A rugged mountain, an inaccessible morass, and beyond that morass the sea: the mountain thrusting so close upon the morass as barely to leave space for a narrow wagon road. This was the western gate of Thermopylæ. Behind the narrow defile the mountain and swamp-land drew asunder; in the still scanty opening hot springs gushed forth, sacred to Heracles, then again on the eastern side Mt. Œta and the impenetrable swamp drew together, forming the second of the “Hot Gates,”—the gates which Xerxes must unlock if he would continue his march to Athens.
The Great King’s couriers reported that the stubborn Hellenes had cast a wall across the entrance, and that so far from showing terror at the advent of majesty, were carelessly diverting themselves by athletic games, and by combing and adorning their hair, a fact which the “Lord Prexaspes” at least comprehended to mean that Leonidas and his Spartans were preparing for desperate battle. Nevertheless, it was hard to persuade the king that at last he confronted men who would resist him to his face. Glaucon said it. Demaratus, the outlawed Spartan, said it. Xerxes, however, remained angry and incredulous. Four long days he and his army sat before the pass, “because,” announced his couriers, “he wishes in his benignity to give these madmen a chance to flee away and shun destruction;” “because,” spoke those nearest to Mardonius, the brain of the army, “there is hot fighting ahead, and the general is resolved to bring up the picked troops in the rear before risking a battle.”
Then on the fifth day either Xerxes’s patience was exhausted or Mardonius felt ready. Strong regiments of Median infantry were ordered to charge Leonidas’s position, Xerxes not failing to command that they slay as few of the wretches as possible, but drag them prisoners before his outraged presence.
A noble charge. A terrible repulse. For the first time those Asiatics who had forgotten Marathon discovered the overwhelming superiority that the sheathing of heavy armour gave the Greek hoplites over the lighter armed Median spearmen. The short lances and wooden targets of the attackers were pitifully futile against the long spears and brazen shields of the Hellenes. In the narrow pass the vast numbers of Barbarians went for nothing. They could not use their archers, they could not charge with their magnificent cavalry. The dead lay in heaps. The Medes attacked again and again. At last an end came to their courage. The captains laid the lash over their mutinous troops. The men bore the whips in sullen silence. They would not charge again upon those devouring spears.
White with anger, Xerxes turned to Hydarnes and his “Immortals,” the infantry of the Life Guard. The general needed no second bidding. The charge was driven home with magnificent spirit. But what the vassal Medes could not accomplish, neither could the lordly Persians. The repulse was bloody. If once Leonidas’s line broke and the Persians rushed on with howls of triumph, it was only to see the Hellenes’ files close in a twinkling and return to the onset with their foes in confusion. Hydarnes led back his men at last. The king sat on the ivory throne just out of arrow shot, watching the ebb and flow of the battle. Hydarnes approached and prostrated himself.
“Omnipotence, I the least of your slaves put my life at your bidding. Command that I forfeit my head, but my men can do no more. I have lost hundreds. The pass is not to be stormed.”
Only the murmur of assent from all the well-tried generals about the throne saved Hydarnes from paying the last penalty. The king’s rage was fearful; men trembled to look on him. His words came so thick, the rest could never follow all his curses and commands. Only Mardonius was bold enough to stand up before his face.
“Your Eternity, this is an unlucky day. Is it not sacred to Angra-Mainyu the Evil? The arch-Magian says the holy fire gives forth sparks of ill-omen. Wait, then, till to-morrow. Verethraghna, the Angel of Victory, will then return to your servants.”
The bow-bearer led his trembling master to the royal tent, and naught more of Xerxes was seen till the morning. All that night Mardonius never slept, but went unceasingly the round of the host preparing for battle. Glaucon saw little of him. The Athenian himself had been posted among the guard of nobles directly about the person of the king, and he was glad he was set nowhere else, otherwise he might have been ordered to join in the attack. Like every other in the host, he slept under arms, and never returned to Mardonius’s pavilion. His heart had been in his eyes all that day. He had believed Leonidas would be swept from the pass at the first onset. Even he had underrated the Spartan prowess. The repulse of the Medes had astonished him. When Hydarnes reeled back, he could hardly conceal his joy. The Hellenes were fighting! The Hellenes were conquering! He forgot he stood almost at Xerxes’s side when the last charge failed; and barely in time did he save himself from joining in the shout of triumph raised by the defenders when the decimated Immortals slunk away. He had grown intensely proud of his countrymen, and when he heard the startled Persian lords muttering dark forbodings of the morrow, he all but laughed his gladness in their faces.
