The manner in which the news of the defeat of the Athenians at Ægospotami affected Athens is in striking contrast with the manner in which Sparta received word of the disastrous Spartan defeat at Leuctra. When report of the naval disaster reached the Piræus, it was quickly communicated to the thronging crowds within the Long Walls, and thence to the heart of the city. Consternation prevailed and all Athens mourned. “That night,” says Xenophon, “no one in Athens slept.” The news of the defeat at Leuctra reached Sparta in the midst of a festive celebration. The magistrates heard of the defeat, and the death of their king, with countenances unmoved; they gave orders that the festival be uninterrupted; and they urged all who had lost relatives and friends in the battle of Leuctra to appear at the festivities in particularly gay attire and with smiling faces, while those whose relatives were among the survivors were ordered to put on mourning. The spirit of Lycurgus, of Draco, and of Leonidas seems to have fused and chilled into the Laws of Sparta. No surrender; conquer or die; return with your shield or upon it; wounds all in front and faces grimly fierce even in death--such was the spirit of Sparta. Whatever may be our admiration for the Spartan qualities in general, there can be but lament that they found expression in the Peloponnesian War. This fratricidal strife brought ruin to Hellas. Marathon, Thermopylæ, Salamis, Platæa, Mycale were all undone by Syracuse and Ægospotami. Chæronea was made possible and the passing of the scepter of empire from Greece to Macedonia, from leaderless Hellas to Alexander the Great. CHAPTER II. ARBELA The life of Alexander the Great is of perennial interest, for it holds in epitome the life of the world when the world was young. Plutarch tells with quaint truthfulness what cannot now be told without a smile of wondering incredulity. Alexander spent the night before the battle of Arbela in consultation with the diviner Aristander, and in sacrificing to the god Fear. What does that mean? The conqueror of the world would placate Fear; would render it favorable to him, adverse to the enemy. Terror, recoil from death, panic-madness of a multitude of men, rout, ruin--from _that_ deliver my army, O great god Fear; but let it come upon my enemy. Thus prayed Alexander as his gaze rested upon the moving plain gleaming with a million torch-lights where Darius, prepared for a night attack, was reviewing his forces. And well might Alexander so pray. Fear that blanches the lips and freezes the blood in the heart, contagious Terror irresistible, dread recoil from butchering death--these were, indeed, effects of causes proportionately terrible. A million men were in the enemy’s ranks, three hundred chariots armed with scythes; rivers were in the rear, and beyond a hostile country.