The Mammoth Book of Heroes

Book 374: Mammoth Books

by Jon E. Lewis

Genres: Action & Adventure

Synopsis

True courage is a hugely valued aspect of humanity.

Many of the accounts in this volume are in the words of those who were there, of men and women who showed real courage, often with their own lives on the line. The tales include: the death of Sir Thomas More; George Washington at Valley Forge; Nelson losing his arm at Santa Cruz; Oscar Schindler saving the lives of Polish Jews; SOE heroine Violette Szabo in occupied France; the protesters in Tiananmen Square; and the New York firefighters and the airline passengers of flight UA49 on September 11th, 2001.

Release date: March 1, 2012

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 160

Sample

Introduction Jon E. Lewis

The Spartans at Thermopylae, Charlotte Yonge

Let’s Roll, Toby Harnden

The Habit and Virtue of Courage, Aristotle

The Face of Courage, M.R.D. Foot

The Heroine of the Playground, Maurice Weaver

The Front of the Bus, Kai Friese

Hero Worship, Thomas Carlyle

The Darlings of the Life-Boats, E. Cobham Brewer

Lieutenant Philip Curtis Wins the Victoria Cross, Anthony Farrar-Hockley

Daniel in the Lions’ Den, The Bible

The Charge of the Light Brigade, F.E. Whitton

The Candle That Shall Never be Put Out, John Foxe

Bomb Disposal, Anonymous

Cobbett in the Dock, William Cobbett

The Lady of the Lamp, Cecil Woodham K. Smith

Bill Neate Versus the Gas-Man, William Hazlitt

The Man Who Broke the Sound Barrier, Tom Wolfe

His Soul Goes Marching On, E.G. Ogan

Horatius at the Bridge, Livy

David and Goliath, The Bible

No Surrender, Lady Constance Lytton

Henry V’s Speech at Agincourt, William Shakespeare

The Storming of Ciudad Rodrigo, William Grattan

The Boy V.C., Alistair Maclean

The Daunt Rock Lightship, Patrick Howarth

The Evacuation of Kham-Duc, Philip Chinnery

Obituary: Digby Tatham-Warter, The Daily Telegraph

George Washington and the Cherry Tree, J. Berg Esenwein, Marietta Stockard, William J. Bennett

Britain is a Land of Unsung Heroes, Robert Hardman

The Spirit of St Louis, Charles A. Lindbergh

The Hero as Priest, Thomas Carlyle

Rorke’s Drift, F.E. Whitton

Spreading the Word, John Wesley

The Heroes of Eyam, Paul Chadburn

Facing the End, R.F. Scott

Man-Eater, Colonel Jim Corbett

Dolley Madison Rescues the National Treasure, Dolley Madison

On Trial, Lillian Hellman

The Show Must Go On, Giles Playfair

Heckling Nixon, Ron Kovic

Sir Walter Scott and his Creditors, Sir Walter Scott

The Blocking of Zeebrugge, Sir Archibald Hurd

Zola and the Dreyfus Case, Frederick Laws

“J’accuse”, Emile Zola

Moral Fibre in Bomber Command, Max Hastings

Mission to Leipzig, Bert Stiles

The Death of Socrates, Plato

The Crucifixion of Christ, The Bible

The Boat Journey, Ernest Shackleton

The General Says “Nuts”, Russell F. Weighley

Alone, Douglas Mawson

Satyagraha, Web Miller

The Big Hitter, Bob Considine

The Trials of Galileo, John Hall

Obituary: Bill Reid, V.C., The Times

The Miracle of the Jacal, Bill O’Neal

Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller, Lorena A. Hickok

Tiananmen Square, Anonymous student

Prisoner of Islamic Jihad, John McCarthy

And Remember the Alamo, Jon E. Lewis

Swimming Niagara, E.J. Trelawny

Boudicca’s Battle Cry, Tacitus

A Yankee Antique, Walt Whitman

Man Could Not Do Much More, Geoffrey Winthrop Young

Heroism, Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Death of Adolfo Rodriguez, Richard Harding Davis

