WaybackWire

SALAMIS.—The allied fleet stays at Salamis: the Spartan admiral Eurybiades, won over by Themistocles of Athens, has decided to fight here.

Yesterday Eurybiades, holding Attica as good as lost, asked the generals where they should fight at sea. Most were for the Isthmus, fearing to be trapped on an island if beaten here. As they spoke, an Athenian brought word that the barbarians were in Attica, burning it.

Today, at the news of the acropolis, some Peloponnesian generals leapt into their ships and hoisted sail without waiting for a vote. The rest resolved to fight for the Isthmus, and at nightfall went aboard.

An Athenian, Mnesiphilus, warned Themistocles: “If they depart from Salamis, you will no longer be fighting for one country.” Themistocles went to Eurybiades’ ship and persuaded him to call the generals again.

In the council Adeimantus of Corinth rounded on him: “Themistocles, at the games those who start before the signal are beaten with rods.” Themistocles answered: “Those left behind win no crown.”

At the Isthmus, he argued, their ships, heavier and fewer, would fight in open sea; in the strait the few can engage the many. When Adeimantus said a man without a city should keep quiet, Themistocles replied that while the Athenians had their ships manned, they had a city and a land greater than the Corinthians’.

Then he turned to Eurybiades: “If you do not do this, we will immediately gather up our households and travel to Siris in Italy”.

Eurybiades changed his mind and resolved to stay and fight, chiefly, it seems, for fear that the Athenians would leave them.

TROEZEN.—Athens stands empty: most of its households are here at Troezen, the rest on Aegina and Salamis, and its men of military age are aboard the triremes.

This week the Athenians made proclamation that “every Athenian should save his children and servants as he best could”.

The honey-cake set out each month for the snake that, the Athenians say, guards the acropolis was found untouched. The priestess took it to mean that the goddess had left the citadel, and the people were all the more eager to go.

On a bill moved by Themistocles, the city was entrusted to Athena, its patroness, and all men of military age were sent aboard the ships.

Troezen has voted to keep the families at public cost: two obols a day to each, and leave for the boys to pick the vintage fruit wherever they please.

As the people embarked, the very old were left behind, and household animals ran alongside, crying after their masters. The dog of one Athenian, Xanthippus, sprang into the sea, swam the strait beside its master’s trireme and staggered out on Salamis, only to faint and die.

A second bill from Themistocles lets those sent away by ostracism come home and serve Hellas with the other citizens. The citizens want Aristides back; he was ostracised before the war.

DELPHI.—The king has burned his way south from Thermopylae through Phocis and Boeotia, and the column he sent against Delphi has been driven off.

In Phocis he sacked the cities and laid waste the countryside, and the Phocians, unable to resist, fled to the heights about Parnassus. Doris he passed through unharmed, since the Dorians are on his side. In Boeotia his army has burned Thespiae, which its people had left, and Plataea likewise.

At Panopea the army parted. One part, keeping Parnassus on its right, set out for Delphi with orders to burn the precinct of Apollo and carry off the offerings, burning the towns of the Panopeans, Daulians and Aeolidae as it went.

The Delphians asked the god whether to bury the sacred treasure or carry it away. He told them to move nothing, saying he could look after his own.

They sent their women and children overseas to Achaea; most of the men went up Parnassus and into the Corycian cave, some to Amphissa, and only sixty men and the prophet stayed.

Word from Delphi is that when the column reached the shrine of Athena Pronaea, a great thunderstorm broke with constant lightning, and huge rocks broke loose and crashed into the ranks. Many were killed; the rest fled, taking it for the work of the gods.

THE ISTHMUS OF CORINTH.—The Peloponnesians are building a wall across the Isthmus, and the work goes on day and night.

As soon as they learned that Leonidas and his men were dead, they ran together from their cities and took up position here. Their general is Cleombrotus son of Anaxandrides, brother of Leonidas.

They have broken up the Scironian road, and after resolving in council they set about the wall. Many tens of thousands are at work, bringing stones, bricks, logs and baskets of sand, and at no hour of the day or night do they rest.

Those who have marched out in full force are the Lacedaemonians and all the Arcadians, the Eleans, Corinthians, Sicyonians, Epidaurians, Phliasians, Troezenians and Hermioneans. The rest of the Peloponnesians have not come.