noon
All is not lost . In three days I will be with you . '' There was no time for an assembly at the Pnyx , but the Five Hundred and the Areopagus council acted for the people . It was ordered to remove the entire population of Attica , with all their movable goods , across the bay to Salamis or to the friendly Peloponnesus , and that same noon the heralds went over the land to bear the direful summons . To Hermione , who in the calm after-years looked back on all this year of agony and stress as on an unreal thing , one time always was stamped on memory as no dream , but vivid , unforgetable , -- these days of the great evacuation . Up and down the pleasant plain country of the Mesogia to southward , to the rolling highlands beyond Pentelicus and Parnes , to the slumbering villages by Marathon , to the fertile farm-land by Eleusis , went the proclaimers of ill-tidings . `` Quit your homes , hasten to Athens , take with you what you can , but hasten , or stay as Xerxes 's slaves . ''