In these
inscriptions he besought the Ionians, if possible, to come over to the
Athenians, who were their fathers, and who were fighting for their
liberty; and if they could not do this, to throw the barbarian army into
confusion during battle. He hoped that these writings would either bring
the Ionians over to the side of the Greeks, or make them suspected of
treason by the Persians.
Meanwhile Xerxes invaded Greece through Doris, and came into Phokis,
where he burned the city of the Phokaeans. The Greeks made no
resistance, although the Athenians begged them to make a stand in
Boeotia, and cover Attica, urging that they had fought in defence of the
whole of Greece at Artemisium. However, as no one would listen to them,
but all the rest of the Greeks determined to defend the Peloponnesus,
and were collecting all their forces within it, and building a wall
across the Isthmus from sea to sea, the Athenians were enraged at their
treachery, and disheartened at being thus abandoned to their fate. They
had no thoughts of resisting so enormous an army; and the only thing
they could do under the circumstances, to abandon their city and trust
to their ships, was distasteful to the people, who saw nothing to be
gained by victory, and no advantage in life, if they had to desert the
temples of their gods and the monuments of their fathers.
X. At this crisis, Themistokles, despairing of influencing the populace
by human reasoning, just as a dramatist has recourse to supernatural
machinery, produced signs and wonders and oracles.
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