of the French fleet, there is one that bears the ever-honored name of
D'Assas.




THE PASS OF THERMOPYLAE

B.C. 430



There was trembling in Greece. 'The Great King', as the Greeks called
the chief potentate of the East, whose domains stretched from the Indian
Caucasus to the Aegaeus, from the Caspian to the Red Sea, was
marshalling his forces against the little free states that nestled amid
the rocks and gulfs of the Eastern Mediterranean. Already had his might
devoured the cherished colonies of the Greeks on the eastern shore of
the Archipelago, and every traitor to home institutions found a ready
asylum at that despotic court, and tried to revenge his own wrongs by
whispering incitements to invasion. 'All people, nations, and
languages,' was the commencement of the decrees of that monarch's court;
and it was scarcely a vain boast, for his satraps ruled over subject
kingdoms, and among his tributary nations he counted the Chaldean, with
his learning and old civilization, the wise and steadfast Jew, the
skilful Phoenician, the learned Egyptian, the wild, free-booting Arab of
the desert, the dark-skinned Ethiopian, and over all these ruled the
keen-witted, active native Persian race, the conquerors of all the rest,
and led by a chosen band proudly called the Immortal. His many capitals--
Babylon the great, Susa, Persepolis, and the like--were names of dreamy