The Twitter Herodotus

7.131 Xerxes lingered in Pieria while his men cleared trees to facilitate the army's march. The heralds he'd sent to Greece had returned.

7.132 All the Boeotians had medized but the Thespians & Plataeans. The Greek allies swore an oath against them & the other medizing Greeks.

7.133 Xerxes hadn't sent heralds to Sparta or Athens, however, as the last heralds sent had been thrown respectively into a well and pit.

7.134 The Spartans, punished for the offense w/bad omens, decided to atone by sending Sperthias & Bulis, volunteers, to Persia to be killed.

7.135 S & B met en route w/Hydarnes, who asked why they resisted Persia. If he knew what freedom was, they said, he'd bid them fight for it.

7.136 The two arrived at Susa and offered themselves to Xerxes to be killed, but he refused to repay the Spartans' offense with his own.

7.137 So S & B went home. Much later their sons were killed while serving as heralds--divine punishment, finally, for the Spartans' offense.

7.138 Xerxes' expedition was nominally against Athens, but in fact against all the Greeks. Some capitulated; those who didn't were scared.

7.139 My opinion is this: the Athenians saved Greece. The Greeks could not have won w/o their fleet. They would have medized or been killed.

7.140 The Athenians had received a terrifying oracle from Delphi urging them to flee to the ends of the earth before the Persians invaded.