(ANAXANDRIDES by his first wife,
and, according to some accounts, was twin-brother to Cleombrotus (DORIEUS]. When Greece was invaded by Xerxes, the Greek congress, which
was held at the Isthmus of Corinth, determined that a stand should be made against the enemy
at the pass of Thermopylae, and Leonidas had the command of the force destined for this
service. The number of his army is varionsly stated: according to Herodotus, it amounted to
somewhat more than 5000 men, of whom 300 were Spartans; in all probability, the regular band
of (so called) Dor. book 3.12.5). The remainder of the Lacedaemonian
force was to follow after the celebration of the festival of the Carneia. Plutarch affirms
that funeral games were celebrated in honour of Leonidas and his comrades, before their
departure from Sparta; according also to him and Diodorus, it was said at the same time by the
self-devoting hero, that the men he took with him were indeed few to fight, but enough to die;
and, when his wife, Gorgo, asked him what his last wishes were, he answered, " Marry a brave
husband and bear brave sons." All this, however, has very much the air of a late and
rhetorical addition to the story; nor is it certain that Leonidas and his band looked forward
to their own death as the inevitable result of their expedition, though Herodotus tells us
that he selected for it such only as had sons to leave behind them, and mentions an oracle
besides, which declared that Sparta could not be saved from ruin but by the death of her king.
When the Greek army was assembled at Thermopylae, there was a prevalent desire on the part of
the Peloponnesians to fall back on the Isthmus, and make their stand against the Persians
there; and it was mainly through the influence of Leonidas that the scheme, selfish at once
and impolitic, was abandoned. The sayings ascribed to him before the battle by Plutarch are
well-known and characteristic enough of a Spartan, but are probably the rhetorical inventions
of a later age. When it was known that the treachery of the Malian Epbialtes had betrayed the
mountain path of the Anopaea to the Persians, after their vain attempts to force their way
through the pass of Thermopylae, Leonidas, declaring that he and the Spartans under his
command must needs remain in the post they had been sent to guard, dismissed all the other
Greeks, except the Thespian and Theban forces. Then, before the body of Persians, who were
crossing the mountain under Hydarnes, could arrive to attack him in the rear, he advanced from
the narrow pass and charged the myriads of the enemy with his handful of troops, hopeless now
of preserving their lives, and anxious only to sell them dearly. In the desperate battle which
ensued, Leonidas himself fell soon. His body was rescued by the Greeks, after a violent
struggle. On the hillock in the pass, where the remnant of the Greeks made their last stand, a
lion of stone (so Herodotus tells us) was set up in his honour; and Pausanias says that his
bones were brought to Sparta forty years after, by one named Pausanias; but if he was the same
who commanded at the battle of Plataea, " forty" must be an erroneous reading for " four" (see
Larcher, ad Herod. 7.225). The later story of Leonidas and his followers
perishing in a night-attack on the Persian camp is unworthy of credit. (de Herod. Mal. 32, Apoph. Lac.;
Them. 3;
de Fin. 2.19, 30,
Tusc. Disp. 1.42, 49; Simon. xv. Anthol. Graec.
vol. i. p. 61, ed. Jacobs.) In the reign of Leonidas we arrive at an exact chronology (says
Clinton, F. H. vol. ii. p. 209), which we have gradually approached in
the two preceding reigns of Anaxandrides and Cleomenes I.