The sentiment, alike durable and unanimous, with which the Greeks of after-times looked back on the battle of Thermopylæ, and which they have communicated to all subsequent readers, was that of just admiration for the courage and patriotism of Leonidas and his band. But among the contemporary Greeks that sentiment, though doubtless sincerely felt, was by no means predominant: it was overpowered by the more pressing emotions of disappointment and terror. So confident were the Spartans and Peloponnesians in the defensibility of Thermopylæ and Artemisium, that when the news of the disaster reached them, not a single soldier had yet been put in motion : the season of the festival-games had passed, but no active step had yet been taken. Meanwhile the invading force, army and fleet, was in its progress towards Attica and Peloponnesus, without the least preparations– and what was still worse, without any combined and concerted plan–for defending the heart of Greece. The loss sustained by Xerxes at Thermopylæ, insignificant in proportion to his vast total, was more than compensated by the fresh Grecian auxiliaries which he now acquired. Not merely the Malians, Lokrians and Dorians, but also the great mass of the Bœotians, with their chief town Thebes, all except Thespiæ and Platæa, now joined him.

Seventh year of the war—invasion of Attica. b.c. 425

The invasion of Attica by the Lacedæmonians had now become an ordinary enterprise, undertaken in every year of the war except the third and sixth, and then omitted only from accidental causes; though the same hopes were no longer entertained from it as at the commencement of the war. During the present spring, Agis king of Sparta conducted the Peloponnesian army into the territory, seemingly about the end of April, and repeated the usual ravages.

Distress in Korkyra from the attack of the oligarchical exiles. A Peloponnesian fleet, and an Athenian fleet, are both sent thither

It seemed however as if Korkyra were about to become the principal scene of the year's military operations: for the exiles of the oligarchical party, having come back to the island and fortified themselves on Mount Istônê, carried on war with so much activity against the Korkyræans in the city that distress and even famine regined there; while sixty Peloponnesian triremes were sent thither to assist the aggressors. As soon as it became known at Athens how hardly the Korkyræans in the city were pressed, orders were given to an Athenian fleet of forty triremes, about to sail for Sicily under Eurymedon and Sophoklês, to halt in their voyage at Korkyra, and to lend whatever aid might be needed. But during the course of this voyage, an incident occurred elsewhere, neither foreseen nor imagined by any one, which gave a new character and promise to the whole war—illustrating forcibly the observations of Pediclês and Archidamus before its commencement, on the impossibility of calculating what turn events might take.

In the last chapter but one of the preceding; volume, I described the Athenian victory at Marathon, the repulse of the Persian general Datis, and the return of his armament across the Ægean to the Asiatic coast. He had been directed to conquer both Eretria and Athens : an order which he had indeed executed in part with success, as the string of Eretrian prisoners brought to Susa attested–but which remained still unfulfilled in regard to the city principally obnoxious to Darius. Far from satiating his revenge upon Athens, the Persian monarch was compelled to listen to the tale of an ignominious defeat. His wrath against the Athenians rose to a higher pitch than ever, and he commenced vigorous preparations for a renewed attack upon them as well as upon Greece generally. Resolved upon assembling the entire force of his empire, he directed the various satraps and subgovernors throughout all Asia to provide troops, horses, and ships both of war and burthen. For no less than three years the empire was agitated by this immense levy, which Darius determined to conduct in person against Greece. Nor was his determination abated by a revolt of the Egyptians, which broke out about the time when his preparations were completed. He was on the point of undertaking simultaneously the two enterprises–the conquest of Greece and the reconquest of Egypt–when he was surprised by death, after a reign of thirty-six years.