Meanwhile Themistoklês and the Athenian seamen landed at Phalêrum, and made their mournful entry into Athens. Gloomy as the prospect appeared, there was little room for difference of opinion,[213] and still less room for delay. The authorities and the public assembly at once issued a proclamation, enjoining every Athenian to remove his family out of the country in the best way he could. We may conceive the state of tumult and terror which followed on this unexpected proclamation, when we reflect that it had to be circulated and acted upon throughout all Attica, from Sunium to Orôpus, within the narrow space of less than six days; for no longer interval elapsed before Xerxes actually arrived at Athens, where indeed he might have arrived even sooner.[214] The whole Grecian fleet was doubtless employed in carrying out the helpless exiles; mostly to Trœzen, where a kind reception and generous support were provided for them (the Trœzenian population being seemingly semi-Ionic, and having ancient relations of religion as well as of traffic with Athens),—but in part also to Ægina: there were, however, many who could not, or would not, go father than Salamis. Themistoklês impressed upon the sufferers that they were only obeying the oracle, which had directed them to abandon the city and to take refuge behind the wooden walls; and either his policy, or the mental depression of the time, gave circulation to other stories, intimating that even the divine inmates of the acropolis were for a while deserting it. In the ancient temple of Athênê Polias on that rock, there dwelt, or was believed to dwell, as guardian to the sanctuary and familiar attendant of the goddess, a sacred serpent, for whose nourishment a honey-cake was placed once in the month. The honey-cake had been hitherto regularly consumed; but at this fatal moment the priestess announced that it remained untouched: the sacred guardian had thus set the example of quitting the acropolis, and it behooved the citizens to follow the example, confiding in the goddess herself for future return and restitution. The migration of so many ancient men, women, and children, was a scene of tears and misery inferior only to that which would have ensued on the actual capture of the city.[215] Some few individuals, too poor to hope for maintenance, or too old to care for life, elsewhere,—confiding, moreover, in their own interpretation[216] of the wooden wall which the Pythian priestess had pronounced to be inexpugnable,—shut themselves up in the acropolis along with the administrators of the temple, obstructing the entrance or western front with wooden doors and palisades.[217] When we read how great were the sufferings of the population of Attica near half a century afterwards, compressed for refuge within the spacious fortifications of Athens at the first outbreak of the Peloponnesian war,[218] we may form some faint idea of the incalculably greater misery which