r the
chairman's stand, never answering the call he rejoiced of wont to hear.

There were cries for Hermippus, cries even for Glaucon, as if prowess in
the pentathlon gave ability to unravel oracles. The athlete sitting beside
Democrates merely blushed and drew closer to his friend. Then at last the
despairing people turned to their last resource.

"Themistocles, son of Neocles, speak to us!"

Thrice the call in vain; but at the fourth time a wave of silence swept
across the Pnyx. A figure well beloved was taking the wreath and mounting
the Bema.

The words of Themistocles that day were to ring in his hearer's ears till
life's end. The careless, almost sybaritic, man of the Isthmus and Eleusis
seemed transfigured. For one moment he stood silent, lofty, awe-inspiring.
He had a mighty task: to calm the superstitious fears of thirty thousand,
to silence the prophets of evil, to infuse those myriads with his own high
courage. He began with a voice so low it would have seemed a whisper if
not audible to all the Pnyx. Quickly he warmed. His gestures became
dramatic. His voice rose to a trumpet-call. He swept his hearers with him
as dry leaves before the blast. "When he began to weave his words, one
might have deemed him churlish, nay a fool, but when from his chest came
his deep voice, and words like unto flakes of winter snow, then who could
with him contend?" Thus Homer of Odysseus the Guileful, thus as truly of
Themistocles saviour of Hellas.

First he told the old, but never wearisome story of the past of Athens.
How, from the days of Codrus long ago, Athens had never bowed the knee to
an invader, how she had wrested Salamis from greedy Megara, how she had
hounded out the tyrannizing sons of Peisistratus, how she had braved all
the wrath of Persian Darius and dashed his huge armament back at Marathon.
With such a past, only a madman as well as traitor would dream of
submitting to Xerxes now. But as for the admonition of Xenagoras to quit
Attica and never strike a blow, Themistocles would have none of it. With a
clearness that appealed to every home-loving Hellene he pictured the fate
of wanderers as only one step better than that of slaves. What, then, was
left? The orator had a decisive answer. Was not the "wooden wall" which
should endure for the Athenians the great fleet they were just completing?
And as for the fate of the battle the speaker had an unexpected solution.
"Holy Salamis," spoke the Pythoness. And woul