mus of Corinth with the
hope of keeping back the invading army. Athens was left to care for
itself. It was thus that Greece usually let itself be devoured
piecemeal.

There was but one thing for the Athenians to do, to obey the oracle and
fly from their native soil. In a few days the Persians would be in
Athens, and there was not an hour to lose. The old men, the women and
children, with such property as could be moved, were hastily taken on
shipboard and carried to Salamis, AEgina, Troezen, and other
neighboring islands. The men of fighting age took to their ships of war,
to fight on the sea for what they had lost on land. A few of the old and
the poverty-stricken remained, and took possession of the hill of the
Acropolis, whose wooden fence they fondly fancied might be the wooden
wall which the oracle had meant. Apart from these few the city was
deserted, and Athens had embarked upon the seas. Not only Athens, but
all Attica, was left desolate, and in the whole state Xerxes made only
five hundred prisoners of war.

Onward came the great Persian host, destroying all that could be
destroyed on Attic soil, and sending out detachments to ravage other
parts of Greece. The towns that submitted were spared. Those that
resisted, or whose inhabitants fled, were pillaged and burnt. A body of
troops was sent to plunder Delphi, the reputed great wealth of whose
temple promised a rich reward. The story of what happened there is a
curious one, and well worth relating.

The frightened Delphians prepared to fly, but first asked the oracle of
Apollo whether they should take with them the sacred treasures or bury
them in secret places. The oracle bade them not to touch these
treasures, saying that the god would protect his own. With this
admonition the people of Delphi fled, sixty only of their number
remaining to guard the holy shrine.

These faithful few were soon encouraged by a prodigy. The sacred arms,
kept in the temple's inmost cell, and which no mortal hand dared touch,
were seen lying before the temple door, as if Apollo was prepared
himself to use them. As the Persians advanced by a rugged path under the
steep cliffs of Mount Parnassus, and reached the temple of Athene
Pronaea, a dreadful peal of thunder rolled above their affrighted heads,
and two great crags, torn from the mountain's flank, came rushing down
with deafening sound, and buried many of them beneath their weight. At
the same time, from the temple of Athene,