(M432) Meanwhile, the Athenians, fully alive to their danger, strained every nerve to make preparations to resist the enemy; fortunately, there was in the treasury a large sum derived from the Lamian mines, and this they applied, on the urgent representations of Themistocles, to building ships and refitting their navy. A Panhellenic congress, under the presidency of Athens and Sparta, assembled at the Isthmus of Corinth.—the first great league since the Trojan war. The representatives of the various States buried their dissensions, the most prominent of which were between Athens and Ægina. In reconciling these feuds, Themistocles took a pre-eminent part. Indeed, there was need, for the political existence of Hellas was threatened, and despair was seen in most every city. Even the Delphic oracle gave out replies discouraging and terrible; intimating, however, that the safety of Athens lay in the wooden wall, which, with extraordinary tact, was interpreted by Themistocles to mean that the true defense lay in the navy. Salamis was the place designated by the oracle for the retreat, which was now imperative, and thither the Athenians fled, with their wives and children, guarded by their fleet. It was decided by the congress that Sparta should command the land forces, and Athens the united navy of the Greeks; but many States, in deadly fear of the Persians, persisted in neutrality, among which were Argos, Cretes, Corcyra. The chief glory of the defense lay with Sparta and Athens. The united army was sent into Thessaly to defend the defile of Tempe, but discovering that they were unable to do this, since another pass over Mount Olympus was open in the summer, they retreated to the isthmus of Corinth, and left all Greece north of Mount Citheron and the Megarid territory without defense. Had the Greeks been able to maintain the passes of Olympus and Ossa, all the northern States would probably have joined in the confederation against Persia; but, as they were left defenseless, we can not wonder that they submitted, including even the Achæans, Borotians, and Dorians. (M433) The Pass of Thermopylæ was now fixed upon as the most convenient place of resistance, next to the vale of Tempe. Here the main land was separated from the island of Eubœa by a narrow strait two miles wide. On the northern part of the island, near the town of Histiæa, the coast was called Artemisium, and here the fleet was mustered, to co-operate with the land forces, and oppose, in a narrow strait, the progress of the Persian fleet. The defile of Thermopylæ itself, at the south of Thessaly, was between Mount Œta and an impassable morass on the Maliac Gulf. Nature had thus provided a double position of defense—a narrow defile on the land, and a narrow strait on the water, through which the army and the fleet must need pass if they would co-operate.