Constantine P. Cavafy poems that deal with other situations such as closure (for example, "The walls"), debt (for example, "Thermopylae"), and human dignity (for example, "The God Abandons Antony"). The poem "Thermopylae" reminds us of the famous battle of Thermopylae where the 300 Spartans and their allies fought against the greater numbers of Persians, although they knew that they would be defeated. There are some principles in our lives that we should live by, and Thermopylae is the ground of duty. We stay there fighting although we know that there is the potential for failure. (At the end the traitor Ephialtes will appear,
Battle of Hysiae (417 BC) destroyed the town and fortress of Hysiae and had its male population executed. The campaign is described by the historians Thucydides (5.83.2), who actually fought in the war, and Diodorus Siculus (12.81.1), who wrote in the 1st century BC, over two hundred years later. Thucydides says that the Spartans marched against Argos in the winter of 418–417 BC with all their allies, but failed to take the city of Argos. The Spartans did, however, capture and destroy the Argive town of Hysiae, taking all the male citizens as hostages. The hostages were subsequently killed. With Hysiae destroyed, the Spartans left