Themistocles

Then the Athenians were seized alike with rage at this betrayal, and with sullen dejection at their utter isolation. Of fighting alone with an army of so many myriads they could not seriously think; and as for the only thing left them to do in their emergency, namely, to give up their city and stick to their ships, most of them were distressed at the thought, saying that they neither wanted victory nor understood what safety could mean if they abandoned to the enemy the shrines of their gods and the sepulchres of their fathers.

Then indeed it was that Themistocles, despairing of bringing the multitude over to his views by any human reasonings, set up machinery, as it were, to introduce the gods to them as a theatrical manager would for a tragedy, and brought to bear upon them signs from heaven and oracles. As a sign from heaven he took the behavior of the serpent, which is held to have disappeared about that time from the sacred enclosure on the Acropolis. When the priests found that the daily offerings made to it were left whole and untouched, they proclaimed to the multitude,—Themistocles putting the story into their mouths,—that the goddess had abandoned her city and was showing them their way to the sea.

Moreover, with the well-known oracle[*](Hdt. 7.141) he tried again to win the people over to his views, saying that its wooden wall meant nothing else than their fleet; and that the god in this oracle called Salamis divine, not dreadful nor cruel, for the very reason that the island would sometime give its name to a great piece of good fortune for the Hellenes. At last his opinion prevailed, and so he introduced a bill providing that the city be entrusted for safe keeping to Athena the patroness of Athens, but that all the men of military age embark on the triremes, after finding for their children, wives, and servants, such safety as each best could.