In the second half of September in the days before the battle, when the full Hellene fleet was assembled on Salamis, the beaches and bays on the western side of the straits were lined with triremes, organized in battle order contingent by contingent. Each required approximately 15m of shore front to allow sufficient space for launching with oars out, and there was space for all 380, and level or gently sloping ground immediately behind to accommodate the 80,000 crewmen. The island was also temporary home to most of the rest of the able-bodied male population of Athens. This included the balance of the city’s hoplite force, maybe 2,000–4,000, and any archers and other light-armed troops not serving on the ships. Their role would be to guard the beaches, and it seems that this was sufficient to discourage any thought of an amphibious landing outside the straits. There were also thousands of non-citizen metoikoi (resident aliens) and slaves, both state- and privately owned, in addition to those serving as rowers alongside the citizen oarsmen. Their role would generally have been as on the mainland, to provide skilled and unskilled labour in the fields, shipyards and armouries, to do clerical work, and to distribute, cook and serve food. They were also servants to the wealthier citizens (and metoikoi) and their women and children, those, probably a minority, that had not been evacuated to Aegina or the Peloponnese.
Herodotus has already stated that the rest of the Hellenes who had fought at Artemisium put in at Salamis at the Athenians’ request to support the sea-borne evacuation of Athens and Attica, ‘but also so that they could discuss with them what to do next’. However, he says a little later that the rest of the fleet, which had been lying at Pogon, the port of Troezen, well to the south of the Isthmus, immediately sailed to join up with them at Salamis, which suggests that a collective, if fragile decision had already been taken to confront the Persians there. Herodotus represents it as being hotly debated right up to the night before the battle. This certainly adds dramatic tension to his narrative and allows him to set out the main strategic and tactical considerations in some detail. It also enables him to spotlight the three leading characters, Themistocles, Eurybiades and Adeimantus, representing the three leading powers in the fractious alliance.
Ending his account of the fall of the Acropolis, Herodotus switches back to Salamis where the Hellene commanders are, again, in conference and receiving a report on the latest developments:
When the Hellenes on Salamis learned what had happened on the Athenian Acropolis, some of the Peloponnesian generals were so panic-stricken that they did not even wait for a collective decision to be made, but hastily boarded their ships, hoisting their sails for flight. Those that were left resolved to give battle off the Isthmus. So, as night fell, they left the meeting place and returned to their ships.
When Themistocles got back to his ship, an Athenian called Mnesiphilus1 asked him what had been decided. On being told that the decision was to withdraw the fleet to the Isthmus and fight in defence of the Peloponnese, he said, ‘If the fleet withdraws from Salamis, you will no longer be fighting for a single Hellene people. Each contingent will go back home to its own city and it will be impossible for Eurybiades or anyone else to stop the fleet breaking up, bringing about the destruction of Hellas by their lack of judgement. If there is anything you can do to reverse this decision by persuading Eurybiades to change his mind and remain here, go and try it.’ This advice was greatly to Themistocles’ liking. He said nothing and went straight to Eurybiades’ ship. Arriving there, he let Eurybiades know that there was a matter of mutual concern he wanted to discuss. Eurybiades asked him to come aboard2 and tell him whatever it was he wanted to say. So, Themistocles sat down beside him and repeated exactly what Mnesiphilus had said to him, presenting the advice as his own and making several additions to it. And, in the end, his pleading persuaded Eurybiades to go back on shore and call the commanders back to the meeting place.
As soon as they were all assembled and even before Eurybiades could explain why he had summoned them, Themistocles spoke out with an intensity that matched his sense of urgency. The Corinthian commander, Adeimantus son of Ocytus, interrupted, ‘Themistocles, at the games a false start gets you a whipping.’ Themistocles retorted, ‘But if you are left on the starting line you get no crown’;3 he was responding to the Corinthian mildly at this point. He then carried on addressing Eurybiades. But he did not utter a word of what he had said just before, that if the Hellenes left Salamis they would go their different ways. It would not have been constructive to make this accusation to the allies’ faces. Instead he produced another argument: ‘You can save Hellas if you listen to my advice and stay here and fight. Ignore these others and their idea of taking the fleet down to the Isthmus. Listen to me now and consider the arguments. If you engage the enemy off the Isthmus you will be fighting in the open sea, which will not favour our prospects at all because our ships are heavier and we are outnumbered. Even if we are actually successful there, you will have lost Salamis, Megara and Aegina. Additionally, their army will follow behind their fleet on land and you will be drawing them towards the Peloponnese and thus putting the whole of Hellas in danger. But consider the benefit of doing what I am telling you to do! First, by taking on their many ships in the narrows with our few, we shall win a great victory. That is the likely outcome of a battle in the narrows, which will be as much to our advantage as one in the open sea will be to the enemy. Then, Salamis and the women and children we brought to safety will be saved. And there is another consideration, one of particular importance to you: if you make the right decision and stay and fight here rather than off the Isthmus, you will be defending the Peloponnese just as effectively. If things turn out as I expect them to and we are victorious with our ships, the Barbarians will not then face you at the Isthmus. They will not advance any further than Attica but withdraw in disorder and we shall get the benefit of the survival of Megara and Aegina, and also of Salamis, where it has been prophesied that we shall overcome our enemies. Men who make realistic plans generally meet with success. But if their planning is unrealistic, God is not inclined to back the judgement of mortal men.’
While Themistocles was saying this, Adeimantus the Corinthian renewed his attack, arguing that a man without a homeland should keep silent and demanding that Eurybiades deny this stateless person4 the right to put forward any proposal. He told Themistocles he would be entitled to share his thoughts when he was in possession of a city, a pointed reminder that Athens had been taken and was now occupied. This time Themistocles responded vehemently and at length, attacking the Corinthians in general as well as Adeimantus personally. And he declared that while they had 200 ships fully manned, the Athenians had both a greater city and more territory than the Corinthians, and that there was not a city in Hellas that could withstand their attack, if they were to launch one.
After making these points, he turned back to Eurybiades and spoke to him with more vehemence than before. ‘If you stay here, you will keep your reputation as a good and noble man. If you leave, you will be the ruin of Hellas. Without our fleet, we are nothing in this war. So, listen to me. If you do not do what I say, we Athenians will immediately gather up our households and ship them to safety in Siris in Italy. This is territory we have owned since ancient times, and there are prophecies that say we are to plant a settlement there.5 You will remember my words when you find yourself abandoned by the allies who are so valuable to you.’ It was with this speech that Themistocles made Eurybiades change his mind. But, in my view, he changed it mainly out of fear that the Athenians would indeed sail away if he took the rest of the ships to the Isthmus. With the Athenians gone, what was left would be no match for the enemy, so he adopted Themistocles’ plan, to stay where they were and give battle.
