heroic self-devotion as Leonidas and his Spartans, without having been prepared for it by the same elaborate and iron discipline. While this inscription was intended as a general commemoration of the exploit, there was another near it, alike simple and impressive, destined for the Spartan dead separately: “Stranger, tell the Lacedæmonians, that we lie here, in obedience to their orders.” On the hillock within the pass, where this devoted band received their death-wounds, a monument was erected, with a marble lion in honor of Leonidas; decorated, apparently, with an epigram by the poet Simonides. That distinguished genius composed at least one ode, of which nothing but a splendid fragment now remains, to celebrate the glories of Thermopylæ; besides several epigrams, one of which was consecrated to the prophet Megistias, “who, though well aware of the fate coming upon him, would not desert the Spartan chiefs.” [199] Herodot. viii, 24, 25. οὐ μὴν οὐδ’ ἐλάνθανε τοὺς διαβεβηκότας Ξέρξης ταῦτα πρήξας περὶ τοὺς νεκροὺς τοὺς ἑωϋτοῦ· καὶ γὰρ δὴ καὶ γελοῖον ἦν, etc. [200] About the numbers of the Greeks at Thermopylæ, compare Herodot. vii, 202; Diodorus, xi, 4; Pausanias, x, 20, 1; and Manso’s Sparta, vol. ii, p. 308; Beylage 24th. Isokratês talks about one thousand Spartans, with a few allies, Panegyric, Or. iv, p. 59. He mentions also only sixty Athenian ships of war at Artemisium: in fact, his numerical statements deserve little attention. [201] Herodot. vii, 228. CHAPTER XLI. BATTLE OF SALAMIS. — RETREAT OF XERXES.