But the belief in Heroes rose to still greater heights. Not merely in peaceful athletic contests, but in real need, in struggles when they were fighting to defend the highest possessions of all--the freedom and safety of their country--the Heroes were found on the side of the Greeks. Nowhere do we see more plainly how real and vivid was the faith of contemporary Greece in the Heroes than in the stories told of the appeals then made to them and of their participation in the Persian wars. At Marathon there were many who saw an apparition of Theseus in full armour fighting in the front of the battle against the barbarians.[123\4] In the painting of Panainos (the brother of Pheidias) in the Stoa Poikile at Athens there was shown among the fighters at Marathon a certain Hero, Echetlos, of whose appearance at the battle a peculiar story was told.[124\4] In the war against Xerxes Delphi was preserved by two of the local Heroes of the land against a Persian raid.[125\4] In the morning before the battle of Salamis the Greeks prayed to the gods, but they called directly {137} upon the Heroes to give them practical help: Aias and Telamon were summoned from Salamis, and a ship was sent to fetch Aiakos and the other Aiakidai from Aegina.[126\4] So little were these Hero spirits mere symbols or great names to the Greeks. Their actual physical participation in the decisive hour was confidently expected. And, indeed, they came and helped:[127\4] after the battle had been won a trireme out of the spoil was dedicated to the Hero Aias as well as to the gods as a thankoffering.[128\4] A Salaminian local Hero, Kychreus, had also come to the help of the Greeks, as a snake, in which form the Heroes, like the earth spirits, frequently appeared.[129\4] After the battle everyone was fully persuaded that they owed their victory to the gods and Heroes.[130\4] As Xenophon puts it, it was the Heroes and their aid which "made Greece unconquerable" in the fight against the barbarians.[131\4] Less frequently we hear of the active participation of national Heroes in the fights of one Greek state against another.[132\4]