After this heavy exchange of verbal missiles, Eurybiades made his decision and the Hellenes at Salamis prepared to fight a sea-battle there. As the sun rose the following day, there was an earthquake on land and sea and it was agreed that the time had come to pray to the gods, and also to summon the descendants of Aeacus to their aid. And they acted on this resolution immediately, offering prayers to all the gods, calling up Ajax and Telamon from Salamis itself, and sending a ship to Aegina for Aeacus and his sons.6 (8.56–64)
Themistocles had built a formidable case, overriding but still playing on first thoughts of local self-interest, backed by four potent arguments and a personal appeal to Eurybiades’ honour. The credible scenario of a retreating Peloponnesian alliance breaking up without making a stand was for Eurybiades’ private consumption. The other four arguments are addressed to Eurybiades but presented to all in the public arena of the Hellene ‘meeting place’. The first of these is tactical: in the straits the Persians would not be able to exploit their superior numbers, manoeuvrability or seamanship, but these qualities would be overwhelmingly to their advantage in the open waters off the Isthmus. In fact, the Persians with their ‘better-sailing’ triremes would have been able to cut the Hellene fleet off in the open sea of the Saronic Gulf before they came close to the Isthmus. The second argument is more strategic: fighting a sea-battle at Salamis would be as good a defence of the Peloponnese as it would be at the Isthmus. In the event of the victory Themistocles was anticipating, the Hellenes would have control of the sea and be able to threaten the flank and rear of the Persian army if it advanced on the Isthmus, and guard against sea-borne Persian attacks on the flank or to the rear of the Hellene defensive line. Saving Salamis was, of course, extremely important to the Athenians, and the Aeginetans and Megarians, both from outside the Peloponnese and contributing 50 triremes between them, would have had a significant voice in the debate. The confidence with which Themistocles spoke of victory could be justified by the good performance of the Hellene fleet at Artemisium when it had held its own against similar odds in much more open water.
The remark with which Herodotus has Themistocles closing his violent exchange with Adeimantus (commander of the second largest contingent at Salamis) would have resonated strongly with his contemporary audiences five decades on, when Athenian sea-power held sway over so much of Hellas and had for a period swung the balance of the Peloponnesian War in Athens’ favour. Corinth was Sparta’s chief naval ally in that war and had been involved in some humiliating defeats. Swinging back to Eurybiades, Themistocles delivered his killer punch: the Athenians would abandon the alliance and migrate to Italy if the decision were taken to fall back on the Isthmus. And, if all the other allies from outside the Peloponnese had decided to look after their own interests, Eurybiades would have led just 89 triremes from Salamis to the Isthmus. Of the rest, as advised by Mnesiphilus, ‘each contingent will go home to its own city’. Although Eurybiades is represented as having definitively made up his mind to stay and fight at Salamis at this point, the matter is not yet finally settled in Herodotus’ account. There is still more drama in store. His narrative compresses negotiation and debate that must have been spread out over a number of months and several different locations into about 48 hours, two beached ships and the Hellene meeting place on the island of Salamis. Against this dramatic, fictional backdrop, however, there are credible glimpses of the actual thought processes involved in the planning and the real tensions and internal conflicts that had to be navigated if Persia was to be resisted with any prospect of success.
Herodotus’ brief mention of the natural portent of the earthquake and the Hellenes’ invocation of divine and heroic support leads into a more detailed account of a significant supernatural event. As with other anecdotes of this nature, Herodotus leaves it to listeners or readers to decide whether to believe it or not. He rarely names individual sources, and Dicaeus, the Athenian, may have been a man of some importance, but he is otherwise unknown (which has not prevented some ingenious scholarly theorizing, even finding a family connection with Thucydides):
Dicaeus son of Theocydes, an Athenian exile who had acquired some status amongst the Medes, told how he was with Demaratus the Lacedaemonian on the Thriasian plain7 at the time the countryside of Attica was being ravaged by Xerxes’ army when the land had been abandoned by the Athenians. He said they saw a dust-cloud coming from the direction of Eleusis, as big as one that might be raised by 30,000 men. They were wondering in their amazement who these men could be, raising such a dust-cloud, and just then they heard a great shout. It was like the cry of ‘Iacchus’ at the mysteries. Demaratus knew nothing about the Eleusinian rites and asked Dicaeus what this shouting meant. Dicaeus explained, ‘It is inconceivable that the King’s forces are not about to meet with some great disaster. Attica is deserted so it is absolutely clear that this is a divine voice calling from Eleusis to bring the Athenians and their allies vengeance. If the omen turns towards the Peloponnese, the King himself and his army on land will be in danger. But if it turns towards the ships at Salamis, the King will be in danger of losing his fleet. Every year the Athenians keep this festival in honour of the Mother and the Maiden,8 and any Athenian or other Hellene who wishes may be initiated. What you are hearing is the cry of ‘Iacchus’9 that they shout out at this festival.’ Demaratus replied, ‘Keep silent and do not give this explanation to anyone else. If these words of yours reach the King, you will lose your head. I shan’t be able to protect you. Nobody could, so keep quiet about it! What happens to the King’s forces is in the hands of the gods.’ That was the firm advice Demaratus gave Dicaeus. And after the dust-storm and the shouting a cloud rose high in the air and drifted over to Salamis and the Hellene camp, and they knew from this that Xerxes’ fleet was going to be destroyed. This is what Dicaeus son of Theocydes used to say, calling upon Demaratus and others to be his witnesses. (8.65)
This event seems to have been a significant piece of the mythology of the Persian War. It is unlikely that Demaratus did not know about the ‘Eleusinian Mysteries’, a major festival in the Hellene religious calendar; Dicaeus’ brief description is there for the benefit of Herodotus’ wider, ‘international’ audience. The episode adds further dramatic tension, and is also one of several reminders that a divine plan was at work that would bring victory to the Hellenes and disaster to the Great King. In this context, the reference to Xerxes’ autocratic power of life and death over his subjects is well timed. Hellene emotions would also have been struck by the story’s implied message that the festival was celebrated, albeit supernaturally, in the absence of mortal participants and in the presence of the enemy that had kept them away from it, all this witnessed by two returning Hellene exiles.
But there could be a more prosaic explanation for the dust-cloud that was observed. A few chapters on Herodotus writes, almost as an aside, ‘that very night the Barbarian army was on the march towards the Peloponnese’ (8.70). A large force of cavalry might have been sent probing to the west as the first phase of a planned advance on the Isthmus by Xerxes’ land force, or in a manoeuvre with more limited objectives like securing beaches on the mainland to the north of Salamis, or simply feinting an attack on the Isthmus line to increase the pressure on the Hellene Alliance. Herodotus does not place Dicaeus and Demaratus’ experience on the Thriasian plain at any single point in his loose chronology, whereas ‘the march towards the Peloponnese’ is set the night before the sea-battle, but the two could have coincided at any point during the occupation of Attica. Fast-moving cavalry would have raised plenty of dust and alien commands and war-cries might easily have been imagined to be the festival acclamations. Also, the month was Boedromion, which quite closely coincided with the modern calendar’s September, and it is likely that whatever gave rise to the story happened on the day, late in that month in 480, on which the procession would have taken place.
