Xerxes, on arriving at the Malian plain, pitched his camp in Trachinia, commanding the country as far as Trachis. The Persian encampment would seem to have stretched from the river Melas, or thereabouts, to the entrance of the west gate of the pass. The Greek encampment was in the middle gate, probably behind the first mound, either on the ridge beyond the valley, or on the stream _débris_ over which the modern road passes. The numbers of the Greek army must have been about eight thousand, including the unstated numbers of the Opuntian Locrians. Of these, however, one thousand Phocians were set to guard the path of the Anopæa, more than three thousand feet above the gate. Leonidas was in command. ◆H. vii. 204.◆ Even before the battle brought him undying fame he seems to have been a man whose character excited great admiration. The three hundred men whom he took with him from Sparta were the royal bodyguard, picked men all, and fathers of families, so Herodotus says. The historian evidently implies that in so desperate a venture Leonidas considered it unadvisable to take with him men whose death would blot out their name from the land of the living. Is this detail quite consistent with the presumed intention to send reinforcements? It is possibly a graphic touch added by Spartan tradition after the event. The Theban contingent was four hundred in number. Herodotus’ account of all relating to it is so full of disputable motives that it has been suggested that he followed a tradition which developed either under the influence of the bitterness of feeling called forth by the attitude of Thebes later on in the war, or of the violent enmity which sprang up between Athens and Thebes in after-time, and which was at its height at the time when Herodotus wrote. He represents Leonidas as taking the Thebans with him under a sort of compulsion, because he suspected them of a tendency to medize. There are several reasons urged for doubting this version of the story of the Theban participation in the campaign. 1. It is doubtful whether Leonidas with so small a force as he had with him could have coerced so powerful a State as Thebes. ◆Diod. xi. 4.◆ 2. Ephoros says these Thebans were of the party opposed to medism. 3. If they were not, Xerxes committed a gross error of policy in branding their prisoners after Thermopylæ. ◆Plut. Herod. Mal. 31–33.◆ 4. Plutarch, a Bœotian himself, emphatically denies the truth of Herodotus’ story. Plutarch’s statements, in brief, are as follows:— (_a_.) The fact that Thebes sent five hundred men to Tempe is proof that up to the time of Thermopylæ Thebes supported the Greek cause. (_b_.) Leonidas had no suspicions against Thebes. He was treated with special honour there. #THE THEBAN CONTINGENT.# (_c_.) If these Thebans were traitors to the Greek cause, why did Leonidas retain so dangerous an element with him in the last fight at Thermopylæ?