So the night passed for him: the hard earth for a bed, a water cruse wrapped in a cloak for a pillow. And just as the first red blush stole over the green Malian bay and the mist-hung hills of Eubœa beyond, he woke with all the army. Mardonius had used the night well. Chosen contingents from every corps were ready. Cavalrymen had been dismounted. Heavy masses of Assyrian archers and Arabian slingers were advanced to prepare for the attack by overwhelming volleys. The Persian noblemen, stung to madness by their king’s reproaches and their own sense of shame, bound themselves by fearful oaths never to draw from the onset until victorious or dead. The attack itself was led by princes of the blood, royal half-brothers of the king. Xerxes sat again on the ivory throne, assured by every obsequious tongue that the sacred fire gave fair omens, that to-day was the day of victory.
The attack was magnificent. For an instant its fury seemed to carry the Hellenes back. Where a Persian fell two stepped over him. The defenders were swept against their wall. The Barbarians appeared to be storming it. Then like the tide the battle turned. The hoplites, locking shields, presented an impenetrable spear hedge. The charge spent itself in empty promise. Mardonius, who had been in the thickest, nevertheless drew off his men skilfully and prepared to renew the combat.
In the interval Glaucon, standing by the king, could see a short, firm figure in black armour going in and out among the Hellenes, ordering their array—Leonidas—he needed no bird to tell him. And as the Athenian stood and watched, saw the Persians mass their files for another battering charge, saw the Great King twist his beard whilst his gleaming eyes followed the fate of his army, an impulse nigh irresistible came over him to run one short bow-shot to that opposite array, and cry in his own Greek tongue:—
“I am a Hellene, too! Look on me come to join you, to live and die with you, with my face against the Barbarian!”
Cruel the fate that set him here, impotent, when on that band of countrymen Queen Nikē was shedding bright glory!
But he was “Glaucon the Traitor” still, to be awarded the traitor’s doom by Leonidas. Therefore the “Lord Prexaspes” must stand at his post, guarding the king of the Aryans.
The second charge was as the first, the third was as the second. Mardonius was full of recourses. By repeated attacks he strove to wear the stubborn Hellenes down. The Persians proved their courage seven times. Ten of them died gladly, if their deaths bought that of a single foe. But few as were Leonidas’s numbers, they were not so few as to fail to relieve one another at the front of the press,—which front was fearfully narrow. And three times, as his men drifted back in defeat, Xerxes the king “leaped from the throne whereon he sat, in anguish for his army.”
At noon new contingents from the rear took the place of the exhausted attackers. The sun beat down with unpitying heat. The wounded lay sweltering in their agony whilst the battle roared over them. Mardonius never stopped to count his dead. Then at last came nightfall. Man could do no more. As the shadows from Œta grew long over the close scene of combat, even the proudest Persians turned away. They had lost thousands. Their defeat was absolute. Before them and to westward and far away ranged the jagged mountains, report had it, unthreaded by a single pass. To the eastward was only the sea,—the sea closed to them by the Greek fleet at the unseen haven of Artemisium. Was the triumph march of the Lord of the World to end in this?
Xerxes spoke no word when they took him to his tent that night, a sign of indescribable anger. Fear, humiliation, rage—all these seemed driving him mad. His chamberlains and eunuchs feared to approach to take off his golden armour. Mardonius came to the royal tent; the king, with curses he had never hurled against the bow-bearer before, refused to see him. The battle was ended. No one was hardy enough to talk of a fresh attack on the morrow. Every captain had to report the loss of scores of his best. As Glaucon rode back to Mardonius’s tents, he overheard two infantry officers:—
“A fearful day—the bow-bearer is likely to pay for it. I hope his Majesty confines his anger only to him.”
