There were cries for Hermippus, cries even for Glaucon, as if prowess in the pentathlon gave ability to unravel oracles. The athlete sitting beside Democrates merely blushed and drew closer to his friend. Then at last the despairing people turned to their last resource.
“Themistocles, son of Neocles, speak to us!”
Thrice the call in vain; but at the fourth time a wave of silence swept across the Pnyx. A figure well beloved was taking the wreath and mounting the Bema.
The words of Themistocles that day were to ring in his hearer’s ears till life’s end. The careless, almost sybaritic, man of the Isthmus and Eleusis seemed transfigured. For one moment he stood silent, lofty, awe-inspiring. He had a mighty task: to calm the superstitious fears of thirty thousand, to silence the prophets of evil, to infuse those myriads with his own high courage. He began with a voice so low it would have seemed a whisper if not audible to all the Pnyx. Quickly he warmed. His gestures became dramatic. His voice rose to a trumpet-call. He swept his hearers with him as dry leaves before the blast. “When he [pg 71]began to weave his words, one might have deemed him churlish, nay a fool, but when from his chest came his deep voice, and words like unto flakes of winter snow, then who could with him contend?” Thus Homer of Odysseus the Guileful, thus as truly of Themistocles saviour of Hellas.
First he told the old, but never wearisome story of the past of Athens. How, from the days of Codrus long ago, Athens had never bowed the knee to an invader, how she had wrested Salamis from greedy Megara, how she had hounded out the tyrannizing sons of Peisistratus, how she had braved all the wrath of Persian Darius and dashed his huge armament back at Marathon. With such a past, only a madman as well as traitor would dream of submitting to Xerxes now. But as for the admonition of Xenagoras to quit Attica and never strike a blow, Themistocles would have none of it. With a clearness that appealed to every home-loving Hellene he pictured the fate of wanderers as only one step better than that of slaves. What, then, was left? The orator had a decisive answer. Was not the “wooden wall” which should endure for the Athenians the great fleet they were just completing? And as for the fate of the battle the speaker had an unexpected solution. “Holy Salamis,” spoke the Pythoness. And would she have said “holy,” if the issue had been only woe to the sons of Athens? “Luckless Salamis” were then more reasonably the word; yet the prophetess so far from predicting defeat had assured them victory.
Thus ran the substance of the speech on which many a soul knew hung the mending or ending of Hellas, but lit all through with gleams of wit, shades of pathos, outbursts of eloquence which burned into the hearers’ hearts as though the speaker were a god. Then at the end, Themistocles, knowing his audience was with him, delivered his peroration:—
“Let him who trusts in oracles trust then in this, and in the old prophecy of Epimenides that when the Persian comes it is to his hurt. But I will say with Hector of Troy, ‘One oracle is best—to fight for one’s native country.’ Others may vote as they will. My vote is that if the foe by land be too great, we retire before him to our ships, ay, forsake even well-loved Attica, but only that we may trust to the ‘wooden wall,’ and fight the Great King by sea at Salamis. We contend not with gods but with men. Let others fear. I will trust to Athena Polias,—the goddess terrible in battle. Hearken then to Solon the Wise (the orator pointed toward the temple upon the soaring Acropolis):—
“ ‘Our Athens need fear no hurt
Though gods may conspire her ill.
The hand that hath borne us up,