Sir Thomas More Upon the Scaffold, Anonymous

The Great Escaper, Tom Moulson

Omdurman, Winston S. Churchill

Spartacus, James Chambers

Ordinary Heroes, Richard Jerome, Susan Schindette, Nick Charles and Thomas Fields-Meyer

Acknowledgments and Sources

At some point in the late 20th century, heroism died in the Western world. There were individual heroic acts, certainly, but the age was not sympathetic to the heroic ideal. “Whatever happened to all of the heroes?” sang the English punk band The Stranglers. “No more heroes anymore”, was the anthemic reply. This observation was not confined to the nihilist edge of British pop culture in the oil-crisis ridden 1970s. “They’re hard to find”, lamented a major American weekly magazine about heroes in August 2001.

Rarely, of course, has a statement been proven so wrong. A bare three weeks later, on September 11, Islamic terrorists flew passenger planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon with the loss of thousands of lives. As the terrorists presumably intended, the Western world changed on September 11 – but not in the way they wished. The decadent West did not roll over on its back; instead it rediscovered some old-fashioned virtues. Duty, compassion, faith, altruism, and greater even than these, heroism. What will always be remembered about that day is the valour of firefighters, police and rescue services in the avalanche of death, and the bravery of the passengers of flight UA93 as they sought to overcome their hijackers. The commentators ceased to remark on heroism’s demise, only on its importance to modern life.

The strange death and resurrection of heroism requires some explanation. Once upon a time, even as late as the 1950s, every little boy and girl was brought up on a diet of heroes and heroic deeds: Columbus sailing the ocean blue, Florence Nightingale, the Alamo, Rorke’s Drift, Harriet Tubman . . . An appreciation of the heroic was part of the training for life, and had been since humankind could first tell stories or pass down remembrances (think of the world’s body of heroic literature and legend, from Beowulf to The Odyssey). The heroic started going out of fashion in the West in the 1950s, with the advent of the “teenager”. Until that decade, youth had always been a minaturized carbon-copy of its parent, but the new phenomenon of “teenage” set youth against parent. In effect, this turned teenagers against the heroic – for parents are always the first heroes of children – and their parents’ essentially conservative value systems . . . and eventually all value systems. The point was neatly made in the 1953 film The Wild One, the quintessential teen movie. Marlon Brando’s motorcycle boy is asked “What ya rebelling against?” “Whaddya got?” he replies.

It was all downhill for heroism after the 1950s, although the 1960s offered the contradiction of simultaneous revolutionary iconoclasm and heroic labour for noble ideals (the black civil rights movement, for example). But, when the optimism of the 1960s was murdered by Hell’s Angels at the Rolling Stones’ Altamont concert, the slip-slide of heroism became a fullscale runaway. The nadir was reached in the cynical, consumerist, cocaine-fuelled 1980s. In The Talmud the question is asked, “Who is a hero?” And the answer is, “He who has conquered his evil inclinations.” Evil inclinations were more applauded than conquered in the 1980s, when money and fame were the only gods. Thus, there were scarcely any heroes in that age, only anti-heroes and celebrities. The emblem of the anti-heroes, or amoralists, was Gordon Gecko, the company trader in Oliver Stone’s 1987 Wall Street; the emblematic celebrity was every wannabee prepared to humiliate themselves on Blind Date or Oprah for their statutory Warholian 15 minutes of fame. No one got famous for good works anymore, only good looks, shopping, self-abasement, scandal and, preferably, victimhood. Of course, if you could do all five – like Madonna or the Princess of Wales – you could reach that stellar state of renown once reserved for the likes of Jesus Christ, George Washington, Joan of Arc, or Winston Churchill.

And so did heroism bump along abysmally for twenty years, until September 11 2001, when suddenly there were heroes galore. They had of course been there all along; it was just that the West had been blinded to them by the reflected tawdry dazzle of money and Hello! celebrity. They being the people who faced adversity – death even – to help others. And they did it not for the dollars or the pounds – hell, they were often poorly paid – or for the exposure on the TV but because of a sense of public duty, decency even. They were people like firefighters and rescue workers at Ground Zero. And when the West learned to see heroism again – for that is what happened on September 11 – it could see it everywhere, in the men and women who push the boundaries of science and human endeavour, in those who stand firm for their rights against tyranny, in those who serve to protect us. Of course, it was lost on no one that in valuing heroes the Western world was valuing what was best in itself.

