"Had," said he, "the prediction of loss and slaughter referred to the Athenians, would Salamis have been called 'divine ?' would it not have been rather called the 'wretched' if the Greeks were doomed to perish near that isle?
The oracle threatens not the Athenians, but the enemy.

Let us prepare then to engage the barbarian by sea.

Our ships are our wooden walls." This interpretation, as it was the more encouraging, so it was the more approved.

The vessels already built from the revenues of the mines of Laurion were now destined to the safety of Greece.
IV.

It was, however, before the arrival of the Persian envoys [60], and when the Greeks first woke to the certainty, that the vast preparations of Xerxes menaced Greece as the earliest victim, that a congress, perhaps at the onset confined to the Peloponnesian states, met at Corinth.