Beyond Psyttaleia and overlapping it is the long spit of land Cynosura (“Dog’s-tail”), like in name and shape to the promontory at Marathon. The result of the contest in this narrow channel is not so surprising as is the foresight of Themistocles and the courage of the Greeks in availing themselves with irresistible daring of the overconfidence of Xerxes. Æschylus’s account betrays the vivid memories of an actual eye-witness. The vessels took position by night. Across the desolated plain of Attica the new Day, “by white steeds drawn, her radiance fair to see, held all the land.” To the astonishment of the Persians, the Greeks, instead of fleeing, raised high their shout of happy omen, and Echo, mate of dance-loving Pan, “back from the island rock returned a shrill and pealing cry of joy.” The Persian messenger continues:— “Fell fear on all of us barbarians, deceived In expectation. For the Greeks a noble hymn Were singing, not as though in flight, but like to men Starting for battle with courageous heart. And then The trumpet’s blare set all of them aflame. Therewith The even dash of oar-blades, at the word, bit deep The brine and quickly all of them were visible. The right wing in good order first led forth, and next Came out and on the armament entire. Aye then, As they came onward, loud the cry that reached our ears: ‘Sons of the Hellenes! On! Set free your native land! Your children free, your wives, ancestral shrines of gods And tombs of fathers’ fathers! Now for all we strive!’” The “jargon” of the Persian host rolled back reply. A Greek ship was the first to grapple. Bronze beak smote beak. Triremes turned keel uppermost,— “Until the water was no longer to be seen, With wreckage of slain men and splintered vessels packed. The corpses beached. They filled the ridges and the shores.” Whether dead or alive the Persians found no refuge upon land. Aristides with his men, instead of the picked Persians, was now on Psyttaleia to save or to destroy. The chorus of Persian women, as they hear the news, imagine their dead now floating with the tide, now, like struggling swimmers, rising to the waves. The leader cries:— “Woe, woe is me! Our dear ones lost, By the sea’s swell tossed Their bodies, borne along the main, Rise and dip, and rise again!” It was not unnatural that the ineffaceable memory of the sea covered with wreckage and the dead should reappear, when Æschylus, in the “Agamemnon,” describes the morning after the storm that wrecked the ships returning from Troy:— “When rose the brilliant light of Helios, we see Th’ Ægean, spread out far and wide, a-blossoming With wrecks of ships and corpses of Achæan men.”