Leonidas
A celebrated king of Lacedaemon who went to oppose Xerxes, king of Persia, who had invaded Greece with a vast army.
A great battle was fought at Thermopylae, the entire army of Leonidas consisting of three hundred men who refused to abandon him. For a time this small army resisted the vast legions of Xerxes, till at length a traitor conducted a detachment of Persians by a secret path to the rear of Leonidas, where he was slain and his soldiers were cut to pieces, one only of the three hundred escaping. The Rev. George Croly, author of Sarathiel, wrote a poem called The Death of Leonidas, which, after describing in vivid language the determined valor of the Greeks, thus concludes : "Thus fought the Greek of old; Thus will he fight again:
Shall not the self-same mold Bring forth the self-same men?"
Lepidus, M. Aemilius. A celebrated Roman, one of the triumvirs with Augustus and Antony. He was of an illustrious family, and, like many of his contemporaries, remarkable for ambition. He was unable to maintain his position as triumvir, and, resigning power, he sank into obscurity.