He declared that the Athenian part of the fleet would never go
to the isthmus. If the others decided on going there, they, the
Athenians, would gather all the fugitives they could from the island of
Salamis and from the coasts of Attica, and make the best of their way to
Italy, where there was a territory to which they had some claim, and,
abandoning Greece forever, they would found a new kingdom there.

Eurybiades, the commander-in-chief, if he was not convinced by the
arguments that Themistocles had offered, was alarmed at his declaration
that the Athenian ships would abandon the cause of the Greeks if the
fleet abandoned Salamis; he accordingly gave his voice very decidedly
for remaining where they were. The rest of the officers finally
acquiesced in this decision, and the council broke up, the various
members of it returning each to his own command. It was now nearly
morning. The whole fleet had been, necessarily, during the night in a
state of great excitement and suspense, all anxious to learn the result
of these deliberations. The awe and solemnity which would, of course,
pervade the minds of men at midnight, while such momentous questions
were pending, were changed to an appalling sense of terror, toward the
dawn, by an earthquake which then took place, and which, as is usually
the case with such convulsions, not only shook the land, but was felt by
vessels on the sea. The men considered this phenomenon as a solemn
warning from heaven, and measures were immediately adopted for
appeasing, by certain special sacrifices and ceremonies, the divine
displeasure which the shock seemed to portend.

In the mean time, the Persian fleet, which we left, it will be
recollected, in the channels between Euboea and the main land, near to
Thermopylae, had advanced when they found that the Greeks had left those
waters, and, following their enemies to the southward through the
channel called the Euripus, had doubled the promontory called Sunium,
which is the southern promontory of Attica, and then, moving northward
again along the western coast of Attica, had approached Phalerum, which
was not far from Salamis. Xerxes, having concluded his operations at
Athens, advanced to the same point by land.

The final and complete success of the Persian expedition seemed now
almost sure. All the country north of the peninsula had fallen. The
Greek army had retreated to the isthmus, having been driven from every
other post, and its last for