HOW THE SPARTANS DIED AT THERMOPYLE. 147

women! Did not this portend disaster in case of a
naval battle ?

The fate of Athens now hung upon a thread.
Had its people fiown to a distant land one of the
greatest chapters in the history of the world would
never have been written. But now Themistocles, to
whom Athens owed its fleet, came forward as its
savior. Ifthe oracle, he declared, had meant that the
Greeks should be destroyed, it would have called Sala-
mis, where the battle was to be fought, “ wretched
Salamis.” But it had said “divine Salamis.” What
did this mean but that it was not the Greeks, but the
enemies of Greece, who were to be destroyed? He
begged his countrymen not to desert their country,
but to fight boldly for its safety. Fortunately for
Athens his solution of the riddle was accepted, and
the city set itself diligently to building more ships,
that they might have as powerful a fleet as possible
when the Persians came,

But not only Athens was to be defended; all
Greece was in peril; the invaders must be met by
land as well as by sea. Greece is traversed by moun-
tain ranges, which cross from sea to sea, leaving only
difficult mountain paths and narrow seaside passes.
One of these was the long and winding defile to
Tempé, between Mounts Olympus and Ossa, on the
northern boundary of Greece. There a few men
could keep back a numerous host, and thither at first
marched the small army which dared to oppose the
Persian millions, a little band of ten thousand men,
under the command of a Spartan general.

But they did not remain there. The Persians