Trail
The allied Greek land forces, which Herodotus states numbered no more than 4,200 men, had chosen Thermopylae to block the advance of the vastly numerically superior Persian army. Although this gap between the Trachinian Cliffs and the Malian Gulf was only "wide enough for a single carriage", it could be bypassed by a trail which led over the mountains south of Thermopylae and joined the main road behind the Greek position. Herodotus notes that this trail was well-known to the locals, who had used it in the past for raiding the neighbouring Phocians.
Read more about this topic: Ephialtes Of Trachis
Famous quotes containing the word trail:
“It is not for man to follow the trail of truth too far, since by so doing he entirely loses the directing compass of his mind.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Most of us don’t have mothers who blazed a trail for us—at least, not all the way. Coming of age before or during the inception of the women’s movement, whether as working parents or homemakers, whether married or divorced, our mothers faced conundrums—what should they be? how should they act?—that became our uncertainties.”
—Anne Roiphe (20th century)
“The ghosts of the villages trail in the sky
Making a new twilight”
—William Stanley Merwin (b. 1927)