Xerxes’ land forces may have been involved in another operation before the sea-battle. According to Herodotus, after the battle, Xerxes ‘attempted to build a causeway over to Salamis, lashing together Phoenician cargo ships to form both a pontoon bridge and a boom’ (8.97). He does not give a location and the timing has no logic. However, a fragment of Ctesias goes into a little more detail than Herodotus on this operation and brings it forward in time (he also brings Plataea forward in time, placing that battle before Salamis!):
After this, Xerxes moved on to a narrow section of the Attica shoreline called the Heracleum, and constructed a causeway in the direction of Salamis, planning to make the crossing on foot. On the advice of the Athenians Themistocles and Aristides, Cretan archers were called for and came up in support. Then there was a sea-battle between the Persians and the Hellenes ... [which is then dispensed with in a hopelessly inaccurate passage of about 40 words]. (Persica 57)
The geographer Strabo, writing four centuries later and working his way east from Eleusis, supports Ctesias’ timing of the operation:
Next we come to the Thriasian plain and the coastline and community of the same name. Then we come to Cape Amphiale and the quarry above it and the channel across to Salamis, about 2 stades [around 400m] wide, over which Xerxes tried to build a causeway. But the naval battle and the flight of the Persians prevented him doing this. Here too are the Pharmakoussai (Enchantresses), two small islands; Circe’s tomb may be seen on the larger one. (Geographia 9.1.13)
These passages have been rejected as evidence on the grounds that Herodotus is more reliable, but, on this occasion, it is tempting to override that generally sound principle. Strabo’s ‘2 stades’, equivalent to about 400m, is well short of the actual distance of 1,000m between the two shores, but it is not a bad guess at the 600m between the two Enchantress islands. And the shrine of Heracles, the Heracleum that Ctesias mentions, is thought to have been close to Perama, the small port on the Attic shore sheltered by the smaller Enchantress (Enchantress 2). It would not have been very challenging for the Persian engineers and manpower that bridged the Hellespont, cut through the Athos Peninsula and drove roads through the mountain forests of Thessaly, and were renowned for spectacular siege-works, to span the 200m of shallow water between the mainland and Enchantress 2. Easy access to the island would have been tactically valuable. The next stage, crossing to the larger Enchantress (Enchantress 1), would require a bridge of boats and protection from the enemy fleet and would have been possible only after defeating the Hellenes in the straits. There would then be less than 300m of water, quite a lot of it possibly wadable, to cross over to Salamis at the narrowest point. With the Hellene fleet eliminated or at least contained, a concentration of triremes and transport ships could then quickly deliver a large force assembled on Enchantress 1 to the beaches of Paloukia Bay. If the Cretan archers were put onto Enchantress 1, their longest shot would not have reached even half-way to Enchantress 2, but they would have been well positioned to harass any Persian ships that came within range and, if accompanied by hoplites, to oppose a landing. Alternatively, this engineering work, which seems too well documented to be an invention, may have had the less ambitious purpose of creating a harbour from which to launch an amphibious attack on Salamis.
At this point Herodotus turns his attention to the Persian fleet again. Naval action was to be the next main phase of operations and Herodotus reviews Xerxes’ options by giving an account of the consultations which may have taken place. Artemisia, tyrant queen of Halicarnassus, takes centre stage. Herodotus previously introduces her as one of the most notable of the smaller-unit commanders (taxiarchoi):
I find it quite amazing that she, a woman, went to war against the Hellenes. On her husband’s death she took over as tyrant and, although she had a son who was a young man, she had the fortitude, the masculine courage to go off on campaign when she did not have to.10 Artemisia was her name, and she was the daughter of Lygdamis, of Halicarnassian stock on her father’s side and Cretan on her mother’s. She was in command of contingents from Halicarnassus, Cos, Nisyrus and Calymna, and contributed five ships, which were rated the best in the whole fleet after the triremes from Sidon. Out of all his allies, Artemisia gave the King the best advice. (7.99)
Herodotus was born in Halicarnassus. He clearly admired Artemisia and was proud of his kinship with her, even though he wrote the Historia as a political exile from his birthplace. It was then still subject to Persia and ruled by Artemisia’s grandson, also called Lygdamis. Herodotus’ account of Artemisia’s part in the events of 480, disproportionate to her position in the Persian chain of command and to the scale of her contribution to Xerxes’ armada, may be as much a bid for reconciliation with her descendants as an exercise in nostalgia and nationalistic pride. However, from a gender aspect, her story is a remarkable one. Tomyris, queen of the Massagetae and a shadowy historical figure from half a century earlier, is the only other female ruler and war-leader mentioned by Herodotus.
After viewing the scene of the Laconian disaster at Thermopylae, the Persians waited at Histiaea for three days, and then sailed down through the Euripus.11 After three more days they reached Phalerum, the port of Athens. In my view, as great a number of Barbarians descended upon Athens by land and sea as came to Cape Sepias and Thermopylae. Against those lost in the storm, at Thermopylae and in the naval actions off Artemisium, I set those who at that time had not enlisted in the King’s forces: I mean the Melians, Dorians and Locrians, the Boeotians, in full force except for the Thespians and Plataeans, and also the Carystians, Andrians and Tenians and all the rest of the people from the islands, except for the five cities whose names I have already mentioned.12 The further into Hellas the King of the Persians advanced, the more peoples followed him. All of these went on to Athens except for the Parians, who were left behind on Cythnos and were waiting to see which way the war would go.13 When the ships had all arrived at Phalerum, Xerxes went down in person, wishing to mingle with the men who sailed them and find out what they thought. He came down and was enthroned before them, and the tyrants of all the different national contingents and the senior commanders from the fleet, all had been summoned into his presence. They were seated in order of precedence reflecting their standing with the King, first the king of Sidon, next the king of Tyre14 and then the rest. When they were all settled in their rows, Xerxes sent Mardonius amongst them to sound each of them out by asking if he should give battle at sea. (8.66–67)
Herodotus has introduced a touch of satire here. Xerxes’ idea of ‘mingling’ (the Greek word also has sexual connotations) is somewhat formal and he actually avoids direct contact with his naval commanders. This is left to Mardonius, his most trusted general:
Mardonius passed amongst them, commencing with the king of Sidon, and asked the question. They were all in agreement, strongly recommending giving battle at sea, all except for Artemisia ... She said, ‘Mardonius, tell the King from me that I, who was not a coward but fought with distinction in the sea-battles off Euboea, have this to say: ‘Master, it is right and proper that I should let you know my true opinion. This is what I personally think will be best for your cause. I say to you, for the sake of your fleet, do not give battle. At sea their men are as superior to your men as men are superior to women, so why do you feel such need to take the risk of fighting at sea? Have you not captured Athens, your goal when you embarked on this campaign? And now the rest of Hellas is in your hands: no one is standing in your way, and those who did stand against you received what they deserved.
