CHAPTER XXIV
THE EVACUATION OF ATHENS
It had come at last,--the hour wise men had dreaded, fools had scoffed at,cowards had dared not face. The Barbarian was within five days' march ofAttica. The Athenians must bow the knee to the world monarch or go forthexiles from their country.
In the morning after the night of terror came another courier, not thistime from Thermopylae. He bore a letter from Themistocles, who wasreturning from Euboea with the whole allied Grecian fleet. The reading ofthe letter in the Agora was the first rift in the cloud above the city.
"Be strong, prove yourselves sons of Athens. Do what a year ago you soboldly voted. Prepare to evacuate Attica. All is not lost. In three days Iwill be with you."
There was no time for an assembly at the Pnyx, but the Five Hundred andthe Areopagus council acted for the people. It was ordered to remove theentire population of Attica, with all their movable goods, across the bayto Salamis or to the friendly Peloponnesus, and that same noon the heraldswent over the land to bear the direful summons.
To Hermione, who in the calm after-years looked back on all this year ofagony and stress as on an unreal thing, one time always was stamped onmemory as no dream, but vivid, unforgetable,--these days of the greatevacuation. Up and down the pleasant plain country of the Mesogia tosouthward, to the rolling highlands beyond Pentelicus and Parnes, to theslumbering villages by Marathon, to the fertile farm-land by Eleusis, wentthe proclaimers of ill-tidings.
"Quit your homes, hasten to Athens, take with you what you can, buthasten, or stay as Xerxes's slaves."
For the next two days a piteous multitude was passing through the city. Acountry of four hundred thousand inhabitants was to be swept clean andleft naked and profitless to the invader. Under Hermione's window, as shegazed up and down the street, jostled the army of fugitives, women old andyoung, shrinking from the bustle and uproar, grandsires on their staves,boys driving the bleating goats or the patient donkeys piled high withpots and panniers, little girls tearfully hugging a pet puppy or hen. Butfew strong men were seen, for the fleet had not yet rounded Sunium to bearthe people away.
The well-loved villas and farmsteads were tenantless. They left thestanding grain, the ripening orchards, the groves of the sacred olives.Men rushed for the last time to the shrines where their fathers hadprayed,--the temples of Theseus, Olympian Zeus, Dionysus, Aphrodite. Thetombs of the worthies of old, stretching out along the Sacred Way toEleusis, where Solon, Clisthenes, Miltiades, and many another bulwark ofAthens slept, had the last votive wreath hung lovingly upon them. Andespecially men sought the great temple of the "Rock," to lift their handsto Athena Polias, and vow awful vows of how harm to the Virgin Goddessshould be wiped away in blood.
So the throng passed through the city and toward the shore, awaiting thefleet.
It came after eager watching. The whole fighting force of Athens and herCorinthian, AEginetan, and other allies. Before the rest raced a statelyship, the _Nausicaae_, her triple-oar bank flying faster than the spray.The people crowded to the water's edge when the great trireme cast off herpinnace and a well-known figure stepped therein.
"Themistocles is with us!"
He landed at Phaleron, the thousands greeted him as if he were a god. Heseemed their only hope--the Atlas upbearing all the fates of Athens. Withthe glance of his eye, with a few quick words, he chased the terrors fromthe strategi and archons that crowded up around him.
"Why distressed? Have we not held the Barbarians back nobly at Artemisium?Will we not soon sweep his power from the seas in fair battle?"
With almost a conqueror's train he swept up to the city. A last assemblyfilled the Pnyx. Themistocles had never been more hopeful, more eloquent.With one voice men voted never to bend the knee to the king. If the godsforbade them to win back their own dear country, they would go together toItaly, to found a new and better Athens far from the Persian's power. Andat Themistocles's motion they voted to recall all the political exiles,especially Themistocles's own great enemy Aristeides the Just, banished bythe son of Neocles only a few years before. The assembly dispersed--notweeping but with cheers. Already it was time to be quitting the city.Couriers told how the Tartar horsemen were burning the villages beyondParnes. The magistrates and admirals went to the house of Athena. The lastincense smoked before the image. The bucklers hanging on the temple wallwere taken down by Cimon and the other young patricians. The statue wasreverently lifted, wound in fine linen, and borne swiftly to the fleet.
"Come, _makaira_!" called Hermippus, entering his house to summon hisdaughter. Hermione sent a last glance around the disordered aula; hermother called to the bevy of pallid, whimpering maids. Cleopis was bearingPhoenix, but Hermione took him from her. Only his own mother should bearhim now. They went through the thinning Agora and took one hard look ateach familiar building and temple. When they should return to them, theinscrutable god kept hid. So to Peiraeus,--and to the rapid pinnaces whichbore them across the narrow sea to Salamis, where for the moment at leastwas peace.
All that day the boats were bearing the people, and late into the night,until the task was accomplished, the like whereof is not found in history.No Athenian who willed was left to the power of Xerxes. One brain andvoice planned and directed all. Leonidas, Ajax of the Hellenes, had beentaken. Themistocles, their Odysseus, valiant as Ajax and gifted with thecraft of the immortals, remained. Could that craft and that valour turnback the might of even the god-king of the Aryans?