equalled only by Achilles, commanded the Trojans, and often disputed the field of victory, with invincible bravery, and various success; and when, after the death of Hector, the Trojans could no longer keep the field, the city of Troy was defended by lofty towers and impregnable walls.

4. The fortune of Greece prevailed; not however by arms, but by stratagem. The Greeks, worn out by a war of ten years, determined to risk their hopes on one desperate effort, which, if successful, would end the war in victory; if not, would exterminate all hope of conquest, for the present, if not forever. They made preparations for returning home, embarked in their ships, and set sail; but they left near the city a wooden horse of vast size, in which was inclosed a band of their bravest heroes. This image, they pretended as an offering to the goddess Minerva, to be placed in the Trojan citadel. To give effect to this stratagem, Sinon was despatched over to the Trojans, with an artful and fictitious story, pretending he had made his escape from the Greeks. The superstition of the times gave them complete success. The whim struck the Trojans favourably. They laid open their walls, and, by various means, dragged the baneful monster, pregnant with destruction, into the city.

5. That night was spent in festivity through Troy. Every guard was withdrawn; all threw aside their arms; and, dissolved in wine, amusement, pleasure, and repose, gave full effect to the hazardous enterprise of the hardy Greeks. The fleet, in the night time, drew back to the shore; the men landed and approached the city; the heroes in the wooden horse sallied forth, killed what few they met, opened the city-gates, and the Greeks entered. The night, which was begun in feasting and carousal, ended in conflagration and blood. The various parts of this daring plan, liable to great uncertainties and embarrassments, were concentrated and made effectual by the signal of a torch shown from a conspicuous tower by Helen herself, the perfidious beauty, who had caused the war.

6. Never was national vengeance more exemplary, or ruin more complete. The destruction of Troy took place 1184 years before the Christian era, This fall of the Trojan empire was final. Independence and sovereignty never returned to those delightful shores; nor has that country since made any figure in history. It continued to be possessed and colonized by the Greeks while they flourished, and followed the fortunes and revolutions of the great empires.

7. If the charms of Helen proved the destruction of Troy, yet the Greeks themselves, though they were able to punish her seducer, had little reason to boast of their conquest, or glory in their revenge. On their return, their fleets were dispersed, and many of their ships wrecked on dangerous coasts. Some of them wandered through long voyages, and settled in foreign parts. Some became pirates, and infested the seas with formidable depredations. A few, and but a few of them, returned to their homes, where fortunes equally disastrous followed them. Their absence, for a course of years, had quite altered the scene of things; as it had opened the way to conspiracies, usurpations, and exterminating revolutions. Their vacant thrones had been filled by usurpers; and their dominions, left defenceless, 'had fallen a prey to every rapacious plunderer. The states of Greece, which, at the beginning of the Trojan war, were rising fast to prosperity, power, and happiness, /were overwhelmed with calamities, and seemed returning rapidly to savage barbarity.

QUESTIONS.

1. What occasioned the Trojan war?-2. Who commanded the Trojans ?--3. How was Troy finally taken?-4. When did the destruction of Troy take place?--5. By whom was it then possessed?-6. What effect had the Trojan war upon the prosperity of the Greeks?

BATTLE OF THEMOPYLÆ.

1. THERMOPYLÆ is a strait or narrow pass of mount Eta, between Thessaly and Phocis, but 25 feet broad,

which therefore might be defended by a small number of forces, and which was the only way through which the Persian army could enter Achaia, and advance to besiege Athens. This was the place where the Grecian army thought fit to wait for the enemy-the person who commanded it was Leonidas, one of the two kings of Sparta. The whole Grecian forces, joined together, amounted only to 11,200 men, of which number 4000) only were employed at Thermopyla to defend the pass. But these soldiers, says Pausanias the historian, were all determined, to a man, either to conquer or die; and what is there that an army of such resolution is not able to effect!

2. Xerxes, in the mean time, was upon his march; and as he advanced near the straits of Thermopylæ, he was strangely surprised to find that they were prepared to dispute his passage. He had always flattered himself, that on the first hearing of his arrival, the Grecians would betake themselves to flight; nor could he ever be persuaded to believe, what Demaratus had told him from the beginning of his project, that at the first pass he came to, he would find his whole army stopped by an handful of men. He sent out a spy to take a view of the enemy. The spy brought him word, that he found the Lacedæmonians out of their entrenchments, and that they were diverting themselves with military exercises, and combing their hair-this was the Spartan manner of preparing themselves for battle.

