"Because Greeks are Greeks, though Sparté's brood, And hearts are hearts, though in Lusandros' breast, And poetry is power, and Euthukles Had faith therein to, full face, fling the same-- Sudden, the ice thaw!"
And the assembled foe cried, "Reverence Elektra! Let stand Athenai!" and so, as Euripides had saved the Athenian exiles in Syracuse harbour, now he saved Athens herself. But her brave long walls were destroyed, destroyed to sound of flute and lyre, wrecked to the kordax step, and laid in the dust to the mocking laughter of a Comedy-chorus. And so no longer would Balaustion remain to see the shame of the beloved city. "Back to Rhodes!" she cried. "There are no gods, no gods! Glory to God--who saves Euripides!" [The long walls of Athens consisted of the wall to Phalerum on the east, about four miles long, and of the wall to the harbour of Piraeus on the west, about four and a half miles long; between these two, at a short distance from the latter and parallel to it, another wall was erected, thus making two walls leading to the Piraeus, with a narrow passage between them. The entire circuit of the walls was nearly twenty-two miles, of which about five and a half miles belonged to the city, nine and a half to the long walls, and seven miles to Piraeus, Munychia, and Phalerum.]
Plutarch, in his life of Lysander, tells how Euripides saved Athens from destruction and the Athenians from slavery:--"After Lysander had taken from the Athenians all their ships except twelve, and their fortifications were delivered up to him, he entered their city on the sixteenth of the month Munychon (April), the very day they had overthrown the barbarians in the naval fight at Salamis. He presently set himself to change their form of government; and finding that the people resented his proposal, he told them 'that they had violated the terms of their capitulation, for their walls were still standing after the time fixed for the demolishing of them was passed; and that, since they had broken the first articles, they must expect new ones from the council.' Some say he really did propose, in the council of the allies, to reduce the Athenians to slavery; and that Erianthis, a Theban officer, gave it as his opinion that the city should be levelled with the ground, and the spot on which it stood turned to pasturage. Afterwards, however, when the general officers met at an entertainment, a musician of Phocis happened to begin a chorus in the _Electra_ of Euripides, the first lines of which are these--