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. Between
these, at a later period, a third wall was built, running parallel to
the northern wall at a distance of about two hundred feet, and known
as the Southern or Middle Wall.

Many years elapsed before these important works were completed; and in
the meantime great events had been happening in other parts of the
Greek world, tending more and more to realise the dream of
Themistocles, and make his beloved city the undisputed mistress of the
sea. After the defeat of the Persian armies and fleets at Salamis,
Plataea, and Mycale, much hard work remained to be done, in reducing
the outlying cities on the coasts of Thrace and in the eastern corners