3. Xerxes, still entertaining some hopes of their flight, waited four days on purpose to give them time to retreat; and in this interval of time, he used his utmost endeavours to gain Leonidas, by making him magnificent promises, and assuring him that he would make him master of all Greece, if he would come over to his party. Leonidas rejected his proposal with scorn and indignation. Xerxes, having afterwards wrote to him to deliver up his arms, Leonidas, in a style and spirit truly laconical, answered him in these words, Come and take them." Nothing remained but to prepare themselves to engage the Lacedæmonians. Xerxes firstcommanded his Median forces to march against them,

with orders to take them all alive, and bring them all to him. These Medes were not able to stand the charge of the Grecians; and being shamefully put to flight, they showed, says Herodotus, that Xerxes had a great many men, and but few soldiers. The next that were sent to face the Spartans, were those Persians called the Immortal Band, which consisted of 10,000 men, and were the best troops in the whole army. But these had no better success than the former.

4./Xerxes, out of all hopes of being able to force his way through troops so determined to conquer or die, was extremely perplexed, and could not tell what resolution to take; when an inhabitant of the country came to him, and discovered a secret path to the top of an eminence, which overlooked and commanded the Spartan forces. He quickly despatched a detachment thither; which, marching all night, arrived there at break of day, and possessed themselves of that advantageous spot. The Greeks were soon apprised of this misfortune; and Leonidas, seeing that it was now impossible to repulse the enemy, obliged the rest of the allies to retire, but staid himself with his 300 Lacedæmonians, all resolved to die with their leader; who being told by the oracle, that either Lacedæmon or her king must necessarily perish, determined, without the least difficulty or hesitation, to sacrifice himself for his country.

5. The Spartans lost all hopes either of conquering or escaping, and looked upon Thermopyle as their bu rying place. The king exhorting his men to take some nourishment, and telling them that they should sup together with old Pluto, they set up a shout of joy, as if they had been invited to a banquet; and, full of ardour, advanced with their king to battle. The shock was exceedingly violent and bloody. Leonidas himself was one of the first that fell. The endeavours of the Lacedæmonians to defend his dead body, were incredible. At length, not vanquished, but oppressed by numbers, they all fell except one man, who escaped to Sparta, where he was treated as a coward and traitor to his country, and nobody would keep company or converse with him. But soon afterwards, he made a glorious

amend for his fault, at the battle of Platea, where he distinguished himself in an extraordinary manner.— Xerxes, enraged to the last degree against Leonidas, for daring to make head against him, caused his dead body to be hung upon a gallows, and made the intended dishonour of his enemy his own immortal disgrace. 6. Xerxes lost in that affair above 20,000 men, among whom were two of the king's brothers. He was very sensible, that so great a loss, which was a manifest proof of the courage of their enemies, was capable of alarming and discouraging his soldiers. In order, therefore, to conceal the knowledge of it from them, he caused all his men that were killed in that action, except 1,000, whose bodies he ordered to be left upon the field, to be thrown together into large holes, which were secretly made, and covered over afterwards with earth and herbs. This stratagem succeeded very ill; for when the soldiers in the fleet, being curious to see the field of battle, obtained leave to come thither for that purpose, it served rather to discover his own littleness of soul, than to conceal the number of the slain.

7. Dismayed with a victory that had cost him so dear, he asked Demaratus, if the Lacedæmonians had many ⚫ such soldiers. That prince told him, that the Spartan republic had a great many cities belonging to it, of which all the inhabitants were exceeding brave; but that the inhabitants of Lacedæmon, who were properly called Spartans; and who were about 8,000 in number, surpassed all the rest in valour, and were all of them such as those who had fought under Leonidas.

8. The action of Leonidas, with his 300 Spartans, was not the effect of rashness or despair; but was a wise and noble conduct, as Diodorus Siculus has taken care to observe, in the magnificent encomium upon that famous engagement, to which he ascribes the success of all the ensuing victories and campaigns. Leonidas, knowing that Xerxes marched at the head of the forces of the east, in order to overwhelm and crush a little country by the dint of his numbers, rightly conceived, from the superiority of his genius and understanding,