which we have on the sea advance together, the one will be able to help the other. But if thou part them asunder, the fleet will not be able to help thee, nor thou to help the fleet. Only order thine own affairs well, and take no thought about thine enemies, whether they will join battle with thee, or what they will do, or how many they be in number. Surely they without us can manage their own affairs and we ours without them. As to the Spartans, if they come out to fight against us, they will in no wise heal this great wound that they have now received at our hands.”
To this the King made answer, “This is well said, Achæmenes, and I will follow thy counsel. For though Demaratus saith what he deems the best for me, his judgment is worse than thine. But this I will not believe, that he has not good will for me and my fortunes. So much I know from the counsel that he has given me before, and also from his own affairs. For that a man may envy a fellow-citizen that is more fortunate than he, and may hate him secretly, and if he be asked for counsel will not speak the thing that is best, is to be believed, unless indeed he be of a very rare and excellent virtue. But a friend rejoices in the prosperity of a friend that is of another country, and gives him counsel according to the best of his power. Now this Demaratus is my friend, and I warn all men that hereafter they keep themselves from speaking evil of him.”
When Xerxes had thus spoken, he went to see the bodies of them that had been slain. And when he came to the body of Leonidas, knowing him to have been the captain and King of the Spartans, he commanded that they should cut the head from it and put it on a cross, which may be taken for a proof that there was no man that Xerxes hated so much as he hated Leonidas while he was yet alive; for else he had not done this dishonor to his dead body. For the Persians are wont, for the most part, more than other men, to show honor to them that have shown themselves good men in war.
It must yet be told how the Spartans first knew that the King had it in his mind to bring an army against Greece. This Demaratus, of whom