, like that of savages in a fray, where each acts
according to his own individual will and pleasure, but it is qualified
and controlled by law. The Spartan soldiers are not personal slaves,
governed by the lash of a master, it is true; but they have certain
principles of obligation and duty which they all feel most solemnly
bound to obey. They stand in greater awe of the authority of this law
than your subjects do of the lash. It commands them never to fly from
the field of battle, whatever may be the number of their adversari