d not wholly
obliterate this most great and glorious act of the Thebans, yet went he
about to deface it with a most vile imputation and suspicion, writing
thus: "The confederates who had been sent returned back, obeying the
commands of Leonidas; there remained only with the Lacedaemonians the
Thespians and the Thebans: of these, the Thebans stayed against their
wills, for Leonidas retained them as hostages; but the Thespians most
willingly, as they said they would never depart from Leonidas and those
that were with him." (Herodotus, vii. 222.) Does he not here manifestly
discover himself to have a peculiar pique and hatred against the
Thebans, by the impulse of which he not only falsely and unjustly
calumniated the city, but did not so much as take care to render his
contradiction probable, or to conceal, at least from a few men, his
being conscious of having knowingly contradicted himself? For having
before said that Leonidas, perceiving his confederates not to be in good
heart nor prepared to undergo danger, wished them to depart, he a little
after adds that the Thebans were against their wills detained by him;
whereas, if he had believed them inclined to the Persians, he should
have driven them away though they had been willing to tarry. For if he
thought that those who were not brisk would be useless, to what purpose
was it to mix among his soldiers those that were suspected? Nor was the
king of the Spartans and general of all Greece so senseless as to think
that four hundred armed Thebans could be detained as hostages by his
three hundred, especially the enemy being both in his front and rear.
For though at first he might have taken them along with him as hostages;
it is certainly probable that at last, having no regard for him, they
would have gone away from him, and that Leonidas would have more feared
his being encompassed by them than by the enemy. Furthermore, would not
Leonidas have been ridiculous, to have sent away the other Greeks, as
if by staying they should soon after have died, and to have detained
the Thebans, that being himself about to die, he might keep them for the
Greeks? For if he had indeed carried them along with him for hostages,
or rather for slaves, he should not have kept them with those that were
at the point of perishing, but have delivered them to the Greeks that
went away. There remained but one cause that might be alleged for
Leonidas's unwillingness to let them go, to wit, that they mi