[139] Josephus, Bell. Judaic. i, 7, 3; ii, 16, 4; ibid. Antiqq. Judaic. xiv, 4, 2. If their bodies were attacked on the Sabbath, the Jews defended themselves; but they would not break through the religious obligations of the day in order to impede any military operations of the besiegers. See Reimar. ad Dion. Cass. lxvi, 7. [140] Herodot. vii, 206; viii, 40. At the time when this plan was laid, they believed that the narrow pass of Thermopylæ was the only means of possible access for an invading army. But Leonidas, on reaching the spot, discovered for the first time that there was also a mountain-path starting from the neighborhood of Trachis, ascending the gorge of the river Asôpus and the hill called Anopæa, then crossing the crest of Œta and descending in the rear of Thermopylæ near the Lokrian town of Alpêni. This path-–then hardly used, though its ascending half now serves as the regular track from Zeitun, the ancient Lamia, to Salona on the Corinthian gulf, the ancient Amphissa–-was revealed to him by its first discoverers, the inhabitants of Trachis, who in former days had conducted the Thessalians over it to attack Phocis, after the Phocians had blocked up the pass of Thermopylæ. It was therefore not unknown to the Phocians: it conducted from Trachis into their country, and they volunteered to Leonidas that they would occupy and defend it.[141] But the Greeks thus found themselves at Thermopylæ under the same necessity of providing a double line of defence, for the mountain-path as well as for the defile, as that which had induced their former army to abandon Tempê: and so insufficient did their numbers seem, when the vast host of Xerxes was at length understood to be approaching, that a panic terror seized them; and the Peloponnesian troops especially, anxious only for their own separate line of defence at the isthmus of Corinth, wished to retreat thither forthwith. The indignant remonstrances of the Phocians and Lokrians, who would thus have been left to the mercy of the invader, induced Leonidas to forbid this retrograde movement: but he thought it necessary to send envoys to the various cities, insisting on the insufficiency of his numbers, and requesting immediate reinforcements.[142] So painfully were the consequences now felt, of having kept back the main force until after the religious festivals in Peloponnesus. [141] Herodot. vii, 212, 216, 218. [142] Herodot. vii, 207.