HOW THE SPARTANS DIED AT
THERMOPYLA.

Wuen Xerxes, as his father had done before him,
sent to the Grecian cities to demand earth and water
in token of submission, no heralds were sent to
Athens or Sparta. These truculent cities had flung
the heralds of Darius into deep pits, bidding them
to take earth and water from there and carry it to
the great king. This act called for revenge, and
whatever mercy he might show to the rest of Greece,
Athens and Sparta were doomed in his mind to be
swept from the face of the earth. How they
escaped this dismal fate is what we have next to tell.

As one of the great men of Athens, Miltiades, had
saved his native land in the former Persian invasion,
so a second patriotic citizen, Themistocles, proved
her savior in the dread peril which now threatened
her. But the work of Themistocles was not done in
a single great battle, as at Marathon, but in years of
preparation. And a war between Athens and the
neighboring island of Aigina had much to do with
this escape from ruin.

To make war upon an island a land army was of
noavail. <A fleet was necessary. The Athenians were
accustomed to a commercial, though not to a war-
like, life upon the sea. Many of them were active,

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