Now alone in the tent with His two closest confidants, He spoke, relaying a dream. “I was on a battlefield, which seemed to extend to infinity, and over which the corpses of the slain spread beyond sight. Cries of victory filled the air; generals and men were vaunting triumphantly. Abruptly I espied the corpse of Leonidas, decapitated, with its head impaled upon a spike, as we had done at Thermopylae, the body itself nailed as a trophy to a single barren tree in the midst of the plain. I was seized with grief and shame. I raced toward the tree, shouting to my men to cut the Spartan down. In
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