Thermopylae
A narrow pass leading from Thessaly into Locris and Phocis, celebrated for a battle fought there, B. C. 480, between Xerxes and the Greeks, in which three hundred Spartans, commanded by Leonidas, resisted for three successive days an enormous Persian army. Lord Byron, in his Childe Harold, canto ii., in an apostrophe to Greece, thus refers to the famous conflict: "Who now shall lead thy scatter'd children forth, And long-accustom'd bondage uncreate ?
Not such thy sons who whilome did await, The hopeless warriors of a willing doom, In bleak Thermopylae's sepulchral strait.
Oh! who that gallant spirit shall resume, Leap from Eurotas' banks, and call thee from the tomb?"