Under these circumstances, the Greek leaders—and Themistocles, as it seems, among them—determined that they could no longer venture to hold the position of Artemisium, but must withdraw the naval force farther into Greece: though this was in fact a surrender of the pass of Thermopylæ, and though the removal which the Eubœans were hastening was still unfinished. These unfortunate men were forced to be satisfied with the promise of Themistocles to give them convoy for their boats and their persons; abandoning their sheep and cattle for the consumption of the fleet, as better than leaving them to become booty for the enemy. While the Greeks were thus employed in organising their retreat, they received news which rendered retreat doubly necessary. The Athenian Abronychus, stationed with his ship near Thermopylæ, in order to keep up communication between the army and fleet, brought the disastrous intelligence that Xerxes was already master of the pass, and that the division of Leonidas was either destroyed or in flight. Upon this the fleet abandoned Artemisium forthwith, and sailed up the Eubœan strait; the Corinthian ships in the van, the Athenians bringing up the rear. Themistocles, conducting the latter, stayed long enough at the various watering-stations and landing-places to inscribe on some neighbouring stones invitations to the Ionian contingents serving under Xerxes: whereby the latter were conjured not to serve against their fathers, but to desert, if possible—or at least, to fight as little and as backwardly as they could. Themistocles hoped by this stratagem perhaps to detach some of the Ionians from the Persian side, or, at any rate, to render them objects of mistrust, and thus to diminish their efficiency. With no longer delay than was requisite for such inscriptions, he followed the remaining fleet, which sailed round the coast of Attica, not stopping until it reached the island of Salamis.
The news of the retreat of the Greek fleet was speedily conveyed by a citizen of Histiæa to the Persians at Aphetæ, who at first disbelieved it, and detained the messenger until they had sent to ascertain the fact. On the next day, their fleet passed across to the north of Eubœa, and became master of Histiæa and the neighbouring territory: from whence many of them, by permission and even invitation of Xerxes, crossed over to Thermopylæ to survey the field of battle and the dead. Respecting the number of the dead, Xerxes is asserted to have deliberately imposed upon the spectators: he buried all his own dead, except one thousand, whose bodies were left out—while the total number of Greeks who had perished at Thermopylæ, four thousand in number, were all left exposed, and in one heap, so as to create an impression that their loss had been much more severe than their own. Moreover, the bodies of the slain helots were included in the heap, all of them passing for Spartans or Thespians in the estimation of the spectators. We are not surprised to hear, however, that this trick, gross and public as it must have been, really deceived very few.
The sentiment, alike durable and unanimous, with which the Greeks of after-times looked back on the battle of Thermopylæ, and which they have communicated to all subsequent readers, was that of just admiration for the courage and patriotism of Leonidas and his band. But among the contemporary Greeks that sentiment, though doubtless sincerely felt, was by no means predominant: it was overpowered by the more pressing emotions of disappointment and terror. So confident were the Spartans and Peloponnesians in the defensibility of Thermopylæ and Artemisium, that when the news of the disaster reached them, not a single soldier had yet been put in motion: the season of the festival games had passed, but no active step had yet been taken. Meanwhile the invading force, army, and fleet, was in its progress towards Attica and the Peloponnesus, without the least preparations—and, what was still worse, without any combined and concerted plan—for defending the heart of Greece. The loss sustained by Xerxes at Thermopylæ, insignificant in proportion to his vast total, was more than compensated by the fresh Grecian auxiliaries which he now acquired. Not merely the Malians, Locrians, and Dorians, but also the great mass of the Bœotians, with their chief town Thebes, all except Thespiæ and Platæa, now joined him. Demaratus, his Spartan companion, moved forward to Thebes to renew an ancient tie of hospitality with the Theban oligarchical leader, Attaginus, while small garrisons were sent by Alexander of Macedon to most of the Bœotian towns, as well to protect them from plunder as to insure their fidelity. The Thespians, on the other hand, abandoned their city, and fled into the Peloponnesus; while the Platæans, who had been serving aboard the Athenian ships at Artemisium, were disembarked at Chalcis as the fleet retreated, for the purpose of marching by land to their city, and removing their families. Nor was it only the land-force of Xerxes which had been thus strengthened; his fleet also had received some accessions from Carystus in Eubœa, and from several of the Cyclades—so that the losses sustained by the storm at Sepias and the fights at Artemisium, if not wholly made up, were at least in part repaired, while the fleet remained still prodigiously superior in number to that of the Greeks.
At the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, near fifty years after these events, the Corinthian envoys reminded Sparta that she had allowed Xerxes time to arrive from the extremity of the earth at the threshold of the Peloponnesus, before she took any adequate precautions against him; a reproach true almost to the letter. It was only when roused and terrified by the news of the death of Leonidas, that the Lacedæmonians and the other Peloponnesians began to put forth their full strength. But it was then too late to perform the promise made to Athens, of taking up a position in Bœotia so as to protect Attica. To defend the isthmus of Corinth was all that they now thought of, and seemingly all that was now open to them: thither they rushed with all their available population under the conduct of Cleombrotus, king of Sparta (brother of Leonidas), and began to draw fortifications across it, as well as to break up the Scironian road from Megara to Corinth, with every mark of anxious energy. The Lacedæmonians, Arcadians, Eleans, Corinthians, Sicyonians, Epidaurians, Phliasians, Trœzenians, and Hermionians, were all present here in full numbers; many myriads of men (bodies of ten thousand each) working and bringing materials night and day. As a defence to themselves against attack by land, this was an excellent position: they considered it as their last chance, abandoning all hope of successful resistance at sea. But they forgot that a fortified isthmus was no protection even to themselves against the navy of Xerxes, while it professedly threw out not only Attica, but also Megara and Ægina. And thus rose a new peril to Greece from the loss of Thermopylæ: no other position could be found which, like that memorable strait, comprehended and protected at once all the separate cities. The disunion thus produced brought them within a hair’s breadth of ruin.
