he men should be
conducted through all his encampments, and be allowed to view and
examine every thing. He then dismissed them, with orders to return to
Greece and report what they had seen. He thought, he said, that the
Greeks would be more likely to surrender if they knew how immense his
preparations were for effectually vanquishing them if they attempted
resistance.

The city of Athens, being farther north than Sparta, would be the one
first exposed to danger from the invasion, and when the people heard of
Xerxes's approach, the whole city was filled with anxiety and alarm.
Some of the inhabitants were panic-stricken, and wished to submit;
others were enraged, and uttered nothing but threats and defiance. A
thousand different plans of defense were proposed and eagerly
discussed. At length the government sent messengers to the oracle at
Delphi, to learn what their destiny was to be, and to obtain, if
possible, divine direction in respect to the best mode of averting the
danger. The messengers received an awful response, portending, in wild
and solemn, though dark and mysterious language, the most dreadful
calamities to the ill-fated city. The messengers were filled with alarm
at hearing this reply. One of the inhabitants of Delphi, the city in
which the oracle was situated, proposed to them to make a second
application, in the character of the most humble supplicants, and to
implore that the oracle would give them some directions in respect to
the best course for them to pursue in order to avoid, or, at least, to
mitigate the impending danger. They did so, and after a time they
received an answer, vague, mysterious, and almost unintelligible, but
which seemed to denote that the safety of the city was connected in some
manner with Salamis, and with certain "wooden walls," to which the
inspired distich of the response obscurely alluded.

The messengers returned to Athens and reported the answer which they had
received. The people were puzzled and perplexed in their attempts to
understand it. It seems that the citadel of Athens had been formerly
surrounded by a wooden palisade. Some thought that this was what was
referred to by the "wooden walls," and that the meaning of the oracle
was that they must rebuild the palisade, and then retreat to the citadel
when the Persians should approach, and defend themselves there.

Others conceived that the phrase referred to ships, and that the oracle
meant to direct them to meet t