Battle of Plataea other. The Allies initially adopted a strategy of blocking land and sea approaches to southern Greece. Thus, in August 480 BC, after hearing of Xerxes' approach, a small Allied army led by Spartan King Leonidas I blocked the Pass of Thermopylae, while an Athenian-dominated navy sailed to the Straits of Artemisium. Famously, the massively outnumbered Greek army held Thermopylae for three days before being outflanked by the Persians, who used a little-known mountain path. Although much of the Greek army retreated, the rearguard, formed of the Spartan and Thespian contingents, was surrounded and annihilated. The simultaneous Battle of Artemisium, consisting
Prosody (Greek) the 2nd foot, as in lines 2 and 4, or the middle of the 4th foot, as in lines 3 and 7. There is never a word-break exactly in the middle of the line, although pastoral poetry (such as that of Theocritus) often makes a word-break between the 4th and 5th foot, known as a "bucolic caesura". The dactylic hexameter is also used for short epigrams, such as Simonides' epigram commemorating the Spartans who died in the battle of Thermopylae of 480 BC. In this case it is joined with a pentameter, consisting of two sections of two and a