The next morning, with the rising sun, Xerxes offered worship to that luminary, the great object of Persian veneration, in presence of his assembled army; and after a brief delay gave orders to advance against the enemy. Hitherto the Grecians seem to have taken post in the narrowest part of the valley, where, as has been mentioned, there was only room for one carriage to pass; but now, knowing that their fate was sealed, and anxious only to sell their lives dearly, they retreated to the broader part, which had formerly been fortified, with the view of allowing freer access, and insuring a more abundant destruction of their foes. And in truth the slaughter was commensurate with their desperation, for in the three days’ conflicts 20,000 Asiatics were left dead in the pass. We should be inclined to attribute to misinformation or mistake the statement, that in the army of a warlike and conquering nation, like the Persians, the officers followed behind, furnished with scourges, with which they drove on their men to the attack, so that many were forced into the sea, and perished there, and still more trodden under foot in the press, while those who escaped were driven on the Grecian spears by the pressure from behind. At last these weapons were broken, and the combat assumed a closer character. Hand to hand they fought at the sword’s point; and now Leonidas, with others of the noblest Spartans, fell, and by his death added fresh ferocity to the combat. The possession of his body was disputed with an obstinacy which recalls the Homeric battles to our minds: two sons of Darius were slain in the struggle, in which the Greeks prevailed so far as to gain possession of the body, and four times to drive back the crowd of enemies. The scene was closed by the arrival of the Persians led by Ephialtes in the rear. The Thebans, who had hitherto co–operated with their countrymen, now separated themselves, and made submission, protesting, as indeed was true, that they had been among the first to give earth and water, and were present at Thermopylæ through compulsion.[34] The Lacedæmonians and Thespians retired to a hillock, where they continued the battle with their swords, and, when these were broken, with their hands and teeth, until they were slain to a man.