[3] After the fall of Livadeia on 1 April 1821 to a contingent of Greek fighters under the command of Athanasios Diakos and Vasilis Bousgos, Hursid Pasha sent two of his most competent commanders from Thessaly, Omer Vrioni and Köse Mehmed, at the head of 8,000 men with orders to put down the revolt in Roumeli and then proceed to the Peloponnese and lift the siege at Tripolitsa.

[4] Athanasios Diakos and his band, reinforced by the fighters of Dimitrios Panourgias and Yiannis Dyovouniotis, decided to halt the Ottoman advance into Roumeli by taking defensive positions near Thermopylae.

Diakos chose to stay and fight with 48 men; they put up a desperate hand-to-hand struggle for a number of hours before being overwhelmed.

As he was led off to be impaled, it was said that onlookers heard him sing: "Look at the time Charon chose to take me, now that branches are flowering, now that the earth sends forth grass".

One popular version mentions that Diakos was also roasted over a fire, however, this is questionable because of another local, oral tradition that has him being killed by a Greek rebel the next day out of mercy, as he was found to be in a near-death state from the impalement.