At the end of two days’ fighting no impression had been made, the pass appeared impracticable, and the defence not less triumphant than courageous,—when a Malian, named Ephialtês, revealed to Xerxes the existence of the unfrequented mountain-path. This at least was the man singled out by the general voice of Greece as the betrayer of the fatal secret: after the final repulse of the Persians, he fled his country for a time, and a reward was proclaimed by the Amphiktyonic assembly for his head; having returned to his country too soon, he was slain by a private enemy, whom the Lacedæmonians honored as a patriot.[166] There were, however, other Greeks who were also affirmed to have earned the favor of Xerxes by the same valuable information; and very probably there may have been more than one informant,—indeed, the Thessalians, at that time his guides, can hardly have been ignorant of it. So little had the path been thought of, however, that no one in the Persian army knew it to be already occupied by the Phocians. At nightfall, Hydarnês with a detachment of Persians was detached along the gorge of the river Asôpus, ascended the path of Anopæa, through the woody region between the mountains occupied by the Œtæans and those possessed by the Trachinians, and found himself at daybreak near the summit, within sight of the Phocian guard of one thousand men. In the stillness of daybreak, the noise of his army trampling through the wood[167] aroused the defenders; but the surprise was mutual, and Hydarnês in alarm asked his guide whether these men also were Lacedæmonians. Having ascertained the negative, he began the attack, and overwhelmed the Phocians with a shower of arrows, so as to force them to abandon the path and seek their own safety on a higher point of the mountain. Anxious only for their own safety, they became unmindful of the inestimable opening which they were placed to guard. Had the full numerical strength of the Greeks been at Thermopylæ, instead of staying behind for the festivals, they might have planted such a force on the mountain-path as would have rendered it not less impregnable than the pass beneath. [166] Herodot. vii, 213, 214; Diodor. xi, 8. Ktesias states that it was two powerful men of Trachis, Kalliadês and Timaphernês, who disclosed to Xerxes the mountain-path (Persica, c. 24). [167] Herodot. vii, 217, 218. ἠώς τε δὴ διέφαινε—ἦν μὲν δὴ νηνεμίη, ψόφου δὲ γενομένου πολλοῦ, etc. I cannot refrain from transcribing a remark of Colonel Leake: “The _stillness of the dawn_, which saved the Phocians from being surprised, is very characteristic of the climate of Greece in the season when the occurrence took place, and like many other trifling circumstances occurring in the history of the Persian invasion, is an interesting proof of the accuracy and veracity of the historian.” (Travels in Northern Greece, vol. ii, c. x, p. 55.)