"It is one of the sublimest and most awful spectacles in history
--that city in ruins--the earth still trembling, the grim and
dauntless soldiery collected amid piles of death and ruin; and in
such a time, and such a scene, the multitude sensible not of danger,
but of wrong, and rising not to succor, but to revenge--all that
should have disarmed a feebler enmity giving fire to theirs; the
dreadest calamity their blessing--dismay their hope. It was as if
the Great Mother herself had summoned her children to vindicate
the long-abused, the all-inalienable heritage derived from her;
and the stir of the angry elements was but the announcement of an
armed and solemn union between nature and the oppressed.

"Fortunately for Sparta, the danger was not altogether unforeseen.
After the confusion and the horror of the earthquake, and while
the people, dispersed, were seeking to save their effects,
Archida'mus, who, four years before, had succeeded to the throne
of Lacedaemon, ordered the trumpets to sound as to arms. That
wonderful superiority of man over matter which habit and discipline
can effect, and which was ever so visible among the Spartans,
constituted their safety at that hour. Forsaking the care of
their property, the Spartans seized their arms, flocked around
their king, and drew up in disciplined array. In her most imminent
crisis Sparta was thus saved. The Helots approached, wild,
disorderly, and tumultuous; they came intent only to plunder and
to slay; they expected to find scattered and affrighted foes
--they found a formidable army; their tyrants were still their
lords. They saw, paused, and fled, scattering themselves over
the country, exciting all they met to rebellion, and soon joined
with the Messenians, kindred to them by blood and ancient
reminiscences of heroic struggles; they seized that same Ithome