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[8] For Xerxes, the proudest of all who have reigned over the Medes, or over the Persians who succeeded them, the achiever of such brilliant exploits, was met on his march by Leonidas and the handful of men he led to Thermopylae,1 and they would have prevented him from even seeing Greece at all, and from ever burning Athens, if the man of Trachis had not guided the army with Hydarnes by the path that stretches across Oeta, and enabled the enemy to surround the Greeks; so Leonidas was overwhelmed and the foreigners passed along into Greece.

1 480 B.C.

Pausanias. Pausanias Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918.

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