‘Let me tell you what I think your enemies will do. If you do not rush to give battle but keep your ships where they are, staying close to land, or even advance on the Peloponnese, then, Master, you will easily achieve what you planned to do when you came here. The Hellenes cannot hold out for long. You will scatter them, and they will make their escape, each to their own city. I have found out that they have no food on this island and, if you launch your land forces in a strike against the Peloponnese, it is unlikely that those contingents that came from there will either stay quietly where they are or be inclined to fight a sea-battle for the sake of Athens. But if you rush into battle straightaway, I have a foreboding that a defeat for the fleet will lead to the ruin of your army. Also ponder on this, Great King: it is generally the case that good masters have bad slaves and bad masters have good slaves. You are the best of all men, so your slaves are bad. They are reckoned to be your allies, those Egyptians, Cypriots, Cilicians and Pamphylians, but they are quite useless.’
As Artemisia was speaking to Mardonius, those who were well disposed towards her thought her words would bring disaster on her in the form of some terrible punishment from the King, because of her firmly delivered advice not to give battle at sea. But others, who were not admirers of Artemisia and who envied the way she was honoured as if she was one of the leading members of the alliance, were pleased to see this confrontation, thinking it suicidal. But when her views were reported to Xerxes, he was mightily pleased with her advice. Even before he had had an excellent opinion of her, and now he rated her even more highly. However, the order he gave was to follow the recommendations of the majority, for he believed that at Euboea his fleet had underperformed because he was not present. This time he made arrangements to watch the battle in person. (8.68–69)
Artemisia’s advice in part mirrors the arguments Themistocles presented to Eurybiades and the irony of Herodotus’ remark that ‘she gave the King the best advice’ is intentional. Xerxes did not take it. However, it is unlikely that there was a serious shortage of food on Salamis. It was as important to deprive the invaders as to stockpile provisions for the enlarged population of the island, and the evacuation ships probably transported at least as much tonnage of grain, oil, wine and livestock from Attica as people. But there is just a hint of the strategic option which could possibly have won the war for Xerxes. This was to split his fleet, retaining a force large enough to contain the Hellenes within the straits and sending the remainder to make landings to the rear of the Hellene defensive line in support of a frontal attack on the Isthmus by the army. Her illogical ‘good masters–bad slaves’ theory and closing strident dismissal of four of her allies, who together accounted for around 40 per cent of Xerxes’ navy, rather undermine the wisdom of the rest of the speech. There was a hierarchy of slaves in the Hellene world from trusted and respected family staff and public servants to forced labourers in the Athenian silver mines, all termed ‘douloi’ in Greek. In the Persian Empire the kings (and queen) and tyrants who served the Great Kings enjoyed autonomy, respect and power as rulers of subject nations infinitely beyond the highest status that might be achieved by any slave of the Hellenes. But, in the context of Herodotus’ thematic highlighting of the fundamental differences between Persian autocracy and the recently emerged Hellene, and especially Athenian values and style of governance, the Hellene conference does not stand out as superior. It is chaotic, with Themistocles bulldozing his case through, Adeimantus interrupting aggressively and attempting to deny him isegoria (the equal right of all citizens to free speech) and Eurybiades, albeit wisely, apparently ruling against the majority. Xerxes’ consultation is orderly; all are invited to give their views (though they might not dare to say what they think). Artemisia’s frankly expressed minority-of-one opinion is listened to with respect and Xerxes, albeit unwisely, goes with the majority. However, if each of the 17 city-states represented at the Hellene meeting formally had a vote and the seven from the Peloponnese were the only ones to cast their vote against Themistocles, Eurybiades’ mandate was clear. Dissenters were free to leave but, if any genuinely wished to do so, this was, in the end, not a practical option.
At Artemisium the two fleets had been facing each other across an 11km stretch of open water with a clear view of each other’s movements. At the narrowest point, less than 1,600m separated the Hellenes on Salamis from Persian-occupied Attica, but the Persians were beached at Phalerum, an indirect 16km away. Each was conveniently placed for fighting on their battleground of choice, the Hellenes in the confined waters of the straits of Salamis, the Persians in the wider Saronic Gulf. The Hellenes were in a strong position. Reinforcements from the reserve held at Pogon had brought the strength of the fleet up to 380, a figure arrived at somewhat shakily by Herodotus. It may have been lower; Aeschylus in his tragedy Persae puts it at 300. According to Herodotus the Hellene fleet included just two deserters from the other side, contrary to Themistocles’ hopes and best efforts. It probably also included a few ships captured at Artemisium and refurbished and crewed to replace losses. A plausible starting figure for Xerxes’ invasion fleet is around 800 triremes rather than the 1,207 first cited by Aeschylus and repeated by Herodotus. It is then likely that some were detached to protect supply routes and harbours in the rear as the army and fleet advanced into Europe, and the storm off Magnesia would have reduced the number further. So perhaps 500–600 faced the Hellenes at Artemisium. The number may have been the same, or perhaps slightly smaller at Salamis, with captured ships with new crews, and the newly medized Hellenes making up for battle losses. The Hellene fleet, 300–400 strong, was outnumbered but more than sufficient to mount a deep defence of the two entrances to the south-eastern end of the straits on either side of Psyttaleia and, simultaneously if necessary, to take care of any threat from the north-west by blocking the channels between the two Enchantress islands and, if navigable when sea level was lower, between Enchantress 1 and Salamis.
With crews mustered close to their ships, they would have sufficient time to put to sea and form up to counter any Persian thrust into the straits of Salamis. A single trireme, rowed at 6 knots (11.1km/h), following the course likely to be taken by an attacking column, entering the straits through the wider channel to the east of Psyttaleia and steering north-west, would take 15–20 minutes to reach a point off the Attic shore opposite the tip of Cynosoura. A mass of 300 or 400 ships, travelling more slowly to preserve cohesion, would take considerably longer to perform the same manoeuvre. To this must be added the time taken to advance a further 2,250m to the west to align with the Greek left wing, and to swing from column to line to face the enemy. Two hours seems a reasonable estimate. Depending on where it was beached, a Greek trireme could launch and reach the nearest point on the Attic shore in 10–20 minutes. A full-fleet manoeuvre, which would include straightening the line in the course of the crossing, might take an hour. The Greeks were not in danger of being caught at their moorings (certain disaster), and had a range of options for counter-manoeuvre. These included envelopment of the head of an attacking column as it entered the straits, punching into its flank in column at one or more points, delaying until more ships had entered and attacking in line before they were fully deployed, or simply waiting for them to advance and fighting a defensive action.