“Yes—Mardonius will walk the Chinvat bridge to-morrow. The king is turning against him. Megabyzus is the bow-bearer’s enemy, and already is gone to his Majesty to say that it is Mardonius’s blunders that have brought the army to such a plight. The king will catch at that readily.”
At the tents Glaucon found Artazostra and Roxana. They were both pale. The news of the great defeat had been brought by a dozen messengers. Mardonius had not arrived. He was not slain, that was certain, but Artazostra feared the worst. The proud daughter of Darius found it hard to bear up.
“My husband has many enemies. Hitherto the king’s favour has allowed him to mock them. But if my brother deserts him, his ruin is speedy. Ah! Ahura-Mazda, why hast Thou suffered us to see this day?”
Glaucon said what he could of comfort, which was little. Roxana wept piteously; he was fain to soothe her by his caress,—something he had never ventured before. Artazostra was on the point of calling her eunuchs and setting forth for Xerxes’s tent to plead for the life of her husband, when suddenly Pharnuches, Mardonius’s body-servant, came with news that dispelled at least the fears of the women.
“I am bidden to tell your Ladyships that my master has silenced the tongues of his enemies and is restored to the king’s good favor. And I am bidden also to command the Lord Prexaspes to come to the royal tent. His Majesty has need of him.”
Glaucon went, questioning much as to the service to be required. He did not soon forget the scene that followed. The great pavilion was lit by a score of resinous flambeaux. The red light shook over the green and purple hangings, the silver plating of the tent-poles. At one end rose the golden throne of the king; before it in a semicircle the stools of a dozen or more princes and commanders. In the centre stood Mardonius questioning a coarse-featured, ill-favoured fellow, who by his sheepskin dress and leggings Glaucon instantly recognized as a peasant of this Malian country. The king beckoned the Athenian into the midst and was clearly too eager to stand on ceremony.
“Your Greek is better than Mardonius’s, good Prexaspes. In a matter like this we dare not trust too many interpreters. This man speaks the rough dialect of his country, and few can understand him. Can you interpret?”
“I am passing familiar with the Locrian and Malian dialect, your Majesty.”
“Question this man further as to what he will do for us. We have understood him but lamely.”
Glaucon proceeded to comply. The man, who was exceeding awkward and ill at ease in such august company, spoke an outrageous shepherd’s jargon which even the Athenian understood with effort. But his business came out speedily. He was Ephialtes, the son of one Eurydemus, a Malian, a dull-witted grazier of the country, brought to Mardonius by hope of reward. The general, partly understanding his purpose, had brought him to the king. In brief, he was prepared, for due compensation, to lead the Persians by an almost unknown mountain path over the ridge of Œta and to the rear of Leonidas’s position at Thermopylæ, where the Hellenes, assailed front and rear, would inevitably be destroyed.
As Glaucon interpreted, the shout of relieved gladness from the Persian grandees made the tent-cloths shake. Xerxes’s eyes kindled. He clapped his hands.
“Reward? He shall have ten talents! But where? How?”
The man asserted that the path was easy and practicable for a large body of troops. He had often been over it with his sheep and goats. If the Persians would start a force at once—it was already quite dark—they could fall upon Leonidas at dawn. The Spartan would be completely trapped, or forced to open the defile without another spear thrust.
“A care, fellow,” warned Mardonius, regarding the man sharply; “you speak glibly, but if this is a trick to lead a band of the king’s servants to destruction, understand you play with deadly dice. If the troops march, you shall have your hands knotted together and a soldier walking behind to cut your throat at the first sign of treachery.”
Glaucon interpreted the threat. The man did not wince.
“There is no trap. I will guide you.”
That was all they could get him to say.
“And do not the Hellenes know of this mountain path and guard it?” persisted the bow-bearer.
Ephialtes thought not; at least if they had, they had not told off any efficient detachment to guard it. Hydarnes cut the matter short by rising from his stool and casting himself before the king.
“A boon, your Eternity, a boon!”
“What is it?” asked the monarch.
“The Immortals have been disgraced. Twice they have been repulsed with ignominy. The shame burns hot in their breasts. Suffer them to redeem their honour. Suffer me to take this man and all the infantry of the Life Guard, and at dawn the Lord of the World shall see his desire over his miserable enemies.”
