The histories of Herodotus;

49-52] XERXES BURNS ATHENS 457
When the leaders from the above-mentioned cities met
together at Salamis, they held a council, in which Eurybiades
proposed that any one who chose should deliver his opinion,
where he thought it would be most advantageous to come to
an engagement by sea, of all the places of which they were
still in possession : for Attica was already given up, and he
made this proposition concerning the rest. Most of the opinions
of those who spoke coincided, that they should sail to the
isthmus and fight before Peloponnesus ; alleging this reason,
that if they should be conquered by sea while they were at
Salamis, they should be besieged in the island, where no succour
could reach them ; but if at the isthmus, they might
escape to their own cities.
While the commanders from Peloponnesus were debating
these matters, an Athenian arrived with intelligence that the
barbarian had entered Attica, and was devastating the whole
of it by fire. For the army with Xerxes, having taken its
route through Boeotia, after having burned the city of the
Thespians, who had departed to Peloponnesus, and likewise
the city of the Plataeans, had arrived at Athens, and was laying
waste every part of it. They set fire to Thespia and
Platsea, being informed by the Thebans that they were not
on the side of the Medes. From the passage over the Hellespont,
thence the barbarians began to march, having spent one
month there, including the time they were crossing over into
Europe; in three months more they were in Attica, when
Calliades was archon of the Athenians. They took the city,
deserted of inhabitants, but found some few of the Athenians
in the temple, with the treasurers of the temple, and some
poor people; who, having fortified the Acropolis with planks
and stakes, tried to keep off the invaders : they had not withdrawn
to Salamis, partly through want of means, and moreover
they thought they had found out the meaning of the
oracle which the Pythian delivered to them, that the wooden
wall " should be impregnable " ; imagining that this was the
refuge according to the oracle, and not the ships. The Persians,
posting themselves on the hill opposite the Acropolis,
which the Athenians call the Areopagus, besieged them in
the following manner: when they had wrapped tow round
their arrows, and set fire to it, they shot them at the fence.
Thereupon those Athenians who were besieged still defended
themselves, though driven to the last extremity, and the fence
had failed them ; nor, when the Pisistratidas proposed them,
would they listen to terms of capitulation ; but still defending
themselves, they both contrived other means of defence, and