care for their safety; but it did not become him and the Spartans that were with him, he said, to leave their post that they had come to keep at the first. And indeed it seems fit to be believed that Leonidas, seeing that the others were faint-hearted and would not willingly abide the peril, bade them go, but that he himself held it to be a shameful thing to depart. For he knew that he should get for himself great glory by abiding at his post, and that the prosperity of Sparta should not be destroyed. For when the Spartans at the very beginning of the war sent to inquire of the Pythia, seeking to know what should befall them, there was given to them an oracle, that one of two things must come to pass, to wit, that Sparta must perish, or that one of their kings must fall in battle.
And that oracle was this—
Remembering therefore this oracle, and desiring to get for the Spartans all the glory of this matter Leonidas sent away the others. This is rather to be believed than that they had a controversy in the council, and so departed in an unseemly fashion and without order.