At the time the Greeks were thus becoming a great nation, there was in Asia an old and powerful empire called Persia.  Some of the Greek colonies in Asia Minor were accused by the great King Darius of inciting his own people in Asia Minor to revolt.  And he sent an army, which punished and subdued the offending Greeks.  King Darius then decided that he would invade Greece itself.  He thought he could easily master that little scrap of territory, and capture its straggling colonies along the Mediterranean coast, and thus extend his own dominion into Europe.

Athens and Sparta were, as usual, engaged in a small war; but at the news of a threatened Persian invasion, the Greek States sprang solidly together.

The armies met on the field of Marathon (490 B.C.), and the Asiatic host, after a desperate conflict, turned and fled.  So confident had the Persians been of victory, that they had brought a mass of white marble with which to erect a monument on the plain of Marathon.  This Phidias, the great Greek sculptor, carved into a gigantic figure of Nemesis, to represent Divine vengeance.

The proud and arrogant Persians were not used to defeat.  For ten years they brooded over it and prepared to wipe it out by an overwhelming victory.  Darius was dead; but his son Xerxes, in the year 480 B.C., appeared on the coast of Greece with a vast army, which he himself led.

The first incident in the war was the most renowned in the history of the world.  If you do not know of it already, you will often hear how Leonidas, with his little Spartan band of three hundred, defended the narrow rocky pass at Thermopylae against the whole Persian army, and how they stood their ground until every man was killed.

The Persians pressed on into the heart of Greece.  Athens was abandoned, and then burnt by the conquerors.  What made the cause of Greece still more desperate was the dissensions between the Athenians and the Spartans, who insisted upon concentrating their forces to guard their own Peloponnesus.  But finally all united in a great battle at Salamis.

The fate of Greece was now to be decided.  Xerxes, seated on a jewelled throne that he might witness the victory of his arms, to his bitter dismay saw the terrible and overwhelming rout of his entire army, and returned to Persia with only a ragged remnant of his great host.

Now shall I tell you something more about this great King, and who it was who became his wife after he went back to Persia?

You all know the story.  It is one of the most thrilling and dramatic that was ever written.  You know about the lovely Jewish maiden who was chosen by the great King to be his wife in the place of Vashti, and how a wicked minister or adviser to the King plotted the downfall of Mordecai, and was then after all compelled to lead him in triumph through the streets, crying, “Thus shall it be done to the man whom the King delighteth to honor!” And how the brave Queen, at the risk of her own life, saved her people from extermination.  Well, this great King was Xerxes, and his wife was Queen Esther.  And after the war with the Greeks was over, her uncle, Mordecai, was chief officer to the King, and wisely managed the affairs of his great kingdom.