The expressions ἔμπροσθε πρὸ τῆς ἀκροπόλιος appear to refer to the position of the Persian army, who would naturally occupy the northern and western fronts of the acropolis: since they reached Athens from the north,—and the western side furnished the only regular access. The hill called Areopagus would thus be nearly in the centre of their position. Forchhammer explains these expressions unsatisfactorily. [234] Herodot. viii, 52, 53. [235] Herodot. i, 84. Thus was divine prophecy fulfilled: Attica passed entirely into the hands of the Persians, and the conflagration of Sardis was retaliated upon the home and citadel of its captors, as it also was upon their sacred temple of Eleusis. Xerxes immediately despatched to Susa intelligence of the fact, which is said to have excited unmeasured demonstrations of joy, confuting, seemingly, the gloomy predictions of his uncle Artabanus.[236] On the next day but one, the Athenian exiles in his suite received his orders, or perhaps obtained his permission, to go and offer sacrifice amidst the ruins of the acropolis, and atone, if possible, for the desecration of the ground: they discovered that the sacred olive-tree near the chapel of Erechtheus, the special gift of the goddess Athênê, though burnt to the ground by the recent flames, had already thrown out a fresh shoot of one cubit long,—at least the piety of restored Athens afterwards believed this encouraging portent,[237] as well as that which was said to have been seen by Dikæus, an Athenian companion of the Peisistratids, in the Thriasian plain. It was now the day set apart for the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries; and though in this sorrowful year there was no celebration, nor any Athenians in the territory, Dikæus still fancied that he beheld the dust and heard the loud multitudinous chant, which was wont to accompany in ordinary times the processional march from Athens to Eleusis. He would even have revealed the fact to Xerxes himself, had not Demaratus deterred him from doing so: but he as well as Herodotus construed it as an evidence that the goddesses themselves were passing over from Eleusis to help the Athenians at Salamis. But whatever may have been received in after times, on that day certainly no man could believe in the speedy resurrection of conquered Athens as a free city: not even if he had witnessed the portent of the burnt olive-tree suddenly sprouting afresh with preternatural vigor. So hopeless did the circumstances of the Athenians then appear, not less to their confederates assembled at Salamis than to the victorious Persians. [236] Herodot. v, 102; viii, 53-99; ix, 65. ἔδεε γὰρ κατὰ τὸ θεοπρόπιον πᾶσαν τὴν Ἀττικὴν τὴν ἐν τῇ ἠπείρῳ γενέσθαι ὑπὸ Πέρσῃσι. [237] Herodot. viii, 55-65.