and united in a phalanx they are the bravest of all men.  Yet, though free, they have an absolute master, the Law, which they dread more than all your subjects do you; they obey it, and this law requires them to stand fast to their post and conquer or die.’” This is the difference between the two parties to the conflict:  on the one side, a multitude of subjects united by force under a capricious master; on the other, little martial republics whose citizens govern themselves according to laws which they respect.

=First Persian War.=—­There were two Persian wars.  The first was simply an expedition against Athens; six hundred galleys sent by Darius disembarked a Persian army on the little plain of Marathon, seven hours distant from Athens.

Religious sentiment prevented the Spartans from taking the field before the full moon, and it was still only the first quarter; the Athenians had to fight alone.[74] Ten thousand citizens armed as hoplites camped before the Persians.  The Athenians had ten generals, having the command on successive days; of these Miltiades, when his turn came, drew up the army for battle.  The Athenians charged the enemy in serried ranks, but the Persians seeing them advancing without cavalry and without archers, thought them fools.  It was the first time that the Greeks had dared to face the Persians in battle array.  The Athenians began by turning both flanks, and then engaged the centre, driving the Persians in disorder to the sea and forcing them to reembark on their ships.

The victory of Marathon delivered the Athenians and made them famous in all Greece (490).

=Second Persian War.=—­The second war began ten years later with an invasion.  Xerxes united all the peoples of the empire, so that the land force amounted, as some say, to 1,700,000 men.[75] There were Medes and Persians clad in sleeved tunics, armed with cuirasses of iron, bucklers, bows and arrows; Assyrians with cuirass of linen, armed with clubs pointed with iron; Indians clad in cotton with bows and arrows of bamboo; savages of Ethiopia with leopard skins for clothing; nomads armed only with lassos; Phrygians armed with short pikes; Lydians equipped like Greeks; Thracians carrying javelins and daggers.  The enumeration of these fills twenty chapters in Herodotus.[76] These warriors brought with them a crowd equally numerous of non-combatants, of servants, slaves, women, together with a mass of mules, horses, camels, and baggage wagons.

This horde crossed the Hellespont by a bridge of boats in the spring of 480.  For seven days and nights it defiled under the lash.  Then traversing Thrace, it marched on Greece, conquering the peoples whom it met.

The Persian fleet, 1,200 galleys strong, coasted the shores of Thrace, passing through the canal at Mount Athos which Xerxes had had built for this very purpose.