Vessels of commerce or war would double it, bound from Athens to the Ægean or to Ionia, and grain transports sailing to Athens from the Euxine. The Persian warships backing out from the inhospitable bay of Marathon “sailed around Sunium, making haste to anticipate the Athenians in arriving at the city.” The vessel of Theseus sailed past it bringing back safe from Crete the Athenian youths and maidens, and, in after days, the look-out, posted at Sunium, hastened back to Athens to say that the mission-ship from Delos had been sighted and was beating its way up the Saronic gulf to put an end, on its arrival, at once to the sacred holiday and to the life of Socrates. On the west coast of Attica the place of chief interest, in connection with Greek letters, is Vari, near the promontory of Zoster, where Mount Hymettus comes down to the sea. Herodotus tells us that the frightened Persians, escaping from Salamis, thought that the long rocks running out at Zoster were some more hostile ships and “went fleeing for a long distance” until they recognised their mistake. Some little distance inland on the side of Hymettus, back of the town of Vari, is a grotto dedicated to the Nymphs and also sacred to the Graces, to Pan, and to Apollo. There is a tradition that the infant Plato was taken to Hymettus by his parents, who there sacrificed on his behalf to Pan, the Nymphs and Apollo. The straits which interrupt the continuity of Mount Ægaleus with Salamis could not avail to dissever the island from Attica. The northwestern promontory, indeed, comes even closer to the outjutting Nisæan peninsula of the Megarid, and it was inevitable that Megara and Athens should contend for this “island of desire.” The energy of Solon at the beginning of the sixth century adjudicated the dispute with finality, and Salamis was permanently incorporated as an essential part of Attica. To a seafaring folk triremes and sailing craft could annul the interrupting sea, and the mainland and island were still more firmly cemented by the blood of Persian and Greek at the great sea-fight.