But they were secretly annoyed to
find that their malice had been detected and exposed; and by this
incident was sown the first seed of ill-will which was afterwards to
bear such bitter fruit for Athens and for Greece. For the present,
however, the affair was ended, and the first step secured for the
Athenians in their career of glory and power.
Themistocles was the first who clearly saw that the future of Athens
lay on the sea. But if Athens was to hold and extend her position as
the first naval power in Greece, it was above all things necessary
that she should have a strong and fortified station for her fleets,
her arsenals, and her dockyards. Nature had provided her with what she
needed, in the peninsula of Peiraeus, which juts out into the Saronic
Gulf, about five miles south-west of the inland town. 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. Three land-locked harbours gave ample room for the fleets
of Athens to lie in shelter and safety; and this great sea-port town
was afterwards united to the original city by two long walls, which
met the sea, one at the north-western corner of Peiraeus, and the
other at the south-eastern point of the Bay of Phalerum.
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