It is easy to cruise the battlefield. A ferry service runs quite frequently from Gate 8 of the main harbour of Piraeus to Paloukia at the northern end of the straits. It passes to the east of Psyttaleia and then quite close to the tip of the promontory of Cynosoura and the entrance to the deep bay of Ambelaki, the site of the ancient town of Salamis. It stops at modern Kamatero, then continues westward past the long bay where the Athenian fleet forming the Hellene left and most of their centre was beached, and ends close to the causeway that now joins the island of St George (Enchantress 1) to Salamis. The trip takes 30 minutes. Even allowing for the extensive 20th-century seaport infrastructure and the many large cargo and cruise ships lining the shores, it is very striking how tight the space would have been for this immense clash of several hundred triremes (and around 200,000 men and one woman), and how narrow the south-eastern and northern entrances to the straits were. This was the whole point of Themistocles’ strategy and the measure of the Persians’ misjudgement. It is what all the sources, maps, analyses and commentaries tell us, but none of them more vividly than the direct experience of chugging through those same waters at not much more than ramming speed in a ferryboat of about the same length and width as a trireme and its 170 oars. It is possible to take the same boat back to Piraeus after a few minutes wait, but it is well worth spending a little longer. There is a truly authentic kapheneio-ouzeri, ‘To Perasma’, just a few steps from the ferry station ready to fortify the researcher with beer and wine, sardines and octopus before or after (preferably after) the essential scramble up the hill behind. From this ridge there is a view across to the south and west of the island which demonstrates that watchers on those shores could easily communicate by simple smoke or fire signals with the Greek command on the north-eastern side. More important is the panoramic view over the island of St George down the straits to Cynosoura and Psyttaleia, with Piraeus beyond. This takes in the whole stretch of water that was fought over and, on its southern side, the beaches and bays of Salamis and, opposite, the steep flanks of Mount Aigaleos on the Attic shore from where on some vantage point, possibly inside the secure perimeter of the modern Greek naval base or amongst the unromantic apartment blocks of Perama, Xerxes on his golden throne watched his disaster unfold. The view from the ridge behind Paloukia is like looking down the length of a great stadium. Back on the mainland, the tram-route from central Athens to Piraeus takes in Flisvos Marina where Olympias, when in dry dock in the Maritime Museum, keeps a watchful eye on Salamis and the approaches to Piraeus.
In Herodotus’ chronology, the Persians immediately obeyed Xerxes’ order and put to sea:
When the command to launch was given, the Barbarian fleet set course for Salamis and, under no pressure, formed up in line. However, by then it was too late in the day to fight a battle and night was coming on, but they were ready to fight next day. (8.70)
This can be plausibly explained as an unsuccessful attempt to draw the Hellenes out into the wider space of the Saronic Gulf, after which the Persians returned to Phalerum for the night when it was clear there would be no action. The timescale is telescoped here, as at other points, either for literary effect or because Herodotus’ information was sparse. ‘Next day’ implies that the night-time manoeuvres that preceded the battle followed on immediately from that afternoon’s manoeuvres. But it is unlikely that ships would have been sent out again immediately on a long night patrol with the expectation of combat the following morning. It could be that the Persians were hoping the Greeks would behave as they did at Artemisum and engage with them late in the day. Certainly, if the Persians were offering battle outside the straits, the Greeks were not tempted. The night operation that immediately preceded the battle is much more likely to have taken place a day or two later.
Fear and terror now gripped the Hellenes, especially those who had come from the Peloponnese. They were terrified because they had been posted to Salamis and were about to fight at sea to protect the Athenians’ homeland, and knew that if they were defeated they would be trapped on an island and under siege, leaving their own land unguarded. In fact, that very night the Barbarian army was on the march towards the Peloponnese. And, indeed, all possible measures were being taken to prevent the Barbarians invading by land. As soon as the Peloponnesians had learned that Leonidas and his men had met their end at Thermopylae, they had hastily gathered at the Isthmus and taken up position there. Cleombrotus son of Anaxandridas, the brother of Leonidas, was in command. With the Isthmus established as their base, they demolished the Scironian road15 and then built a wall right across the Isthmus as they had agreed to do when they were debating what action to take. Since there were tens of thousands of them all working together, they made excellent progress, bringing up stones, bricks, timber and baskets of sand. They worked at this together day and night without resting for a moment.
These were the Hellenes who mustered in full force at the Isthmus: the Lacedaemonians, all of the Arcadians, the Eleans, the Corinthians, the Sicyonians, the Epidaurians, the Phliasians,16 the Troezenians and the Hermioneans. They were the ones who marched out fearing for Hellas in her time of peril. The rest of the Peloponnesians did not care, even though the Olympian and Carnean festivals were now over. All the remaining cities of the Peloponnese, except those I have listed, stayed neutral. However, if I may put it bluntly, in staying neutral they actually medized. (8.70–73)
The focus of Herodotus’ narrative has switched briefly to land-based operations. A large Persian force may actually have been on the march towards the Isthmus in anticipation of victory off Salamis and the elimination of any seaborne defence of the position. Alternatively, this may simply have been a feint to put more pressure on the already strained alliance, or troop movements to secure beaches around the bay of Eleusis. Herodotus’ brief digression on the fortification works at the Isthmus, which he later states were not yet finished in the early summer of 479, provides an opportunity to shame the majority of the cities of the Peloponnese that took no part in the defence of Hellas.
The Peloponnesians at the Isthmus were so engaged with their work because they regarded their efforts as a race which had to be won at all cost, and also because they did not expect their ships to win. Those who were at Salamis knew what the Peloponnesians at the Isthmus were doing, but they were still very anxious, though not so much afraid for themselves as for the Peloponnese. For a while men only talked quietly to their neighbours, sharing their dismay at Eurybiades’ lack of judgement. But then this blew up into open discussion and many of the arguments were repeated. The Peloponnesians were for sailing back to the Peloponnese and taking their chance in its defence, and firmly against staying to fight for land that had already fallen under the spear. The Athenians, Aeginetans and Megarians wanted to stay where they were and defend that position.
