As for Leonidas and his Spartans, they had died, but had won imperishable fame. The same should be said for the Thespians as well, but history has largely ignored their share in the glorious deed. In after-days an inscription was set up which gave all glory to the Peloponnesian heroes without a word for the noble Thespian band. Another celebrated inscription honored the Spartans alone: "Go, stranger, and to Lacedaemon tell That here, obeying her behests, we fell," or, in plain prose, "Stranger, tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here, in obedience to their orders." On the hillock where the last of the faithful band died was erected a monument with a marble lion in honor of Leonidas, while on it was carved the following epitaph, written by the poet Simonides: "In dark Thermopylae they lie. Oh, death of glory, thus to die! Their tomb an altar is, their name A mighty heritage of fame. Their dirge is triumph; cankering rust, And time, that turneth all to dust, That tomb shall never waste nor hide,-- The tomb of warriors true and tried. The full-voiced praise of Greece around Lies buried in this sacred mound; Where Sparta's king, Leonidas, In death eternal glory has!" _THE WOODEN WALLS OF ATHENS._ The slaughter of the defenders of Thermopylae exposed Athens to the onslaught of the vast Persian army, which would soon be on the soil of Attica. A few days' march would bring the invaders to its capital city, which they would overwhelm as a flight of locusts destroys a cultivated field. The states of the Peloponnesus, with a selfish regard for their own safety, had withdrawn all their soldiers within the peninsula, and began hastily to build a wall across the isthmus of Corinth with the hope of keeping back the invading army. Athens was left to care for itself. It was thus that Greece usually let itself be devoured piecemeal. There was but one thing for the Athenians to do, to obey the oracle and fly from their native soil. In a few days the Persians would be in Athens, and there was not an hour to lose. The old men, the women and children, with such property as could be moved, were hastily taken on shipboard and carried to Salamis, AEgina, Troezen, and other neighboring islands. The men of fighting age took to their ships of war, to fight on the sea for what they had lost on land. A few of the old and the poverty-stricken remained, and took possession of the hill of the Acropolis, whose wooden fence they fondly fancied might be the wooden wall which the oracle had meant. Apart from these few the city was deserted, and Athens had embarked upon the seas. Not only Athens, but all Attica, was left desolate, and in the whole state Xerxes made only five hundred prisoners of war.