“The words of Hydarnes are good,” added Mardonius, incisively, and Xerxes beamed and nodded assent.
“Go, scale the mountain with the Immortals and tell this Ephialtes there await him ten talents and a girdle of honour if the thing goes well; if ill, let him be flayed alive and his skin be made the head of a kettledrum.”
The stolid peasant did not blench even at this. Glaucon remained in the tent, translating and hearing all the details: how Hydarnes was to press the attack from the rear at early dawn, how Mardonius was to conduct another onset from the front. At last the general of the guard knelt before the king for the last time.
“Thus I go forth, Omnipotence, and to-morrow, behold your will upon your enemies, or behold me never more.”
“I have faithful slaves,” said Xerxes, rising and smiling benignantly upon the general and the bow-bearer. “Let us disperse, but first let command be given the Magians to cry all night to Mithra and Tishtrya, and to sacrifice to them a white horse.”
“Your Majesty always enlists the blessings of heaven for your servants,” bowed Mardonius, as the company broke up and the king went away to his inner tent and his concubines. Glaucon lingered until most of the grandees had gone forth, then the bow-bearer went to him.
“Go back to my tents,” ordered Mardonius; “tell Artazostra and Roxana that all is well, that Ahura has delivered me from a great strait and restored me to the king’s favour, and that to-morrow the gate of Hellas will be opened.”
“You are still bloody and dusty. You have watched all last night and been in the thick all day,” expostulated the Athenian; “come to the tents with me and rest.”
The bow-bearer shook his head.
“No rest until to-morrow, and then the rest of victory or a longer one. Now go; the women are consuming with their care.”
Glaucon wandered back through the long avenues of pavilions. The lights of innumerable camp-fires, the hum of thousands of voices, the snorting of horses, the grumbling of camels, the groans of men wounded—all these and all other sights and sounds from the countless host were lost to him. He walked on by a kind of animal instinct that took him to Mardonius’s encampment through the mazes of the canvas city. It was dawning on him with a terrible clearness that he was become a traitor to Hellas in very deed. It was one thing to be a passive onlooker of a battle, another to be a participant in a plot for the ruin of Leonidas. Unless warned betimes the Spartan king and all who followed him infallibly would be captured or slaughtered to a man. And he had heard all—the traitor, the discussion, the design—had even, if without his choice, been partner and helper in the same. The blood of Leonidas and his men would be on his head. Every curse the Athenians had heaped on him once unjustly, he would deserve. Now truly he would be, even in his own mind’s eyes, “Glaucon the Traitor, partner to the betrayal of Thermopylæ.” The doltish peasant, lured by the great reward, he might forgive,—himself, the high-born Alcmæonid, never.
From this revery he was shaken by finding himself at the entrance to the tents of Mardonius. Artazostra and Roxana came to meet him. When he told of the deliverance of the bow-bearer, he had joy by the light in their eyes. Roxana had never shone in greater beauty. He spoke of the heat of the sun, of his throbbing head. The women bathed his forehead with lavender-water, touching him with their own soft hands. Roxana sang again to him, a low, crooning song of the fragrant Nile, the lotus bells, the nodding palms, the perfumed breeze from the desert. Whilst he watched her through half-closed eyes, the visions of that day of battles left him. He sat wrapped in a dream world, far from stern realities of men and arms. So for a while, as he lounged on the divans, following the play of the torch-light on the face of Roxana as her long fingers plied the strings. What was it to him if Leonidas fought a losing battle? Was not his happiness secure—be it in Hellas, or Egypt, or Bactria? He tried to persuade himself thus. At the end, when he and Roxana stood face to face for the parting, he violated all Oriental custom, yet he knew her brother would not be angry. He took her in his arms and gave her kiss for kiss.
Then he went to his own tent to seek rest. But Hypnos did not come for a long time with his poppies. Once out of the Egyptian’s presence the haunting terror had returned, “Glaucon the Traitor!” Those three words were always uppermost. At last, indeed, sleep came and as he slept he dreamed.