Themistocles was losing the argument with the Peloponnesians so he slipped away from the meeting place and sent a man by boat to the Median camp with instructions to deliver a message. The man’s name was Sicinnus, and he was a household slave and tutor to Themistocles’ children. Later, after these events, Themistocles made him a rich man and enrolled him as a Thespian, when the Thespians were taking on citizens.17 He arrived in his boat and this is what he said to the Barbarian commanders, ‘The Athenian General has sent me to you and the other Hellenes know nothing about it. He is actually a supporter of the King and wishes you success, not the Hellenes. His message which I bring to you is that the Hellenes are terrified and plan to withdraw. You now have the opportunity to achieve the finest of all results, as long as you do not hold back and let them make their escape. The Hellenes are disunited and will not stand against you. Instead, you will see them fighting amongst themselves, those who are for you fighting those who are against.’ (8.74–75)
Herodotus’ wonderful story of Themistocles’ brilliant stroke of double-cross intelligence may well be part of the rapidly evolved mythology of the Persian War. However, as already seen, it was a core Persian strategy to maintain dialogue with their opponents, even up to the moment of battle, attempting to bring about a bloodless victory through high-level negotiation, or by undermining resistance with divisive bribery and threats further down the chain of command. Whatever means Themistocles used (and the Persian commanders would have been happy to speak with him directly), it was in character for him to exploit this channel to encourage Xerxes to order an attack without further delay. And Themistocles’ message that the fleet at Salamis was about to fall apart was one Xerxes wanted to hear, and probably even anticipated. He knew that only a tiny minority out of the 1,000 or so city-states that called themselves Hellene was standing against him on the island. Of this minority, some had until very recently been in dispute or at war with each other, and there were long histories of rivalry and enmity. Finally, it is likely that Xerxes had been kept well informed of the heated and narrowly won debates in which the Hellene defensive strategy had been forged, and of the stresses and frictions that jeopardized its implementation.
Sicinnus made himself scarce after delivering his message. It seemed genuine to the Persians, so they landed a substantial force on the island of Psyttaleia that lies between Salamis and the mainland, and then, in the middle of the night, they advanced their west wing in a circling movement towards Salamis, and the ships stationed around Ceos and Cynosoura also advanced so that they controlled the whole passage as far as Munychia. Their purpose in deploying their ships in this way was to prevent the Greeks escaping and to trap them on Salamis, and so pay them back for their success at Artemisium. Their purpose in landing men on the island called Psyttaleia was so that they could be there to give help to friends and kill enemies, for the island lay in the channel in which the fighting was about to take place and, when the battle took place, disabled ships and survivors would be carried onto it. They did all this in silence to prevent the enemy knowing about it, and they made these preparations overnight without any pause for sleep. (8.76)
As usual, Herodotus’ topographical information is vague about direction and location (hardly surprising in an era long before compass bearings, map references and scientific measurement of distance) and is open to various interpretations. The occupation of Psyttaleia provided the Persians with a piece of friendly shore in the middle of the eastern section of the channel they would be contesting, but he does not necessarily mean that the fighting was going to take place exclusively around the island of Psyttaleia. ‘The ships stationed around Ceos and Cynosoura’ have not been previously mentioned and Herodotus gives no indication of the size of this detachment from the main fleet at Phalerum, or of its precise mission. If he is referring to the island of Ceos south-east of the southern tip of Attica, it is possible that the objective was to blockade a line from that point to the promontory of Cynosoura on Salamis, to prevent any ships escaping or reinforcements reaching the island; the Parians stationed on Cythnos may have had a role in this. Additionally, it could have covered Aegina, the closest potential source of Hellene reinforcements. However, a shorter line running north from Psyttaleia close to the tip of Cynosoura and up to the mainland would have served the first two purposes more efficiently. It has been suggested that Ceos is the forgotten name of a small island just to the west of Psyttaleia, but this would suggest too small a concentration to stretch diagonally from Psyttaleia to Munychia. A third suggestion is that it was the name of a beach or harbour somewhere to the north-east on the shore of Attica; this would imply two squadrons spreading out from their bases and joining up to control ‘the whole passage as far as Munychia’. The advance of ‘the west wing in a circling movement towards Salamis’ makes best sense in the context of Herodotus’ later statement that, at the start of the battle, ‘the Phoenicians were facing the Athenians, positioned on the western flank, which was nearest to Eleusis’ (8.85). So, Salamis is taken here to mean the town and surrounding area, not the whole island. It was not literally encircled but the Persian fleet can be visualized forming an arc from its left flank resting on Psyttaleia to its right, resting on Cape Amphiale.
This was all done as quietly as possible under the cover of darkness. Night manoeuvres, though difficult and risky, are documented and were certainly within the capability of the best navies, but night fighting with friends and enemies indistinguishable in a melee was impossible. So, the Persians would have been able to enter the straits unopposed keeping close to the north side of the straits with the Phoenicians leading to form the right wing when they turned to face the Hellenes. It is very likely that the Hellenes were aware of the Persian manoeuvres. In the stillness of the night a watcher on the tip of Cynosoura could not have failed to hear the movement of hundreds of ships and the beat of thousands of oars across only 1,500m of open water, however hard the crews were trying to work their ships in silence. With little moon or an overcast sky, it might not have been possible at sea level to pick out silhouettes against the land behind, but they would have been visible against the water from higher ground. With a gentle breeze in the right direction watchers could even smell the ships. But there was nothing the Hellenes could do except prepare to attack or be attacked at first light.
Aeschylus the tragedian (c.525–455) fought at Marathon. Judging from his epitaph, this was the achievement of which he was most proud. It was more important to him than his many victories in the drama contests at the annual festivals of Dionysus, or his prodigious output of at least 80 plays, or, according to Pausanias, than serving in the fleet at Artemisium and Salamis. At 45 he was too old to fight on deck as a hoplite so he may have pulled an oar, or even commanded a trireme, like his brother Ameinias. In his Persae, staged in Athens in the festival of 472, a messenger brings news of the battle to Xerxes’ mother, Atossa. In a sense, this can be considered an eyewitness description, but Aeschylus’ purpose, poetic and religious, in writing his tragedy was different from Herodotus’ in writing his Historia. Persae was a triumphant yet pious celebration of a glorious, god-given climactic moment in the maturing of a city that was already deeply conscious of its present and future greatness. Aeschylus’ primary purpose was not to present a historical record as Herodotus understood the term. The play was well received, winning first prize with its three accompanying plays in that year’s contest. So, impressionistically, at least, it must have been an acceptable reflection of collective and personal memories of this very recent event in which most of the audience would have been directly involved. Many had also shared in the triumph of Marathon and lived through the tense decade that followed, and there would have been some older citizens in that cheering audience who had wept at Phrynichus’ Fall of Miletus 21 years before. The universal tragic theme, which is also woven into Herodotus’ narrative, of a great man who has offended the gods and will inevitably suffer for it, is at the heart of the play. But Aeschylus’ dramatic and poetic account of the battle also includes detail that valuably complements the Historia by reason of its contemporaneity and eyewitness credibility:
The whole disaster was set in train, O Queen,
By some avenging power or evil spirit.
A Hellene came from the Athenian fleet
And this is what he told your son, Xerxes:
‘When night’s dark mantle falls,
The Hellenes will wait no longer
But spring to their rowing benches and scatter
To save their lives and steal away.’
Xerxes took heed, not sensing Hellene deception
Nor the gods’ displeasure with him.
