s us when we
approach the centre-point of the most memorable battlefield of
history. It was again 'the morning of a mighty day, a day of crisis'
for the destinies, not of Athens alone, but of humanity, when the
Persian fleet, after rowing all night up and down the channel
between Salamis and the shore, beheld the face of Phoebus flash
from behind Pentelicus and flood the Acropolis of Athens with fire.
The Peiraeius recalls a crisis in the world's drama whereof the great
actors were unconscious: fair winds and sunny waves bore light
hearts to Sicily. But Psyttaleia brings before us the heroism of a
handful of men, who knew that the supreme hour of ruin or of victory
for their nation and themselves had come. Terrible therefore was the
energy with which they prayed and joined their paean to the
trumpet-blast of dawn that blazed upon them from the Attic hills.
And this time Zeus, when he heard their cry, saw the scale of Hellas
mount to the stars. Let AEschylus tell the tale; for he was there. A
Persian is giving an account of the defeat of Salamis to Atossa:--

The whole disaster, O my queen, began
With some fell fiend or devil,--I know not whence:
For thus it was; from the Athenian host
A man of Hellas came to thy son, Xerxes,
Saying that when black night shall fall in gloom,
The Hellenes would no longer stay, but leap
Each on the benches of his bark, and save
Hither and thither by stolen flight their lives.
He, when he heard thereof, discerning not
The Hellene's craft, no, nor the spite of heaven,
To all his captains gives this edict forth:
When as the sun doth cease to light the world,
And darkness holds the precincts of the sky,
They should dispose the fleet in three close ranks,
To guard the outlets and the water-ways;
Others should compass Ajax' isle around:
Seeing that if the Hellenes 'scaped grim death
By finding for their ships some privy exit,
It was ordained that all should lose their heads.
So spake he, led by a mad mind astray,
Nor knew what should be by the will of heaven.
They, like well-ordered vassals, with assent
Straightway prepared their food, and every sailor
Fitted his oar-blade to the steady rowlock.
But when the sunlight waned and night apace
Descended, every man who swayed an oar
Went to the boats with him who wielded armour.
Then through the ship's length rank cheered rank in concert,
Sailing as each was set in order due:
And al