them an infinitely greater stake in the perilous game than the three hundred Spartans and their attendant Helots did to Sparta. But in one important respect the official Spartan version failed conspicuously to have the effect which it was doubtless intended to convey. The Greek did not at this or any other time allow his admiration of the national character of the Spartan to warp his judgment with regard to the Spartan government. He was perfectly well aware that the personal bravery of the Spartans in the field stood in strong contrast to the pusillanimity of the policy of their rulers. If he had any illusions on the subject at the beginning of the war, the events of the war itself were strikingly calculated to disillusion him. There can be no possible question as to the personal bravery of the Spartans in every action, whether on land or sea, in so far as pure fighting qualities are concerned; there can be no question as to the greatness of the Spartan contribution to the final result; but Sparta got little credit for the result in after-time. It is impossible to close this chapter without making some attempt to form an estimate of the mental attitude with which Leonidas faced the situation in which he found himself involved on the morning of the final struggle in the pass. It is necessary, in examining the popular story, to remember that Leonidas’ conduct is not represented as a sacrifice to the stern duty imposed by Spartan discipline, but to one of the alternatives put forward on the authority of an oracular response. There was possibly a tinge of fatalism about the character of the man which lent a colouring to the tale of his death current at the time. He died, so it was said, to save his country, not from actual, but from predicted disaster. If this was the case, it is quite comprehensible that his Spartan bodyguard should be involved in the fate of their master. To them Spartan law and custom made the consequences of desertion worse than death. But, leaving the Theban contingent out of the question, what, under the circumstances, could possibly have induced the Thespians to involve themselves in the fate of one who was sacrificing himself to a prediction which did not concern them? What possible feeling, sentimental or practical, could have prompted them to share the fate of a self-doomed man? That was the weak spot in the Spartan version of Thermopylæ. No attempt was made to explain it. The hypothesis which lay at the root of the story made it inexplicable. Nor does it seem to have struck those who invented this story, that under the theory put forward by them, Leonidas, without any motive whatsoever, deliberately allowed 700 devoted men of a little Bœotian city to share a doom which was his and his alone. Leonidas died a nobler death than that. It was with the grander courage of reason that he faced the terrible odds against him on that last day of his life.