So, he gave these orders to his admirals:
‘When Helios ceases to warm the earth with his rays
And night’s mantle shrouds heaven’s holy space,
Divide your massed ships into three squadrons
To guard the channels and the paths of the sounding sea,
And send the rest to encircle Ajax’s isle.18
If any Hellene avoids his sorry fate
And finds some way to escape by stealth,
Execution will be the penalty for all.’
With confidence he made this declaration
In ignorance of the gods’ plans for him.
With discipline and obedient to their orders
Our crews prepared their supper.
Next, each man took his oar
And looped its thong over the tholepin, ready to row.19
Then, as the sun’s last radiance faded
And night came on, all had embarked,
Commanders of their oars or masters of their weapons.
The files of rowers cheered each other up and down the ships,
And so they put to sea, each captain following his orders.
All night long our ships kept station
And all the crews stayed at their oars.
But, when the night was almost over,
The Hellene fleet had made no attempt to steal away.
(Persae 353–85)
Themistocles’ deception is alluded to; while it was not proper to mention a living mortal’s name in tragedy, both his political supporters and his opponents would have relished the reference to him as ‘an avenging demon’. The tasks given to the three squadrons into which Xerxes divides his fleet are described in one line: ‘guard the channels and the paths of the sounding sea’. This can be interpreted in various ways but could be echoed in Herodotus’ ‘they advanced their west wing to envelop Salamis, and the ships stationed between Ceos and Cynosoura also advanced so that they controlled the whole passage as far as Munychia’. ‘The rest’ in Aeschylus’ next line, not mentioned by Herodotus, may have been identified by Diodorus Siculus:
Xerxes very much wanted to prevent the Greek naval forces linking up with their land forces, so he sent the Egyptian squadron with orders to seal off the straits between Salamis and Megara, and he sent the bulk of his fleet towards Salamis itself with orders to engage the enemy and settle the conflict in battle. (Library of History 11.17)
This puts the large and effective Egyptian fleet in position to cover the narrow Megara channel and pick off any Hellenes taking that route to the Isthmus. It could explain why Herodotus makes no mention of the Egyptians taking part in the battle. He later indicates that they were present at this point in the campaign, stating that Mardonius disembarked the heavy-armed Egyptian marines to be part of the army that was to stay behind in Greece to continue the war on land the following year.
In the meantime, the Hellene commanders on Salamis remained locked in close combat in their debate.20 They were not aware that they were now surrounded by the Barbarians’ ships but expecting to see them deployed as they had been through the day.21
While the generals were fighting it out, Aristides son of Lysimachus crossed over from Aegina. He was an Athenian who had been ostracized by the people and, having made a study of his character and conduct, I consider him the finest and most just man of his time in Athens. This man came to the meeting place and called Themistocles out of it, although he was no friend of his but, in fact, a bitter rival. Because of the scale of the present threat, he put all that out of his mind and called Themistocles out of the meeting because he wanted to discuss things with him. He had already heard that the contingents that had come from the Peloponnese were desperate to set sail for the Isthmus. So, when Themistocles came out to him, he said, ‘It is a good thing that we are in opposition to each other; competing to be the one who does most for our fatherland is a good thing in all circumstances, and especially now. But I can tell you that it now makes no difference how much or how little the Peloponnesians have to say about sailing away from here. I have seen with my own eyes that, however much even the Corinthians and Eurybiades himself want it, they will not be able to get out. We are surrounded by the enemy. Go back in there and spell this out to them.’
Themistocles replied, ‘That is excellent advice and it is good news that you bring. You come here after seeing with your own eyes that what I wanted to happen has come about. You should know that it was I who made the Medes do this. Since the Hellenes have shown themselves unwilling to stand and fight when they could choose not to, it has become necessary to force them to do it whether they like it or not. Since you are the bearer of this good news, tell it to them yourself. If it were me telling them, they would think I was making it up and would not believe that the Barbarians have been taking this action. So, go in there yourself and make it clear to them how things stand. It will be best if they are convinced by you, but if they still cannot believe what they are being told, it is all the same to us. They will not be able to escape, if we are indeed completely surrounded as you say we are.’ That is what Themistocles said.
So, Aristides went in and addressed the meeting. He reported that he had come from Aegina and only just managed to slip through the blockade to make the crossing, because the Hellene position was completely surrounded by Xerxes’ ships, and he advised them to make ready to defend themselves. When he had finished speaking, he withdrew from the meeting and the arguing started all over again because most of the commanders did not believe what Aristides had told them. And these Hellenes were still not convinced, but then Tenian deserters arrived in a trireme commanded by a man called Panaetius, son of Sosimenes, and he confirmed that this was indeed the true situation. For that act, the Tenians22 are included amongst the names of those who overcame the Barbarians inscribed on the column at Delphi. With this ship deserting at Salamis and the one from Lemnos that had previously joined it at Artemisium, the Hellene fleet was brought up to a total strength of 380 having previously fallen two short of that figure. (8.78–82)
Aristides’ dramatic entrance and dialogue with Themistocles was spiced up for Herodotus’ Athenian audience by the knowledge that this leading politician had been ostracized two or three years previously as a consequence of his rivalry with Themistocles. Themistocles’ first appearance in the narrative is similarly stage managed. In fact, it is very unlikely that Aristides burst onto the scene in this fashion, because all ostracized citizens had been recalled from exile earlier in the year as one of the emergency measures taken to prepare the city for the anticipated invasion. The aristocratic Aristides, to be known later as ‘the Just’, was popularly contrasted with wily Themistocles, the man of the people. However, this collaboration in the national interest was to last for the next couple of years in which Athens established her leadership of the Delian League, the formal Hellene alliance that was to evolve into the Athenian Empire.
The Hellene commanders decided to believe what the Tenians told them and made their ships ready for battle. With the dawn they called their marines together and Themistocles’ speech was the best, setting out all that is strong in human nature and the human condition in contrast to the lesser qualities. He urged the men to embrace the former and then gave the command to embark. The men went on board and, at that moment, the trireme which had been despatched to collect Aeacus and his sons23 returned from Aegina.
