Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/273

GRECIAN AFFMRS AFTER THE PERSIAN INVASION. 249 countrymen sensible that the open roadstead of Phalerum was thoroughly insecure, and had prevailed upon them to improve and employ in part the more spacious harbors of Peirceus and Munychia, — three natural basins, all capable of being closed and defended. Something had then been done towards the en- largement of this port, though it had probably been subsequently ruined by the Persian invaders : but Themistokles now resumed the scheme on a scale far grander than he could then have ven- tured to propose, — a scale which demonstrates the vast auguries present to his mind respecting the destinies of Athens. Peiroeus and Munychia, in his new plan, constituted a fortified space as large as the enlarged Athens, and with a wall far more elaborate and unassailable. The wall which surrounded them, sixty stadia in circuit,! was intended by him to be so stupendous, both in height and thickness, as to render assault hopeless, and to enable the whole military population to act on shipboard, leaving only old men and boys as a garrison.'^ We may judge how vast his tviavTov Tj-yefiuv eytVETO- Trpb 6e tuv MrjdcKuv Tjp^s Qe/xiaTOKXjjg eviavrbv iva. It seems hardly possible, having no fuller evidence to proceed upon, to determine to which of the preceding years Thucydides means to refer this apx'] of Themistokles. INIr. FjTies Clinton, after discussing the opinions of Dodwell and Corsini (see Fasti Hellenici, ad ann. 481 B.C. and Preface, p.xv), inserts Themistokles as archon eponymus in 481 B.C., the year before the invasion of Xerxes, and supposes the Peirseus to have been commenced in that year. This is not in itself improbable : but he cites the Scholiast as having asserted the same thing before him [nph tCjv Mt^Jj/ccji- i]p^e Qefitaro- kT^tj^ Eviavrdv e va), in which I apprehend that he is not borne out by the analogy of the language : eviavrbv ^va, in the accusative case, denotes only the duration of the itpxv, not the position of the year (compare Thucyd. iii, 68). I do not feel certain that Thucydides meant to designate Themistokles as having been archon eponymus, or as having been one of the nine archons. He may have meant, "during the year when Themistokles was strategus (or general)," and the explanation of the Scholiast, who employs the word fjyifiuv, rather implies that he so understood it. The strategi were annual as well as the archons. Now we know that Themistokles was one of the generals in 480 B.C., and that he commanded in Thessaly, at Artemi- sium, and at Salamis. The Peiraeus may have been begun in the early part of 480 B.C., when Xerxes was already on his march, or at least at Sardis. ' Thucyd. ii, 13. » Thucyd. i, 93. 11*