Free Glory and the Lightning by Taylor Caldwell Page A

and free from inquisitive and interfering government, he did not divide mankind into those born free and those who were born slave. Again, he demanded that slavery be abolished, so he did not consider a slave a mere thing, but a man.”
    The teacher had then ignored this chit, had drawn another breath and continued with his history lesson.
    “Certainly the Spartans—whom I usually deplore for their austerity—were the most disciplined and were a community of soldiers and lived only for war, but they were nothing to the armies and navies of Xerxes. As for us Athenians,” and he smiled fondly, “we are volatile and pride ourselves on our wit and our energy and our love for beauty, and we practice roguery in the market place, and it is alleged we cannot be trusted by our fellow Greeks. But less can be said of the men of Thebes, whom everyone agrees are uncivilized.
    “The towns and the villages were in panic, and sent as few as possible of fighting men to confront the enemy in various places, keeping most of their warriors at home to defend their wives and children and the gritty walls of their habitations, and their scabrous domestic animals. But the armies of Xerxes were as locusts, Arabs, Cabalians and Milyans, Tibareni, Colchians with carved wooden helmets, Medes with their thin dark faces and their reputation as valorous soldiers, Negroes in the skins of animals, Pisidians, Moschians, Saspires, Thracians—and rivers of horses and oxen and glittering war chariots. Ninety thousand archers and spearsmen alone, not to mention swordsmen with leather shields and Persians, themselves, who are famous for ferocity, and mercenary Cissians, Assyrians, Scythians in felt trousers and barbaric Caspians in high-heeled boots and varicolored clothing—all these poured onto the burning plains of Greece and the scintillating dust rolled over them in clouds that caught the igniting sun. They also engaged the Greeks in the incandescent waters.
    “At Thermopylae the Persian forces confronted but seven thousand Greeks, poorly armed except with courage even in the face of their own cynicism and fear, and prepared to die to defend the pass. It was said that Xerxes, himself, pitied them and admired them.
    “His spies had told him that that wretched and quarrelsome army of Spartans, Thebans and some Athenians was being led by Leonidas of Sparta, a fierce captain and a man of fiercer independence. I may note here, as an Athenian, that the Spartans are as mindless as a hill of ants, as well as great warriors—”
    “It would follow,” Aspasia interrupted.
    The teacher’s face swelled with angry blood. He raised his voice and went on: “How such a society, alien to us free Greeks, could have bred a man like Leonidas is a mystery, and was a mystery to Xerxes also. He was a surly man, but intelligent, unlike his fellow Spartans who are only cruel and valiant. However. The earth at Thermopylae rumbled like a drum and the thunder of the gods under the feet of Xerxes’ armored men of many nations, including his Company of the Immortals, his personal and finest troops. And the Greeks met them in the narrow pass and held them immobile until they were betrayed by one of their own, who had led the Persians behind the pass. Xerxes killed the heroic Spartans to a man and advanced on Athens and burned her to the ground.”
    “A man is always betrayed by his own kindred and by those he loves the most,” said Aspasia.
    “Hah!” cried the teacher, moved to fresh anger. “You, who are of such a great and venerable age, how do you know this?”
    Aspasia answered with her exasperating demureness, “You have taught us history, Aeneas.”
    “Hah,” he said, but in a milder voice. “We will continue. The Spartans and the barefoot Thebans, with a number of Athenians, men of no importance, defeated the irresistible Xerxes at Mycale, and, greatest of all, at Salamis and later at Platea. How was it possible? At the last they had, these brave men, only