There were some less obvious lessons in September 11. How, for instance, to explain the heroic acts undertaken by “ordinary” people, the combative passengers of Flight UA93 in particular? And, why were some people heroic but not others? The answer lies, in all probability, in Nurture as much as it does in Nature. Certainly, some people seem to be born risk-takers (and nobody was ever a hero without taking a risk), but heroism also rests on the psychological foundations of self-confidence, self-esteem and empathy; a hero-in-waiting, after all, must not only feel that she or he can affect the outcome of a given situation but must wish to do so. Self-confidence, self-esteem and empathy are qualities learned in childhood. This leads full-circle to why previous generations were fed of an evening on the deeds of heroes. Heroism can be learned. Those “non-professionals” who acted heroically on September 11 almost certainly did so because they were taught cardinal virtues at their parents’ knee.

The learned nature of heroism means more than the enabling of the individual to act heroically. (Though it might be argued that many individuals would profit more from reading Ernest Shackleton’s South or M.R.D. Foot’s account of the Second World War resistance fighter Witold Pilecki – extracts from both of which appear on the following pages – than any amount of counselling or analysis.) A society educated in heroism will become heroic itself. The citizens of Britain endured alone the tyranny of Hitler for a whole year between the fall of France and the outbreak of fighting in Russia. They did so because as children they were taught about the defeat of the Armada, about Henry V at Agincourt, about the frostbitten Titus Oates sacrificing his life so that his fellow explorers at the South Pole might have a better chance to live. (“I am just going outside and may be some time”, said Oates.) Heroic “primers”, recounting such deeds used to be commonplace. The greatest of these was Thomas Carlyle’s “On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History” which was a philosophical examination of heroism, but also a book of moral instruction by historical example, a book by which Carlyle intended to shape a nation’s (Britain’s) character, indeed.

It would be egotistical and rash to compare this book with Carlyle’s, but its purpose, above the provision of the time-honoured “good read”, is an avowedly moral one: to show, by illustration from the past, what heroism is, what it looks like, and why we should and could emulate it. If you want, it’s a DIY book of heroism, with handy best-case examples from Ancient Greece to September 11, 2001, ranging through war to science to exploration to sport. Some of the examples are sure to irk, even to provoke, for heroism crosses political boundaries; the heroic don’t always fight for the same causes (Ron Kovic was heroic in his struggle against the Vietnam war, just as Lt.-Col. Joe M. Jackson was in fighting it), but the way they fight is the same: selfless, dutiful, virtuous (never for the dollars), constant and always against the odds, be these odds superior numbers in battle, the opinion of the crowd, the forces of Nature.

There is one outstanding component of heroism, which is even greater than these. This is courage. For that reason, this anthology also presents many stories of courage, so that this quality may be seen clearly and often. Courage and heroism are, of course, quite distinct: the heroic is always courageous, but the courageous is not always heroic. Courage can be bought for money, it can be generated by self-interest. The pugilist Tom Hickman showed immense courage in his bare-knuckle fight with Bill Neate in 1821, but it was prompted solely by the size of the purse and desire for reputation. He makes these pages because his endurance and his “self-possession” (as Hazlitt has it) in battering, bloody round upon round was something to behold. And still is.

Hickman’s courage, then, was physical courage. There is another sort, which is moral courage, the arguing of one’s beliefs. Everyone vaunts physical courage (the Nazis did, Stalin did), but moral courage – such as that shown by Emile Zola in defending the Jewish Dreyfus in the anti-semitic France of 1898 – is more problematic. In general, the society which values moral courage is itself moral. The societies of Hitler and Stalin never did and never were. Even so, it is always the threat of physical pain up to and including death which tests human bravery most absolutely, most perfectly. Since this threat is most often found in war, I have included a number of battlefield stories.

A last comment. This volume is not intended to be read page to page. It is, instead, a book to browse, to dip into; the contents list will direct anyone in search of particular examples. There is no great over-arching order, only that which seems to me to provide variety and thought-provocation. That said, I have consciously put the epic of the Spartans at Thermopylae at the beginning, since this is surely the benchmark of heroism, the event by which all heroic deeds are to be judged.

