On the day after the joyous one we have just witnessed he began his work as sole absolute general of the state. There was plenty of work to do. Athenian citizens had grown disheartened, and become lax in military discipline. He began by making all those who could bear arms, from boys of fifteen to men of sixty, meet every day for warlike exercise. He instituted a series of alarms, on hearing which, at any hour of the day or night, everyone seized his arms, and ran to his appointed post. Besides superintending these exercises himself, and providing that the ordinary soldiers of all classes were duly furnished with all things necessary for their duties, he raised the knights, to which order he belonged, to the highest point of excellence, making them complete in their own peculiar drill, and teaching them other exercises which he had learnt in Thrace and Persia. He obtained one hundred new triremes from the state, provided chiefly by the spoils and tribute that he had brought with him from the Asiatic cities. While half the day was taken up with the land forces and the land defences, the other half he spent on the water, attending to the drilling of the sailors and the rowers at their work. No one was ever more severe or strict in details, especially as regarded the watchfulness that he required from the sentinels, and if some of the lazier or more stubborn of his soldiers did sometimes complain among themselves, no general was ever more implicitly obeyed. Not a murmur was heard openly against his exacting, self-denying, necessary discipline through all the three months spent in this laborious business. The heart of the people seemed changed; or, rather, the old heart which had beat so firmly when Miltiades led them, was renewed within them. Their pleasures were postponed. They recognised that this was not a time to indulge themselves in their usual favourite amusements. Even the comic playwright, who made fun of everything and everyone on all occasions, grew almost serious at this time. At the end of three months Athens possessed a compact array of troops such as it had never had before. The huge fleet, with its complement of sailors, perfectly equipped, lay in the port, ready at the given signal to raise anchor and set sail. But the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries was near, and the general put off the departure of his forces till after they, with all the other citizens, had taken part in this great festival. Messengers, for the first time for years, were sent through the neighbouring states, to announce the approach of the festival, so that all might attend who wished to be present at, or take part in, the games which followed.