AUTHOR’S NOTE

The invasion of Greece by Xerxes, with its battles of Thermopylæ, Salamis, and Platæa, forms one of the most dramatic events in history. Had Athens and Sparta succumbed to this attack of Oriental superstition and despotism, the Parthenon, the Attic Theatre, the Dialogues of Plato, would have been almost as impossible as if Phidias, Sophocles, and the philosophers had never lived. Because this contest and its heroes—Leonidas and Themistocles—cast their abiding shadows across our world of to-day, I have attempted this piece of historical fiction.

Many of the scenes were conceived on the fields of action themselves during a recent visit to Greece, and I have tried to give some glimpse of the natural beauty of “The Land of the Hellene,”—a beauty that will remain when Themistocles and his peers fade away still further into the backgrounds of history.