to guard it and not permit the Barbarian to go by into Hellas, and they resolved that the fleet should sail to Artemisium, for these points are near to one another, so that each division of their forces could have information of what was happening to the other. At Thermopylae the Greeks awaited the Persians. II. THERMOPYLAE It was midsummer in the year 480 B.C. when the Persian host left Therma and marched down through Thessaly to the Pass of Thermopylae. The Persians encamped before the Pass and a scout was sent forward to bring back information as to what the Greeks were doing. Only a small force of Greeks was defending the Pass, the main part of the Greek army was kept back further to the south to defend the Isthmus. A small body of about three hundred Spartans had been sent under their King Leonidas to defend the Pass of Thermopylae, and, if possible, to prevent the Persians from advancing further into Greece. These three hundred men were the picked body-guard of the King, a force in which only fathers of sons might serve, so that their families might not die out of Sparta. {149} The Persian scout went cautiously forward, and to his great surprise saw some of the Spartans practising athletic exercises and others combing their long hair. He could not see the rest, as an ancient wall built across the Pass hid them from sight. He returned to Xerxes and reported on what he had seen. The King sent for a Greek who was in his camp and asked him what this behaviour of the Spartans might mean. He told him that they were following an ancient Spartan custom, for "whenever they are about to put their lives in peril, then they attend to the arrangement of their hair." The Spartans knew against what odds they had to fight, but their duty had placed them where they were, and no Spartan ever retreated or turned his back upon his foe.