Note 215 — Chapter XLI · BATTLE OF SALAMIS. — RETREAT OF XERXES.

Herodot. viii, 41; Plutarch, Themistoklês, c. x.

In the years 1821 and 1822, during the struggle which preceded the liberation of Greece, the Athenians were forced to leave their country and seek refuge in Salamis three several times. These incidents are sketched in a manner alike interesting and instructive by Dr. Waddington, in his Visit to Greece (London, 1825), Letters, vi, vii, x. He states, p. 92, “Three times have the Athenians emigrated in a body, and sought refuge from the sabre among the houseless rocks of Salamis. Upon these occasions, I am assured, that many have dwelt in caverns, and many in miserable huts, constructed on the mountain-side by their own feeble hands. Many have perished too, from exposure to an intemperate climate; many, from diseases contracted through the loathsomeness of their habitations; many from hunger and misery. On the retreat of the Turks, the survivors returned to their country. But to what a country did they return? To a land of desolation and famine; and in fact, on the first reoccupation of Athens, after the departure of Omer Brioni, several persons are known to have subsisted for some time on grass, till a supply of corn reached the Piræus from Syra and Hydra.”

A century and a half ago, also in the war between the Turks and Venetians, the population of Attica was forced to emigrate to Salamis, Ægina, and Corinth. M. Buchon observes, “Les troupes Albanaises, envoyées en 1688 par les Turcs (in the war against the Venetians) se jetèrent sur l’Attique, mettant tout à feu et à sang. En 1688, les chroniques d’Athènes racontent que ses malheureux habitants furent obligés de se refugier à Salamine, à Egine, et à Corinthe, et que ce ne fut qu’après trois ans qu’ils purent rentrer en partie dans leur ville et dans leurs champs. Beaucoup des villages de l’Attique sont encore habités par les déscendans de ces derniers envahisseurs, et avant la dernière révolution, on n’y parloit que la langue albanaise: mais leur physionomie diffère autant que leur langue de la physionomie de la race Grecque.” (Buchon, La Grèce Continentale et la Morée. Paris, 1843, ch. ii, p. 82.)