It must be recognized that in this great war the darkness before the dawn of Greek victory was intense. The strategy which led the Greek fleet to take its station at Salamis was the strategy of despair. It was adopted because there was no alternative. The only possibility of success depended upon the Persians being induced to attack the fleet in its chosen position; and this accounts for the manifest anxiety which Themistocles showed to do everything, to run even the risk of a charge of the grossest treachery, in order to bring about an engagement in the strait. One thing favoured his design. The Persians had shown at Artemisium that they intended, if they could, not merely to defeat, but to capture the whole Greek fleet Salamis strait, consisting of two narrow channels by which the broad bay of Eleusis communicates with the Saronic gulf, would seem to them a position adapted by nature to the carrying out of this purpose; and it must have been with a view to encourage them in this idea that Themistocles left the western channel unguarded. He was playing a desperate game, under circumstances which were, however, sufficiently desperate to justify it. The dazzling brilliancy of the success attained by it has blinded posterity to the enormous risk which it entailed. Herodotus does not enlarge on the feelings of the Athenians when they discovered what had been going on during their absence at Artemisium. #REMOVAL OF THE POPULATION OF ATTICA.# They must have felt bitterly that they had been the victims of a base desertion, and they probably expressed their feelings; but nothing in the whole course of the war is more honourable to them than the practical spirit and energy with which they faced the situation. It was indeed before Salamis rather than at Salamis that Athens saved Greece. “When they learnt what had happened,” says Herodotus, “they requested the fleet to touch at Salamis.” They appear to have already made up their minds what to do. It is probable that their previous experience of the selfish policy of the Peloponnesians had prepared them for the possibility of a position such as that in which they found themselves. The half-fulfilment of the first oracle delivered to them at Delphi was to be accomplished. The population of Attica was to be removed _en masse_ to refuges beyond the reach of the Persian army; and it is not unlikely that under certain eventualities the Athenian authorities were prepared to carry out to the full the desperate advice which Delphi had given them. ◆H. viii. 41.◆ The proclamation of removal was issued, and the people of Attica fled to various places on the shores of the Saronic gulf, some to Ægina, some to Salamis, but the majority to Trœzen. The Athenians knew well that they could expect no mercy from the Persian. Marathon had been an unpardonable act of _lèse mejesté_, for which they would have in any case to pay dearly, and with the very life-blood of their