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He is astonished at the smallness of the harbor at Peiraeus, having insensibly formed his conception of its size from the notices of the mighty fleets which sailed from it in the palmy days when Athens was mistress of the seas.
As soon as the city-wall was completed, fortifications of immense strength were carried round the whole of Peiraeus; and within this vast rampart rose a second city, equal in size to the old one, with streets laid out in straight lines, and filled with the stir and bustle of a maritime population.
Diodorus the topographer, in his treatise 'On Tombs' says, more as a conjecture than as knowing it for a fact, that in the great harbour of Peiraeus a kind of elbow juts out from the promontory of Alkimus, and that when one sails past this, going inwards, where the sea is most sheltered, there is a large foundation, and upon it the tomb of Themistokles, shaped like an altar.
But the guarantor powers carried out their obligations by promptly sending a combined naval expedition, which hauled down the Greek flag at Canea, and prevented the deputies from embarking for Peiraeus. This apparently pedantic insistence upon the status quo was extremely exasperating to Greek nationalism.
Themistokles, on the other hand, did not so much "stick Peiraeus on to Athens," as Aristophanes the comic poet said, as make the city dependent upon Peiraeus, and the land dependent on the sea. By this means he transferred power from the nobles to the people, because sailors and pilots became the real strength of the State.
The Peiraeus was the only port in the country where steamers could come alongside a quay, and discharge their cargoes directly on shore. Elsewhere, the vessel must anchor many cables' lengths out, and depend on the slow and expensive services of lighters, for lack of pier construction and dredging operations.
And if he turned his eyes to his own camp, he saw little to relieve his anxiety. For the predictions of Lamachus had been fulfilled to the letter. By his fatal policy of procrastination Nicias had frittered away the resources of the most splendid armament that ever set sail from Peiraeus.
He is not prepared to see the southern shore of Salamis so near to the Peiraeus, though it explains the close connection between that island and Athens, and throws some light upon the great naval defeat of the Persians.
But at the last moment their hearts failed them, and instead of sailing to Peiraeus, they landed on the island of Salamis, and after attacking a sea-side fort, and capturing three triremes which were riding at anchor near it, they spread themselves out, and began ravaging and plundering the country. Meanwhile fire-signals had been raised, conveying the alarm to Peiraeus and Athens.
While Attica lay in the grip of the enemy, a fleet of sixty-five triremes, carrying a great military force, weighed anchor from Peiraeus, and steered its course, under the command of Demosthenes, for Sicily. We must now return to Syracuse, where fortune was preparing a new blow for the ill-fated Athenian army.
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