Such unshaken fidelity on the part of the Athenians to the general cause of Greece, in spite of present suffering, combined with seductive offers for the future, was the just admiration of their descendants, and the frequent theme of applause by their orators.[306] But among the contemporary Greeks it was hailed only as a relief from danger, and repaid by a selfish and ungenerous neglect. The same feeling of indifference towards all Greeks outside of their own Isthmus, which had so deeply endangered the march of affairs before the battle of Salamis, now manifested itself a second time among the Spartans and Peloponnesians. The wall across the Isthmus, which they had been so busy in constructing, and on which they had relied for protection against the land-force of Xerxes, had been intermitted and left unfinished when he retired: but it was resumed as soon as the forward march of Mardonius was anticipated. It was, however, still unfinished at the time of the embassy of the Macedonian prince to Athens, and this incomplete condition of their special defence was one reason of their alarm lest the Athenians should accept the terms proposed. That danger being for the time averted, they redoubled their exertions at the Isthmus, so that the wall was speedily brought into an adequate state of defence, and the battlements along the summit were in course of being constructed. Thus safe behind their own bulwark, they thought nothing more of their promise to join the Athenians in Bœotia, and to assist in defending Attica against Mardonius: indeed, their king Kleombrotus, who commanded the force at the Isthmus, was so terrified by an obscuration of the sun at the moment when he was sacrificing to ascertain the inclinations of the gods in reference to the coming war, that he even thought it necessary to retreat with the main force to Sparta, where he soon after died.[307] Besides these two reasons,—indifference and unfavorable omens,—which restrained the Spartans from aiding Attica, there was also a third: they were engaged in celebrating the festival of the Hyakinthia, and it was their paramount object, says the historian,[308] to fulfil “the exigences of the god.” As the Olympia and the Karneia in the preceding year, so now did the Hyakinthia, prevail over the necessities of defence, putting out of sight both the duties of fidelity towards an exposed ally, and the bond of an express promise. [306] Herodot. ix, 7. ἐπιστάμενοί τε ὅτι κερδαλεώτερόν ἐστι ὁμολογέειν τῷ Πέρσῃ μᾶλλον ἢ πολεμέειν, etc. The orators are not always satisfied with giving to Athens the credit which she really deserved: they venture to represent the Athenians as having refused these brilliant offers from Xerxes on his first invasion, instead of from Mardonius in the ensuing summer. Xerxes never made any offers to them. See Isokratês, Or. iv, Panegyric, c. 27, p. 61. [307] Herodot. ix, 10.