But the final overthrow of the Persian hosts on the battle-field
of Plataea has an importance far greater than that of the
deliverance of the Greeks from immediate danger. Perhaps no other
event in ancient history has been so momentous in its consequences;
for what would have been the condition of Greece had she then
become a province of the Persian empire? The greatness which she
subsequently attained, and the glory and renown with which she
has filled the earth, would never have had an existence. Little
Greece sat at the gates of a continent, and denied an entrance to
the gorgeous barbarism of Asia. She determined that Europe should
not be Asiatic; that civilization should not sink into the abyss
of unmitigated despotism. She turned the tide of Persian
encroachment back across the Hellespont, and Alexander only
followed the refluent wave to the Indus.

"'Twas then," as SOUTHEY says,

"The fate
Of unborn ages hung upon the fray:
T'was at Plataea, in that awful hour
When Greece united smote the Persian's power.
For, had the Persian triumphed, then the spring
Of knowledge from that living source had ceased;
All would have fallen before the barbarous king--
Art, Science, Freedom: the despotic East,
Setting her mark upon the race subdued,
Had stamped them in the mould of sensual servitude."

Furthermore, on this subject we subjoin the following reflections
from the author previously quoted: