safety
toward the southward. The military force of the city and a small number
of the inhabitants alone remained.

When the Persians began to draw near, a prodigy occurred in the temple,
which seemed intended to warn the profane invaders away. It seems that
there was a suit of arms, of a costly character doubtless, and highly
decorated with gold and gems--the present, probably, of some Grecian
state or king--which were hung in an inner and sacred apartment of the
temple, and which it was sacrilegious for any human hand to touch. These
arms were found, on the day when the Persians were approaching, removed
to the outward front of the temple. The priest who first observed them
was struck with amazement and awe. He spread the intelligence among the
soldiers and the people that remained, and the circumstance awakened in
them great animation and courage.

Nor were the hopes of divine interposition which this wonder awakened
disappointed in the end; for, as soon as the detachment of Persians came
near the hill on which Delphi was situated, loud thunder burst from the
sky, and a bolt, descending upon the precipices near the town, detached
two enormous masses of rock, which rolled down upon the ranks of the
invaders. The Delphian soldiers, taking advantage of the scene of panic
and confusion which this awful visitation produced, rushed down upon
their enemies and completed their discomfiture. They were led on and
assisted in this attack by the spirits of two ancient heroes, who had
been natives of the country, and to whom two of the temples of Delphi
had been consecrated. These spirits appeared in the form of tall and
full-armed warriors, who led the attack, and performed prodigies of
strength and valor in the onset upon the Persians; and then, when the
battle was over, disappeared as mysteriously as they came.

In the mean time the great body of the army of Xerxes, with the monarch
at their head, was advancing on Athens. During his advance the city had
been in a continual state of panic and confusion. In the first place,
when the Greek fleet had concluded to give up the contest in the
Artemisian Channel, before the battle of Thermopylae, and had passed
around to Salamis, the commanders in the city of Athens had given up the
hope of making any effectual defense, and had given orders that the
inhabitants should save themselves by seeking a refuge wherever they
could find it. This annunciation, of course, filled the city with