[Footnote 50:  Greece.]

Even numerous and fully arrayed bodies of cavalry have been repeatedly broken, both in ancient and modern warfare, by resolute charges of infantry.  For instance, it was by an attack of some picked cohorts that Caesar routed the Pompeian cavalry—­which had previously defeated his own—­and won the battle of Pharsalia.

INVASION OF GREECE BY PERSIANS UNDER XERXES

DEFENCE OF THERMOPYLAE

B.C. 480

HERODOTUS

The invasion of Greece by Xerxes is the subject of the great history written in nine books by Herodotus.  His object is to show the preeminence of Greece, whose fleets and armies defeated the forces of the Persians after these latter had triumphed over the most powerful nations of the earth.  Xerxes collected a vast army from all parts of the empire.  The Phoenicians furnished him with an enormous fleet, and he made a bridge of a double line of boats across the Hellespont and cut a canal through the peninsula of Mount Athos.  He reached Sardis in the autumn of B.C. 481, and the next year his army crossed the bridge of boats, taking seven days and seven nights for the transit.  The number of his fighting men was over two millions and a half.  His ships of war were twelve hundred and seven in number, and he had three thousand smaller vessels for carrying his land forces and supplies.  At the narrow pass of Thermopylae, in the northeast of Greece, this immense army was checked for a while by the heroic Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans, who, however, perished in their attempt to prevent the Persian’s attack on Athens, which city was almost entirely destroyed by the invaders.  The sea-fight of Salamis was won by the Greeks against enormous odds; and in the battle of Plataea, B.C. 479, the defeat of the Persians by the Greek land forces was made more complete by the death of Mardonius, the most renowned general of Xerxes.

The Greeks, when they arrived at the Isthmus, consulted on the message they had received from Alexander, in what way and in what places they should prosecute the war.  The opinion which prevailed was that they should defend the pass at Thermopylae; for it appeared to be narrower than that into Thessaly, and at the same time nearer to their own territories; for the path by which the Greeks who were taken at Thermopylae were afterward surprised, they knew nothing of, till, on their arrival at Thermopylae, they were informed of it by the Trachinians.  They accordingly resolved to guard this pass, and not suffer the barbarian to enter Greece; and that the naval force should sail to Artemisium, in the territory of Histiaeotis, for these places are near one another, so that they could hear what happened to each other.  These spots are thus situated.