The devoted band thus left with Leonidas at Thermopylæ consisted of the three hundred Spartans, with a certain number of Helots attending them, together with seven hundred Thespians and apparently four hundred Thebans. If there had been before any Lacedæmonians, not Spartans, present, they must have retired with the other Peloponnesians. By previous concert with the guide, Ephialtês, Xerxes delayed his attack upon them until near noon, when the troops under Hydarnês might soon be expected in the rear. On this last day, however, Leonidas, knowing that all which remained was to sell the lives of his detachment dearly, did not confine himself to the defensive,[176] but advanced into the wider space outside of the pass; becoming the aggressor and driving before him the foremost of the Persian host, many of whom perished as well by the spears of the Greeks as in the neighboring sea and morass, and even trodden down by their own numbers. It required all the efforts of the Persian officers, assisted by threats and the plentiful use of the whip, to force their men on to the fight. The Greeks fought with reckless bravery and desperation against this superior host, until at length their spears were broken, and they had no weapon left except their swords. It was at this juncture that Leonidas himself was slain, and around his body the battle became fiercer than ever: the Persians exhausted all their efforts to possess themselves of it, but were repulsed by the Greeks four several times, with the loss of many of their chiefs, especially two brothers of Xerxes. Fatigued, exhausted, diminished in number, and deprived of their most effective weapons, the little band of defenders retired, with the body of their chief, into the narrow strait behind the cross wall, where they sat all together on a hillock, exposed to the attack of the main Persian army on one side, and of the detachment of Hydarnês, which had now completed its march, on the other. They were thus surrounded, overwhelmed with missiles, and slain to a man; not losing courage even to the last, but defending themselves with their remaining daggers, with their unarmed hands, and even with their mouths.[177] [176] The story of Diodorus (xi, 10) that Leonidas made an attack upon the Persian camp during the night, and very nearly penetrated tn the regal tent, from which Xerxes was obliged to flee, suddenly, in order to save his life, while the Greeks, after having caused immense slaughter in the camp, were at length overpowered and slain,—is irreconcilable with Herodotus and decidedly to be rejected. Justin, however (ii, 11), and Plutarch (De Herodot. Malign. p. 866), follow it. The rhetoric of Diodorus is not calculated to strengthen the evidence in its favor. Plutarch had written, or intended to write, a biography of Leonidas (De Herodot. Mal. ibid.); but it is not preserved. [177] Herodot. vii, 225.