At Delphi the road which wound up the steep slope to the temple of Apollo was lined on both sides with an unbroken succession of monuments which illustrated some of the brightest triumphs and darkest tragedies in Greek history. Here the proud trophy of the Lacedaemonian victory at Aegospotami, with its rows of statues rising in tiers, confronted the more modest trophy erected by the Athenians for the victory of Marathon. Here were statues set up by the Argives for the share they had taken with the Thebans in founding Messene. Here was a treasury dedicated by the Athenians out of the spoils of Marathon, and another dedicated by the Thebans out of the spoils of Leuctra. Here another treasury, built by the Syracusans, commemorated the disastrous defeat of the Athenians in Sicily. A bronze palm-tree and a gilded image of Athena stood here as memorials of Athenian valour by sea and land at the Eurymedon. Here, above all, were monuments of the victories achieved by the united Greeks over the Persians at Artemisium, Salamis, and Plataea. The golden tripod, indeed, which formed the trophy of Plataea, had disappeared long before Pausanias passed up the Sacred Way, its empty place testifying silently to the rapacity of the Phocian leaders; but the bronze serpent which had supported it still stood erect, with the names of the states that had taken part in the battle inscribed on its coils. A prodigious image of Apollo, five-and-thirty ells high, towering above the other monuments, proclaimed at once the enormity of the crime which the Phocians had committed and the magnitude of the fine by which they had expiated it. High and conspicuous too, on the architrave of the temple, hung the shields which told of one of the latest triumphs of the Greek arms, the repulse and defeat of the Gauls. All these and many more historical monuments Pausanias saw and described at Delphi. [Sidenote: Historic monuments at Athens.]