£. HE WOODEN WALLS OF
ALHENS,

Tue slaughter of the defenders of Thermopyle
exposed Athens to the onslaught of the vast Persian
army, which would soon be on the soil of Attica.
A few days’ march would bring the invaders to its
capital city, which they would overwhelm as a flight
of locusts destroys a cultivated field. The states of
the Peloponnesus, with a selfish regard for their own
safety, had withdrawn all their soldiers within the
peninsula, and began hastily to build a wall across
the isthmus of Corinth with the hope of keeping
back the invading army. Athens was left to care
for itself. It was thus that Greece usually let itself
be devoured piecemeal.

There was but one thing for the Athenians to do,
to obey the oracle and fly from their native soil.
In a few days the Persians would be in Athens, and
there was not an hour to lose. The old men, the
women and children, with such property as could be
moved, were hastily taken on shipboard and carried
to Salamis, Aigina, Troezen, and other neighbaring
islands. The men of fighting age took to their ships
of war, to fight on the sea for what they had lost
on land. A few of the old and the poverty-stricken
remained, and took possession of the hill of the

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