The fighting of the previous days had shown him the strength of the position which he held at the middle gate. It was a desperate risk; but there was just the possibility that by detaching half his force to stop the encircling body of the foe in the difficult path which they were travelling, he might still be able to maintain the pass, and if he did maintain it he would do his country an inestimable service. It was thus with half his little army that he deliberately chose to face an enemy one hundred times his own numerical strength. He took a risk of whose magnitude he must have been well aware, to win, in case of success, a prize of incalculable greatness. He cannot have deluded himself, he may be pardoned if he deluded his allies—as to the overwhelming nature of the chances against them. He might have retreated. There is an exaggerated tendency to assume that Spartan discipline at this time forbade a commander, under any circumstances, to withdraw from a position once taken up. Artemisium and, above all, Platæa, prove this not to have been the case. He was under no such compulsion. What he did dare to do was to face odds such as men had never faced before and never have faced since, because by so doing he had a possible prospect of conferring a service of enormous value on his country. He did this, too, in spite of that bitter feeling of his countrymen’s desertion which must have been present in his mind. Nor was the nobility of his death marred by a useless sacrifice of the lives of devoted men. #ORIGIN OF HERODOTUS’ VERSION.# Great as was the risk, the greatness of the end to be attained in case of success justified his associating others with himself in the desperate venture. I have laid aside this account of Thermopylæ for some months, in order to consider whether any other more reasonable explanation of the circumstances might be drawn from Herodotus’ narrative of _facts_. I do not, however, see any possibility of arriving at any other conclusion from them, when taken in combination with the topographical evidence, which happens in this case to be very clear. There was certainly a possibility of defending the pass, even after Hydarnes had forced the path. It may have been remote; but it existed all the same.