The main body of the army pursued its way directly southward toward the city of Athens, which was now the great object at which Xerxes aimed. A large detachment, however, separating from the main body, moved more to the westward, toward Delphi. Their plan was to plunder the temples and the city, and send the treasures to the king. The Delphians, on hearing this, were seized with consternation. They made application themselves to the oracle, to know what they were to do in respect to the sacred treasures. They could not defend them, they said, against such a host, and they inquired whether they should bury them in the earth, or attempt to remove them to some distant place of safety.
The oracle replied that they were to do nothing at all in respect to the sacred treasures. The divinity, it said, was able to protect what was its own. They, on their part, had only to provide for themselves, their wives, and their children.
On hearing this response, the people dismissed all care in respect to the treasures of the temple and of the shrine, and made arrangements for removing their families and their own effects to some place of safety toward the southward. The military force of the city and a small number of the inhabitants alone remained.
When the Persians began to draw near, a prodigy occurred in the temple, which seemed intended to warn the profane invaders away. It seems that there was a suit of arms, of a costly character doubtless, and highly decorated with gold and gems--the present, probably, of some Grecian state or king--which were hung in an inner and sacred apartment of the temple, and which it was sacrilegious for any human hand to touch. These arms were found, on the day when the Persians were approaching, removed to the outward front of the temple. The priest who first observed them was struck with amazement and awe. He spread the intelligence among the soldiers and the people that remained, and the circumstance awakened in them great animation and courage.
Nor were the hopes of divine interposition which this wonder awakened disappointed in the end; for, as soon as the detachment of Persians came near the hill on which Delphi was situated, loud thunder burst from the sky, and a bolt, descending upon the precipices near the town, detached two enormous masses of rock, which rolled down upon the ranks of the invaders. The Delphian soldiers, taking advantage of the scene of panic and confusion which this awful visitation produced, rushed down upon their enemies and completed their discomfiture. They were led on and assisted in this attack by the spirits of two ancient heroes, who had been natives of the country, and to whom two of the temples of Delphi had been consecrated. These spirits appeared in the form of tall and full-armed warriors, who led the attack, and performed prodigies of strength and valor in the onset upon the Persians; and then, when the battle was over, disappeared as mysteriously as they came.