And a final hope. I hope that the reader will be left enlightened in the heroic landmarks of our past and depart inspired by them. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “whoever is heroic will always find crises to try their edge.” He might equally have written, “Crises will always find us, but we will only get the edge on them by being heroic.” The hero resides in us all.

Charlotte Yonge

It was in 480 BC that Xerxes of Persia led his army into Greece, to be met by the Spartans in the narrow gorge of Thermopylae. Although the Spartans were defeated, their stand at Thermopylae inspired the Greeks to later victory and entered the annals of history as the byword for steadfast courage against insuperable odds.

“Stranger, bear this message to the Spartans, that we lie here obedient to their laws.”1

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 Ægæus, 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 Phœnician, the learned Egyptian, the wild freebooting 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 splendour to the Greeks, described now and then by Ionians from Asia Minor who had carried their tribute to the king’s own feet, or by courtier slaves who had escaped with difficulty from being all too serviceable at the tyrannic court. And the lord of this enormous empire was about to launch his countless host against the little cluster of states the whole of which together would hardly equal one province of the huge Asiatic realm! Moreover, it was a war not only on the men, but on their gods. The Persians were zealous adorers of the sun and of fire; they abhorred the idol-worship of the Greeks, and defiled and plundered every temple that fell in their way. Death and desolation were almost the best that could be looked for at such hands; slavery and torture from cruelly barbarous masters would only too surely be the lot of numbers should their land fall a prey to the conquerors.

True it was that ten years back the former Great King had sent his best troops to be signally defeated upon the coast of Attica; but the losses at Marathon had but stimulated the Persian lust of conquest, and the new King Xerxes was gathering together such myriads of men as should crush down the Greeks and overrun their country by mere force of numbers.

The muster-place was at Sardis, and there Greek spies had seen the multitudes assembling and the state and magnificence of the king’s attendants. Envoys had come from him to demand earth and water from each state in Greece, as emblems that land and sea were his; but each state was resolved to be free, and only Thessaly, that which lay first in his path, consented to yield the token of subjugation. A council was held at the Isthmus of Corinth, and attended by deputies from all the states of Greece, to consider of the best means of defence. The ships of the enemy would coast round the shores of the Ægean Sea, the land army would cross the Hellespont on a bridge of boats lashed together, and march southwards into Greece. The only hope of averting the danger lay in defending such passages as, from the nature of the ground, were so narrow that only a few persons could fight hand to hand at once, so that courage would be of more avail than numbers.

The first of these passes was called Tempe, and a body of troops was sent to guard it; but they found that this was useless and impossible, and came back again. The next was at Thermopylæ. Look in your map of the Archipelago, or Ægean Sea, as it was then called, for the great island of Negropont, or by its old name, Eubœa. It looks like a piece broken off from the coast, and to the north is shaped like the head of a bird, with the beak running into a gulf, that would fit over it, upon the mainland, and between the island and the coast is an exceedingly narrow strait. The Persian army would have to march round the edge of the gulf. They could not cut straight across the country, because the ridge of mountains called Œta rose up and barred their way. Indeed, the woods, rocks, and precipices came down so near the seashore that in two places there was only room for one single wheel track between the steeps and the impassable morass that formed the border of the gulf on its south side. These two very narrow places were called the gates of the pass, and were about a mile apart. There was a little more width left in the intervening space; but in this there were a number of springs of warm mineral water, salt and sulphurous, which were used for the sick to bathe in, and thus the place was called Thermopylæ, or the Hot Gates. A wall had once been built across the westernmost of these narrow places, when the Thessalians and Phocians, who lived on either side of it, had been at war with one another; but it had been allowed to go to decay, since the Phocians had found out that there was a very steep, narrow mountain path along the bed of a torrent by which it was possible to cross from one territory to the other without going round this marshy coast road.

This was therefore an excellent place to defend. The Greek ships were all drawn up on the farther side of Eubœa to prevent the Persian vessels from getting into the strait and landing men beyond the pass, and a division of the army was sent off to guard the Hot Gates. The council at the Isthmus did not know of the mountain pathway, and thought that all would be safe as long as the Persians were kept out of the coast path.

