Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/85

 ADVICE OF THEmSTOKLES. 61 had originally been surrounded with a wooden palisade, was the refuge pointed out : but the greater number, and among them most of those who were by profession expositoi's of prophecy, maintained that the wooden wall indicated the fleet. But these professional expositors, while declaring that the god bade them go on shipboard, deprecated all idea of a naval battle, and insist- ed on the necessity of abandoning Attica forever : the last lines of the oracle, wherein it was said that Salamis would destroy the children of women, appeared to them to portend nothing but disaster in the event of a naval combat. Such was the opinion of those who passed for the best expositors of the divine will : it harmonized completely with the despairing temper then preva- lent, heightened by the terrible sentence pronounced in the first oracle ; and emigration to some, foreign land presented itself as the only hope of safety even for their persons. The fate of Athens, — and of Greece generally, which would have been helpless without Athens, — now hung upon a thread, when Themistokles, the great originator of the fleet, interposed with equal steadfastness of heart and ingenuity, to insure the proper use of it. He contended that if the god had intended to desig- nate Salamis as the scene of a naval disaster to the Greeks, that island would have been called in the ox-acle by some such epithet as " wretched Salamis : " but the fact that it was termed " divine Salamis," indicated that the parties, destined to perish there, were the enemies of Greece, not the Greeks themselves. He encouraged his countrymen, therefore, to abandon their city and country, and to trust themselves to the fleet as the wooden wall recommended by the god, but with full determination to fight and conquer on board.^ Great, indeed, were the consequences ' Herodot. vii, 143. Tavrr/ Qe/XKjTOKMovc d-0(paivo/uivov,'A'&7jvalot Tavra (T(f>i eyvuaav alperurepa elvac fiu/.Xov fj ra tuv xP^^H'O^oyuv, oi ova eIuv vavfiaxirji' upTieo'&aL, dAAa SKAcnovrag X'^PV'" t^" 'A.ttlk7jv, alljjv rivd, o'lKi^eiv. There is every reason to accept the statement of Herodotus as true, re- specting these oracles delivered to the Athenians, and the debated interpre- tation of them. They must have been discussed publicly in the Athenian assembly, and Herodotus may well have conversed with persons who had heard the discussion. Kespecting the other oracle which he states to have been delivered to the Spartans, — intimating that either Sparta