IT was towards evening that Leonidas learnt that the Persians were flanking him unhindered. He let most of his modest brigade go, but his three hundred Spartans and seven hundred Thespians* chose to remain, waiting for day. A veteran from Trachis, where Xerxes was encamped, remembered seeing the sky there black with Persian arrows. ‘Good,’ mused Dienekes.* ‘At least we’ll have some shade.’
Next morning the Persians came on, whipped up by their commanders. Leonidas and his thousand men leapt down from their barricade, and fought until their spears were splintered, their swords shivered, their knives snapped, and their fists broken. At last Leonidas and every one of his brave Greeks lay dead, surrounded by piles of barbarian bodies. Xerxes asked hoarsely whether all Greeks were like this, and how many more there were. Every one of them could have saved himself. Every one gave his life for Greece.
Thermopylae had been a defeat, but Leonidas had bought three precious days. It now fell to Themistocles and the Greek fleet to use them to advantage.*
Not a troupe of actors, taking their name from the (?) sixth-century BC actor Thespis of Icaria, but inhabitants of the ancient Greek city of Thespiae, now Thespies a few miles northwest of Athens.
Herodotus praised Dienekes (Διηνέκης) as the bravest of this courageous company of Spartans, and attributed this quip to him, adding that he said many other memorable things under pressure. The line is however attributed by Plutarch to Leonidas himself.
The story of Xerxes’s Greek campaign continues with The Battle of Salamis.