The troops sent for this purpose were from different cities, and amounted to about 4,000, who were to keep the pass against two millions. The leader of them was Leonidas, who had newly become one of the two kings of Sparta, the city that above all in Greece trained its sons to be hardy soldiers, dreading death infinitely less than shame. Leonidas had already made up his mind that the expedition would probably be his death, perhaps because a prophecy had been given at the Temple at Delphi that Sparta should be saved by the death of one of her kings of the race of Hercules. He was allowed by law to take with him 300 men, and these he chose most carefully, not merely for their strength and courage, but selecting those who had sons, so that no family might be altogether destroyed. These Spartans, with their helots or slaves, made up his own share of the numbers, but all the army was under his generalship. It is even said that the 300 celebrated their own funeral rites before they set out, lest they should be deprived of them by the enemy, since, as we have already seen, it was the Greek belief that the spirits of the dead found no rest till their obsequies had been performed. Such preparations did not daunt the spirits of Leonidas and his men; and his wife, Gorgo, was not a woman to be faint-hearted or hold him back. Long before, when she was a very little girl, a word of hers had saved her father from listening to a traitorous message from the King of Persia; and every Spartan lady was bred up to be able to say to those she best loved that they must come home from battle “with the shield or on it” – either carrying it victoriously or borne upon it as a corpse.

When Leonidas came to Thermopylæ, the Phocians told him of the mountain path through the chestnut woods of Mount Œta, and begged to have the privilege of guarding it on a spot high up on the mountain side, assuring him that it was very hard to find at the other end, and that there was every probability that the enemy would never discover it. He consented, and encamping around the warm springs, caused the broken wall to be repaired and made ready to meet the foe.

The Persian army were seen covering the whole country like locusts, and the hearts of some of the southern Greeks in the pass began to sink. Their homes in the Peloponnesus were comparatively secure: had they not better fall back and reserve themselves to defend the Isthmus of Corinth? But Leonidas, though Sparta was safe below the Isthmus, had no intention of abandoning his northern allies, and kept the other Peloponnesians to their posts, only sending messengers for further help.

Presently a Persian on horseback rode up to reconnoitre the pass. He could not see over the wall, but in front of it and on the ramparts he saw the Spartans, some of them engaged in active sports, and others in combing their long hair. He rode back to the king, and told him what he had seen. Now, Xerxes had in his camp an exiled Spartan prince, named Demartus, who had become a traitor to his country, and was serving as counsellor to the enemy. Xerxes sent for him, and asked whether his countrymen were mad to be thus employed instead of fleeing away; but Demartus made answer that a hard fight was no doubt in preparation, and that it was the custom of the Spartans to array their hair with especial care when they were about to enter upon any great peril. Xerxes would, however, not believe that so petty a force could intend to resist him, and waited four days, probably expecting his fleet to assist him; but as it did not appear, the attack was made.

The Greeks, stronger men and more heavily armed, were far better able to fight to advantage than the Persians with their short spears and wicker shields, and beat them off with great ease. It is said that Xerxes three times leapt off his throne in despair at the sight of his troops being driven backwards; and thus for two days it seemed as easy to force a way through the Spartans as through the rocks themselves. Nay, how could slavish troops, dragged from home to spread the victories of an ambitious king, fight like freemen who felt that their strokes were to defend their homes and children?

But on that evening a wretched man, named Ephialtes, crept into the Persian camp, and offered, for a great sum of money, to show the mountain path that would enable the enemy to take the brave defenders in the rear. A Persian general, named Hydarnes, was sent off at nightfall with a detachment to secure this passage, and was guided through the thick forests that clothed the hillside. In the stillness of the air, at daybreak, the Phocian guards of the path were startled by the crackling of the chestnut leaves under the tread of many feet. They started up, but a shower of arrows was discharged on them, and forgetting all save the present alarm, they fled to a higher part of the mountain, and the enemy, without waiting to pursue them, began to descend.

