blotted out: for an oracle had been given by the Pythian prophetess to
the Spartans, when they consulted about this war at the time when it
was being first set on foot, to the effect that either Lacedemon must
be destroyed by the Barbarians, or their king must lose his life. This
reply the prophetess gave them in hexameter verses, and it ran thus:


"But as for you, ye men who in wide-spaced Sparta inhabit,
Either your glorious city is sacked by the children of Perses,
Or, if it be not so, then a king of the stock Heracleian
Dead shall be mourned for by all in the boundaries of broad Lacedemon.
Him[222] nor the might of bulls nor the raging of lions shall hinder;
For he hath might as of Zeus; and I say he shall not be restrained,
Till one of the other of these he have utterly torn and divided."[223]

I am of opinion that Leonidas considering these things and desiring to
lay up for himself glory above all the other Spartans,[224] dismissed
the allies, rather than that those who departed did so in such
disorderly fashion, because they were divided in opinion. 221. Of this
the following has been to my mind a proof as convincing as any other,
namely that Leonidas is known to have endeavoured to dismiss the
soothsayer also who accompanied this army, Megistias the Acarnanian,
who was said to be descended from Melampus, that he might not perish
with them after he had declared from the victims that which was about
to come to pass for them. He however when he was bidden to go would
not himself depart, but sent away his son who was with him in the
army, besides whom he had no other child.

222. The allies then who were dismissed departed and went away,
obeying the word of Leonidas, and only the Thespians and the Thebans