Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/142

 ]15 HISTORY OF GREECE. ingly, the gloomy predictions of his uncle Artabanus.i On the next day but one, the Athenian exiles in his suite received his cders, or perhaps obtained his permission, to go and offer sacri- fice amidst the ruins of the acropolis, and atone, if possible, for the desecration of the ground : they discovered that the sacred olive-tree neai* the chapel of Erechtheus, the special gift of the goddess Athene, though burnt to the ground by the recent flames, had already thrown out a fresh shoot of one cubit long, — at least the piety of restored Athens afterwards believed this en- couraging portent,^ as well as that which was said to have been seen by Dikseus, an Athenian companion of the Peisistratids, in the Thriasian plain. It was now the day set apart for the cele- bration of the Eleusinian mysteries ; and though in this sorrow- ful year there was no celebration, nor any Athenians in the ter- ritory, Dikaeus still fancied that he beheld the dust and heard the loud multitudinous chant, which was wont to accompany in ordi- nary times the processional march from Athens to Eleusis. He would even have revealed the fact to Xerxes himself, had not Demaratus deterred him from doing so : but he as well as He- rodotus construed it as an evidence that the goddesses them- selves were passing over from Eleusis to help the Athenians at Salamis. But whatever may have been received in after times, on that day certainly no man could believe in the speedy resurrection of conquered Athens as a free city : not even if he had witnessed the portent of the burnt olive-tree suddenly sprout- ing afresh with preternatural vigor. So hopeless did the circum- stances of the Athenians then appear, not less to their confeder- ates assembled at Salamis than to the victorious Persians. About the time of the capture of the acropolis, the Persian fleet also arrived safely in the bay of Phalerum, reinforced by ships from Karystus as well as from various islands of the Cyclades, so that Herodotus reckons it to have been as strong as before the terrible storm at Sepias Akte, — an estimate cer- tainly not admissible.3 ' Herodot. v, 102 ; viii, 53-99 : ix, 65. sdee yap KarcL to ■deoirponiov vrdaav tt/v ^Attikt/v ttjv ev Ty ijTveipoj yevea'&aL vnb Tlepaijai.
 * Herodot. viii, 55-65.
 * Herodot. viii, 66. Colonel Leake observes upcn this statement (Athens