was awakened--the
persuasions of Themistocles prevailed--even the women loudly declared
their willingness to abandon Athens for the sake of the Athenians; and
it was formally decreed that the city should be left to the guardianship
of Minerva, and the citizens should save themselves, their women,
children, and slaves, as their own discretion might suggest. Most of
them took refuge in Troezene, where they were generously supported at
the public expense--some at Aegina--others repaired to Salamis.

A moving and pathetic spectacle was that of the embarcation of the
Athenians for the Isle of Salamis. Separated from their children,
their wives (who were sent to remoter places of safety)--abandoning
their homes and altars--the citadel of Minerva--the monuments of
Marathon--they set out for a scene of contest (B. C. 480), perilous
and precarious, and no longer on the site of their beloved and
father-land. Their grief was heightened by the necessity of leaving
many behind, whose extreme age rendered them yet more venerable, while
it incapacitated their removal. Even the dumb animals excited all the
fond domestic associations, running to the strand, and expressing by
their cries their regret for the hands that fed them: one of them, a
dog, that belonged to Xanthippus, father of Pericles, is said to have
followed the ships, and swam to Salamis, to die, spent with toil, upon
the sands.

VIII. The fleet now assembled at Salamis; the Spartans contributed
only sixteen vessels, the people of Aegina thirty--swift galleys and
well equipped; the Athenians one hundred and eighty; the whole navy,
according to Herodotus, consisted of three hundred and seventy-eight
[78] ships, besides an inconsiderable number of vessels of fifty oars.

Eurybiades still retained the chief command. A council of war was
held. The greater number of the more influential allies were composed
of Peloponnesians, and, with the countenance of the Spartan chief, it
was proposed to retire from Salamis and fix the station in the isthmus
near the land-forces of Peloponnesus. This was highly consonant to
the interested policy of the Peloponnesian states, and especially to
that of Sparta; Attica was considered already lost, and the fate of
that territory they were therefore indisposed to consider. While the
debate was yet pending, a messenger arrived from Athens with the
intelligence that the barbarian, having reduced to ashes the allied
cities of Thespiae and