Ten Great Events in History | Page 6

before beginning a battle to offer sacrifice, and to wait for an
omen or sign from heaven on the offering. Even now, when the
Persians had advanced to within bow-shot and were pouring flights of
arrows upon the Spartans, Pausanias offered sacrifice. But the omens
were bad, and forbade any action except in self-defence. The Spartans
knelt behind their shields, but the arrows pierced them, and the bravest
men died sorrowfully, lamenting not for death, but because they died
without striking a blow for Sparta. In his distress Pausanias called upon
the goddess Hera, and the omens suddenly became favorable, and the
Spartans with their Tegean allies threw themselves upon the enemy.
32. But the disparity of forces rendered the attack desperate. Fifty-three
thousand Greeks in all were opposed to the overwhelming numbers of

Mardonius. The Athenians were engaged elsewhere and could afford
no assistance. The Persians had made a palisade of their wicker shields,
behind which they could securely and effectually use their bows and
arrows. By the first fierce onset of the Greeks this palisade went down,
but the Asiatics, laying aside their bows, fought desperately with
javelins and daggers. But they had no metal armor to defend them; and
the Spartans, with their lances fixed and their shields touching each
other, bore down everything before them.
33. The Persians fought with almost Hellenic heroism. Coming to close
quarters, they seized the spears of their enemies and broke off their
heads. Rushing forward singly or in small groups, they were borne
down in the crush and killed; still they were not dismayed; and the
battle raged more fiercely on the spot where Mardonius, on his white
horse, fought with the flower of his troops. At length Mardonius was
slain, and when his chosen guards had fallen around him, the remainder
of the Persians made their way to their fortified camp, and took refuge
behind its wooden walls.
34. In the mean time the Athenian army had been confronted by the
Persian-Theban allies. Here it was not a conflict between disciplined
valor and barbaric hordes, but between Greek and Greek. The battle
was long and bloody, but in the end the defenders of Greek liberty were
victorious over those who would destroy it. The Theban force was not
only defeated but annihilated, and then the Athenians hastened to the
support of Pansanias. While the Spartans were the best-drilled soldiery
in Greece for the field, they had little skill in siege operations, and the
wooden walls of the Persian camp opposed to them an effective barrier.
35. While the Spartan force was engaged in abortive attempts, the
Athenians and their allies came up fresh from their victory over the
Thebans. Headed by the Tegeans, they burst like a deluge into the
encampment, and the Persians, losing all heart, sought wildly to hide
themselves like deer flying from lions. Then followed a carnage so
fearful that out of two hundred and sixty thousand men not three
thousand, it is said, remained alive.
36. Thus ended this formidable invasion, which threatened the very

existence of Greece. The great wave of Oriental despotism had spent its
force without submerging freedom. Thenceforth the wonderful Greek
energy and creative power might be turned away from matters military
and expended upon the arts of peace.
37. The Athenians returned to their city and found everything in ruins.
Fire and hate had destroyed home and temple alike. All the
accumulated wealth of generations was gone. Nothing was left but the
indomitable energy which had been tested on so many trying
emergencies, and the wonderful skill of eye and hand which came of
inherited aptitude and long personal experience. Upon the old site a
new city grew in a single generation, marvelous in its splendor of
temple and palace, so light and airy, yet so strong and enduring, that
after the lapse of twenty-five centuries the marble skeletons, though in
ruins, stand, the admiration of all men and of all ages.

CHAPTER II.
CRUSADES AND THE CRUSADERS.
1. After the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, in the year 70 of the
Christian era, Palestine continued for upward of two centuries in the
condition of a Roman province, inhabited by a mixed population of
pagans, Jews, and Christians. In Jerusalem, temples of Venus and
Jupiter were erected on the most sacred spots of Christian history; and
heathenism triumphed in the possession of the Holy City of two
religions. On the establishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire by
Constantine, in the year 321, this state of things was changed; Palestine
and Jerusalem became objects of interest to all Christians, and crowds
of pilgrims visited the localities celebrated by the evangelists. Splendid
churches were erected on the ruins of pagan temples, and every spot
pointed out as the scene of the