galleys, and meet with the Persians at a great distance from
Greece.

When the contingents met at the straits of Artemisium, the Greeks would
have the Lacedaemonians to command, and Eurybiades to be their admiral;
but the Athenians, who surpassed all the rest together in number of
vessels, would not submit to come after any other, till Themistocles,
perceiving the danger of this contest, yielded his own command to
Eurybiades, and got the Athenians to submit, persuading them that if in
this war they behaved themselves like men, he would answer for it after
that, that the Greeks, of their own will, would submit to their command.

Though the fights between the Greeks and Persians in the straits of
Euboea were not so important as to make any final decision of the
war, yet the experience which the Greeks obtained in them was of great
advantage; for thus, by actual trial and in real danger, they found
out, that neither number of ships, or riches and ornaments, nor boasting
shouts, nor barbarous songs of victory, were any way terrible to men
that knew how to fight, and were resolved to come hand to hand with
their enemies. This, Pindar appears to have seen, and says justly enough
of the fight at Artemisium, that

There the sons of Athens set
The stone that freedom stands on yet.

For the first step towards victory undoubtedly is to gain courage.
Artemisium is in Euboea, beyond the city of Histiaea, a sea-beach open
to the north; there is small temple there, dedicated to Diana, surnamed
of the Dawn, and trees about it, around which again stand pillars of
white marble; and if rub them with your hand, they send forth both the
smell and color of saffron.

But when news came from Thermopylae to Artemisium, informing that that
king Leonidas was slain, and that Xerxes had made himself master of
all the passages by land, they returned back to the interior of Greece.
Xerxes had already passed through Doris and invaded the country of
Phocis, and was burning and destroying the cities of the Phocians, yet
the Greeks sent them no relief; and, though the Athenians earnestly
desired them to meet the Persians in Boeotia, before they could come
into Attica, as they themselves had come forward by sea at Artemisium,
they gave no ear to their request, being wholly intent upon
Peloponnesus, and resolved to gather all their forces together within
the Isthmus, and to build a wall from sea to sea in that narrow neck of
land; so that t