The Historians' History of the World 03 [Greece to the Peloponnesian War]

The Athenian Acropolis—a craggy rock rising abruptly about one hundred and fifty feet, with a flat summit of about one thousand feet long from east to west, by five hundred feet broad from north to south—had no practicable access except on the western side: moreover, in all parts where there seemed any possibility of climbing up, it was defended by the ancient fortification called the Pelasgic wall. Obliged to take the place by force, the Persian army was posted around the northern and western sides, and commenced their operations from the eminence immediately adjoining on the northwest, called Areopagus: from whence they bombarded, if we may venture upon the expression, with hot missiles, the woodwork before the gates; that is, they poured upon it multitudes of arrows with burning tow attached to them. The wooden palisades and boarding presently took fire and were consumed: but when the Persians tried to mount to the assault by the western road leading up to the gate, the undaunted little garrison still kept them at bay, having provided vast stones, which they rolled down upon them in the ascent.

For a time the Great King seemed likely to be driven to the slow process of blockade; but at length some adventurous men among the besiegers tried to scale the precipitous rock before them on its northern side, hard by the temple or chapel of Aglaurus, which lay nearly in front of the Persian position, but behind the gates and the western ascent. Here the rock was naturally so inaccessible, that it was altogether unguarded, and seemingly even unfortified: moreover, the attention of the little garrison was all concentrated on the host which fronted the gates. Hence the separate escalading party was enabled to accomplish their object unobserved, and to reach the summit in the rear of the garrison; who, deprived of their last hope, either cast themselves headlong from the walls, or fled for safety to the inner temple. The successful escaladers opened the gates to the entire Persian host, and the whole Acropolis was presently in their hands. Its defenders were slain, its temples pillaged, and all its dwellings and buildings, sacred as well as profane, consigned to the flames. The citadel of Athens fell into the hands of Xerxes by a surprise, very much the same as that which had placed Sardis in those of Cyrus.

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. 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 Athene, 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, as well as that which was said to have been seen by Dicæus, an Athenian companion of the Pisistratids, 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, Dicæus 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 vigour. So hopeless did the circumstances of the Athenians then appear, not less to their confederates assembled at Salamis than to the victorious Persians.

About the time of the capture of the Acropolis, the Persian fleet also arrived safely in the Bay of Phalerum, reinforced by ships from Carystus as well as from various islands of the Cyclades, so that Herodotus reckons it to have been as strong as before the terrible storm at Sepias Acte—an estimate certainly not admissible.

XERXES INSPECTS HIS FLEET