As day dawned, morning light showed the watchers of the Grecian camp below a glittering and shimmering in the torrent bed where the shaggy forests opened; but it was not the sparkle of water, but the shine of gilded helmets and the gleaming of silvered spears! Moreover, a Cimmerian crept over to the wall from the Persian camp with tidings that the path had been betrayed; that the enemy were climbing it, and would come down beyond the eastern Gate. Still, the way was rugged and circuitous, the Persians would hardly descend before midday, and there was ample time for the Greeks to escape before they could thus be shut in by the enemy.

There was a short council held over the morning sacrifice. Megistias, the seer, on inspecting the entrails of the slain victim, declared, as well he might, that their appearance boded disaster. Him Leonidas ordered to retire, but he refused, though he sent home his only son. There was no disgrace to an ordinary tone of mind in leaving a post that could not be held, and Leonidas recommended all the allied troops under his command to march away while yet the way was open. As to himself and his Spartans, they had made up their minds to die at their post, and there could be no doubt that the example of such a resolution would do more to save Greece than their best efforts could ever do if they were careful to reserve themselves for another occasion.

All the allies consented to retreat, except the eighty men who came from Mycæne and the 700 Thespians, who declared that they would not desert Leonidas. There were also 400 Thebans who remained; and thus the whole number that stayed with Leonidas to confront two million of enemies were fourteen hundred warriors, besides the helots or attendants on the 300 Spartans, whose number is not known, but there was probably at least one to each. Leonidas had two kinsmen in the camp, like himself claiming the blood of Hercules, and he tried to save them by giving them letters and messages to Sparta; but one answered that “he had come to fight, not to carry letters,” and the other that “his deeds would tell all that Sparta wished to know.” Another Spartan, named Dienices, when told that the enemy’s archers were so numerous that their arrows darkened the sun, replied, “So much the better: we shall fight in the shade.” Two of the 300 had been sent to a neighbouring village, suffering severely from a complaint in the eyes. One of them, called Eurytus, put on his armour, and commanded his helot to lead him to his place in the ranks; the other, called Aristodemus, was so overpowered with illness that he allowed himself to be carried away with the retreating allies. It was still early in the day when all were gone, and Leonidas gave the word to his men to take their last meal. “To-night,” he said, “we shall sup with Pluto.”

Hitherto he had stood on the defensive, and had husbanded the lives of his men; but he now desired to make as great a slaughter as possible, so as to inspire the enemy with dread of the Grecian name. He therefore marched out beyond the wall, without waiting to be attacked, and the battle began. The Persian captains went behind their wretched troops and scourged them on to the fight with whips! Poor wretches! they were driven on to be slaughtered, pierced with the Greek spears, hurled into the sea, or trampled into the mud of the morass; but their inexhaustible numbers told at length. The spears of the Greeks broke under hard service, and their swords alone remained; they began to fall, and Leonidas himself was among the first of the slain. Hotter than ever was the fight over his corpse, and two Persian princes, brothers of Xerxes, were there killed; but at length word was brought that Hydarnes was over the pass, and that the few remaining men were thus enclosed on all sides. The Spartans and Thespians made their way to a little hillock within the wall, resolved to let this be the place of their last stand; but the hearts of the Thebans failed them, and they came towards the Persians holding out their hands in entreaty for mercy. Quarter was given to them, but they were all branded with the king’s mark as untrustworthy deserters. The helots probably at this time escaped into the mountains; while the small desperate band stood side by side on the hill still fighting to the last, some with swords, others with daggers, others even with their hands and teeth, till not one living man remained amongst them when the sun went down. There was only a mound of slain, bristled over with arrows.

Twenty thousand Persians had died before that handful of men! Xerxes asked Demaratus if there were many more at Sparta like these, and was told there were 8,000. It must have been with a somewhat failing heart that he invited his courtiers from the fleet to see what he had done to the men who dared to oppose him, and showed them the head and arm of Leonidas set up upon a cross but he took care that all his own slain, except 1,000, should first be put out of sight. The body of the brave king was buried where he fell, as were those of the other dead. Much envied were they by the unhappy Aristodemus, who found himself called by no name but the “Coward,” and was shunned by all his fellow-citizens. No one would