ined to defend the Peloponnesus,
and were collecting all their forces within it, and building a wall
across the Isthmus from sea to sea, the Athenians were enraged at their
treachery, and disheartened at being thus abandoned to their fate. They
had no thoughts of resisting so enormous an army; and the only thing
they could do under the circumstances, to abandon their city and trust
to their ships, was distasteful to the people, who saw nothing to be
gained by victory, and no advantage in life, if they had to desert the
temples of their gods and the monuments of their fathers.

X. At this crisis, Themistokles, despairing of influencing the populace
by human reasoning, just as a dramatist has recourse to supernatural
machinery, produced signs and wonders and oracles. He argued that it was
a portent that the sacred snake during those days deserted his usual
haunt. The priests, who found their daily offerings to him of the first
fruits of the sacrifices left untouched, told the people, at the
instigation of Themistokles, that the goddess Athena (Minerva) had left
the city, and was leading them to the sea. He also swayed the popular
mind by the oracle, in which he argued that by "wooden walls" ships were
alluded to; and that Apollo spoke of Salamis as "divine," not terrible
or sad, because Salamis would be the cause of great good fortune to the
Greeks. Having thus gained his point, he proposed a decree, that the
city be left to the care of the tutelary goddess of the Athenians, that
all able-bodied men should embark in the ships of war, and that each man
should take the best measures in his power to save the women and
children and slaves.

When this decree was passed, most of the Athenians sent their aged folks
and women over to Troezen, where they were hospitably received by the
Troezenians, who decreed that they should be maintained at the public
expense, receiving each two obols a day, that the children should be
allowed to pick the fruit from any man's tree, and even that their
school expenses should be paid. This decree was proposed by Nikagoras.

The Athenians at this time had no public funds, yet Aristotle tells us
that the Senate of the Areopagus, by supplying each fighting man with
eight drachmas, did good service in manning the fleet; and Kleidemus
tells us that this money was obtained by an artifice of Themistokles.
When the Athenians were going down to the Peiraeus, he gave out that the
Gorgon's head had been l