Unkingly thinking

The boys are full of nonsense as usual and very boisterous. I have to speak very sternly in school to get them to keep quiet, sit still, sit with their legs in front of them, use their helper hands, write neatly, concentrate, keep quiet, sit down, keep working, and listen. But still, school is fun. Today we read about King Darius and King Xerxes his son, kings of Persia which was a great empire, who wanted to conquer Greece. The Greeks were fighting for their homelands and families though, so despite being outnumbered 10 to 1 in the first battle, they won. Ten years later Xerxes sent an even bigger army, numbering 2 million soldiers, across to Greece. Problem was, they couldn’t transport the soldiers by ship as the army was too vast, so they had to march overland. They got to a straight though, a long body of water, which had to be crossed. King Xerxes’ solution was to join together many of their ships and then build a bridge across it so the soldiers could march across. “Oh”, Caleb said, “that’s stupid – what if a storm came and the whole thing fell apart?” The very next paragraph detailed how the plan failed because a huge storm came up and smashed the entire thing to pieces. Pretty good thinking on Caleb’s part! They rebuilt it though, and it took seven days and seven nights of continuous walking, of two rows of men, to get the entire army across. Next comes the battle of Thermopylae which we will read about later in the week.