ATHENS ABANDONED
If the causes of alarm were great for the Peloponnesians, yet more desperate did the position of the Athenians appear. Expecting, according to agreement, to find a Peloponnesian army in Bœotia ready to sustain Leonidas, or at any rate to co-operate in the defence of Attica, they had taken no measures to remove their families or property: but they saw with indignant disappointment as well as dismay, on retreating from Artemisium, that the conqueror was in full march from Thermopylæ, that the road to Attica was open to him, and that the Peloponnesians were absorbed exclusively in the defence of their own isthmus and their own separate existence. The fleet from Artemisium had been directed to muster at the harbour of Trœzen, there to await such reinforcements as could be got together: but the Athenians entreated Eurybiades to halt at Salamis, so as to allow them a short time for consultation in the critical state of their affairs, and to aid them in the transport of their families. While Eurybiades was thus staying at Salamis, several new ships which had reached Trœzen came over to join him; and in this way Salamis became for a time the naval station of the Greeks, without any deliberate intention beforehand.
Meanwhile Themistocles and the Athenian seamen landed at Phalerum, and made their mournful entry into Athens. Gloomy as the prospect appeared, there was little room for difference of opinion, and still less room for delay. The authorities and the public assembly at once issued a proclamation, enjoining every Athenian to remove his family out of the country in the best way he could. We may conceive the state of tumult and terror which followed on this unexpected proclamation, when we reflect that it had to be circulated and acted upon throughout all Attica, from Sunium to Oropus, within the narrow space of less than six days; for no longer interval elapsed before Xerxes actually arrived at Athens, where indeed he might have arrived even sooner.
The whole Grecian fleet was doubtless employed in carrying out the helpless exiles; mostly to Trœzen, where a kind reception and generous support were provided for them,—the Trœzenian population being seemingly semi-Ionic, and having ancient relations of religion as well as of traffic with Athens,—but in part also to Ægina: there were, however, many who could not, or would not, go farther than Salamis. Themistocles impressed upon the sufferers that they were only obeying the oracle, which had directed them to abandon the city and to take refuge behind the wooden walls; and either his policy, or the mental depression of the time, gave circulation to other stories, intimating that even the divine inmates of the Acropolis were for a while deserting it. In the ancient temple of Athene Polias on that rock, there dwelt, or was believed to dwell, as guardian to the sanctuary and familiar attendant of the goddess, a sacred serpent, for whose nourishment a honey cake was placed once in the month. The honey cake had been hitherto regularly consumed; but at this fatal moment the priestess announced that it remained untouched: the sacred guardian had thus set the example of quitting the acropolis, and it behooved the citizens to follow the example, confiding in the goddess herself for future return and restitution.
The migration of so many ancient men, women, and children, was a scene of tears and misery inferior only to that which would have ensued on the actual capture of the city.[31] Some few individuals, too poor to hope for maintenance, or too old to care for life elsewhere,—confiding, moreover, in their own interpretation of the wooden wall which the Pythian priestess had pronounced to be inexpugnable,—shut themselves up in the Acropolis along with the administrators of the temple, obstructing the entrance or western front with wooden doors and palisades. When we read how great were the sufferings of the population of Attica near half a century afterwards, compressed for refuge within the spacious fortifications of Athens at the first outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, we may form some faint idea of the incalculably greater misery which overwhelmed an emigrant population, hurrying, they knew not whither, to escape the long arm of Xerxes. Little chance did there seem that they would ever revisit their homes except as his slaves.
In the midst of circumstances thus calamitous and threatening, neither the warriors nor the leaders of Athens lost their energy—arm as well as mind was strung to the loftiest pitch of human resolution. Political dissensions were suspended: Themistocles proposed to the people a decree, and obtained their sanction, inviting home all who were under sentence of temporary banishment: moreover, he not only included but even specially designated among them his own great opponent Aristides, now in the third year of ostracism. Xanthippus the accuser, and Cimon, the son of Miltiades, were partners in the same emigration: the latter, enrolled by his scale of fortune among the horsemen of the state, was seen with his companions cheerfully marching through the Ceramicus to dedicate their bridles in the Acropolis, and to bring away in exchange some of the sacred arms there suspended, thus setting an example of ready service on shipboard, instead of on horseback. It was absolutely essential to obtain supplies of money, partly for the aid of the poorer exiles, but still more for the equipment of the fleet; there were no funds in the public treasury—but the senate of Areopagus, then composed in large proportion of men from the wealthier classes, put forth all its public authority as well as its private contributions and example to others, and thus succeeded in raising the sum of eight drachmæ for every soldier serving.