Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/112

88 mSTORY OF GREECE. for two successive days : the Greek troops were sufficiently numerous to relieve eacli other when fatigued, since the space was so narrow that few could contend at once ; and even the Immortals, or ten thousand choice Persian guards, and the other choice troops of the army, when sent to the attack on the second day, were driven back with the same disgrace and the same slaughter as the rest. Xerxes surveyed this humiliating repulse from a lofty throne expressly provided for him : " thrice (says the historian, with Homeric vivacity) did he spring from his throne, in agony for his army." i At the end of two days' fighting no impression had been made, the pass appeared impracticable, and the defence not less trium- phant than courageous, — when a Malian, named Ephialtes, re- vealed to Xerxes the existence of the unfrequented mountain- path. This at least was the man singled out by the general voice of Greece as the betrayer of the fatal secret : after the final repulse of the Persians, he fled his country for a time, and a reward was proclaimed by the Amphiktyonic assembly for his head ; having returned to his country too soon, he was slain by a private enemy, whom the Lacedaemonians honored as a patriot.2 There were, however, other Greeks who were also affirmed to have earned the favor of Xerxes by the same valuable informa- tion ; and very probably there may have been more than one informant, — indeed, the Thessahans, at that time his guides, can hardly have been ignorant of it. So little had the path been thought of, however, that no one in the Persian army knew it to be already occupied by the Phocians. At nightfall, Hydarnes with a detachment of Persians was detached along the gorge of the river Asopus, ascended the path of Anopaea, through the woody region between the mountains occupied by the OEtseans and those possessed by the Trachinians, and found himself at daybreak near the summit, within sight of the Phocian guard of one thousand men. In the stillness of daybreak, the noise of ' Herodot.Tii,212. 'Ev ravrricji ryai Trpoaoihiai rr/g ^axTjg Xeyerai (iaaikea, &7]Ev/j.evov, Tplg dvaSpafielv e/c tov ■&p6vov, delaavra nepl ry arparcy. See Homer, Iliad, xx, 62 ; ^scbyl. Pers. 472. ^ Herodot. vii, 213, 214 ; Diodor. xi, 8. Ktesias states that it was two powerful men of Trachis, Kalliades and Timaphernes, who disclosed to Xerxes the mountain-path (Persica, c. 24)