The Hellenes put out to sea in full force, and, as they were putting out to sea, the Barbarians bore down on them. Some backed water and came near to beaching their ships, but then an Athenian, Ameinias of Pallene, darted forward and rammed an enemy ship. The two ships were locked together and could not separate, and others came to Ameinias’ aid and joined the fight. This is how the Athenians say the battle began; but the Aeginetans say the ship that made the crossing to Aegina to collect Aeacus and his sons started it. The story is also told that a female spectre appeared and shouted orders in a voice loud enough to be heard by the whole Greek fleet, beginning with this reproach, ‘Madmen, how much further are you going to back off?’ (8.83–84)
After their overnight manoeuvres the Persians were poised to attack at sunrise and the Hellenes were ready to meet them. Some reconstructions of the battle follow Diodorus Siculus, who states that the Hellenes ‘occupied the passage between the Heracleum and Salamis’ (Library of History 11.18), suggesting that initially their line ran across the straits around 2,000m from the eastern entrance, its right resting on Salamis and its left on the mainland shore. If the Hellenes had waited there and allowed the Persians to enter the straits in columns and manoeuvre into line, they would have left their beaches and encampments on Salamis to the east of their position completely exposed. Also, they would have had to keep 100m or more of clear water between their left flank and the shore to stay out of range of the thousands of archers that the Persians could mass at the water’s edge; their oarsmen were protected but all on deck would have been lethally exposed. The Persians would then have had a good chance of streaming through this gap and carrying out a decisive periplous. Their left would not have been exposed to the same threat from the Salamis shore because supplying the standard complement of four archers for each trireme would have left only a modest number on land.
A more plausible reconstruction has the two sides following the tactical principle of fighting with a friendly shore at their backs and facing each other across the straits, the Persians formed into line after entering under cover of darkness and the Hellenes coming straight out from their beaches. Contact was almost immediate, as Herodotus indicates, because the fleets were only a few hundred metres apart by the time the Hellenes had launched and formed their line, which was probably two ships deep and approximately 3,000m long. On engagement, their left rested on the eastern edge of Enchantress 1 and their right on the tip of Cynosoura. Elements may have thrust further forward initially and then backed water to draw the enemy on as the gap between the two fleets narrowed. In any case commanders and helmsmen would have been adjusting their positions in the line, darting short distances forward and astern, feinting attack and probing for openings whilst avoiding creating opportunities for the enemy. The ideal manoeuvre was to break into the enemy line with a sudden sprint and then to turn sharply and ram their target in the side or the stern quarter. Thucydides, who commanded triremes in battle, makes the limitations of eyewitness accounts very clear in his description of the disastrous defeat of the Athenian fleet in the harbour of Syracuse in 413:
The opposing armies on shore suffered the most agonizing and conflicting emotions whilst victory hung in the balance ... Their view of the battle from the shore was inevitably as variable as the fighting itself. Close up to the action and looking at different pieces of it, some who saw comrades winning and drew courage from this were moved to call upon the gods not to deny them salvation, while others who saw comrades losing shouted cries of despair, and suffered more stress as spectators than the actual combatants ... In that one Athenian army, while the outcome of the battle remained uncertain, you could hear, all at the same time, shrieks, cheers, cries of ‘We’re winning’ or ‘We’re losing’ and the whole range of reactions you would expect from a great army in mortal danger. And it was much the same for the men on the ships. (History of the Peloponnesian War 7.71)
The story of the female spectre reflects the emotions experienced by the Hellenes watching from the shores of Salamis or, even more specifically, the consternation felt by onlookers who did not understand what was going on tactically. Ships off Enchantress 1, the promontory on the north side of Ambelaki Bay and the eastern end of Cynosoura would have begun the battle close to shore and any tactical backwatering might have appeared suicidal; a beached ship was hopelessly vulnerable.
At this point, according to the later Athenian slander that Herodotus repeats, Adeimantus fled with his 40 Corinthian ships:
The Athenians say that the Corinthian commander Adeimantus was in such a state of terror and panic at the start of the fighting when the first ships engaged that he unfurled his sails and turned and fled. Seeing their commander taking flight, the rest of the Corinthians followed suit. But when they had withdrawn as far along the shore of Salamis as the temple of Athena Sciras,24 they were met by a small craft. It must have been despatched by the gods, they say, because no mortal man appears to have sent it and because the Corinthians knew nothing about what was happening to the rest of the fleet when it approached them. That is why they think this was a case of divine intervention. When this boat had drawn closer to the Corinthian ships, the men on board hailed them. ‘Adeimantus,’ they shouted, ‘by turning your ships to flight you are betraying the Hellenes. They are actually winning the battle and overcoming the enemy as they prayed they would.’ Adeimantus would not believe this. Then they told him that they were willing to be taken hostage and killed if the Corinthians found that the Hellenes were not the victors. So then Adeimantus and the rest of them turned their ships round and rejoined the fleet when the fighting was all over. This is the story told by the Athenians, but the Corinthians contest it and argue that they played a leading part in the battle, and the rest of Hellas confirms that this was so. (8.94)
It is impossible to square this story with other evidence that the Corinthians, the second strongest element in the Hellene fleet, played a leading part in the fighting. If they did leave their position in the line somewhere to the right of the Athenians and sail between them and the advancing enemy and out of the straits between the Enchantresses, this must have been to reinforce Themistocles’ disinformation that the Hellenic Alliance was falling apart. After pausing briefly then receiving a signal that the Persian right was fully engaged, they could have rowed back and launched an unexpected attack on its flank and rear. In his strange and vicious essay, On the Malice of Herodotus, Plutarch misses Herodotus’ clear signals that he does not believe this story himself and, to refute it, quotes the inscription on a memorial to the Corinthians who died at Salamis:
When all of Hellas hung on a razor’s edge,
We gave our lives to save her.
(On the Malice of Herodotus 39)
Aeschylus paints a more glorious picture than Herodotus of the battle’s opening phase:
As soon as the white colts of daybreak,
Brilliant to behold, covered the earth,
A cry rang out from the Hellene ranks
Like a triumph song, and a high echo
Bounced back from the island rocks.
Terror gripped the Barbarians,
Terror and shattered hopes. This was not flight!
The Hellenes were singing their sacred paean
And surging into battle with spirits high.
A trumpet call set them all afire.
Straightway, on the command, they dipped their oars,
All striking the ocean brine together.
Swiftly the whole fleet came into view,
The right wing leading in perfect order
And then the whole host coming out against us.
And we could hear a great shout,
‘Sons of Hellas, forward to freedom!
Freedom for the land of your fathers!
Freedom for your children and wives!
Freedom for the shrines of your ancestral gods,
For the tombs of your forefathers!
Now all is at stake!’
From our side, a hubbub of Persian voices answered back.
Now there could be no more delay.
Straightway, ship struck ship with brazen prow.
A Hellene ship was the first to strike,
Breaking off the whole sternpost of a Phoenician.25
Then all the rest picked targets for their spearing rams.26
(Persae 386–411)
Aeschylus graphically captures the moment, under wispy cloud lit by the risen sun or with morning mist breaking up along the shoreline, when the Greek fleet gathered itself to advance. Trumpet call and paean were a long-established part of the ritual of hoplite war. Aeschylus may be quoting words from one of the speeches given before Salamis, even Themistocles’. Some reconstructions of the battle have been ingeniously based on a literal interpretation of the three lines describing the emergence of the Greek fleet, including one in which it appears in its entirety from either side of Enchantress 1, which would have been a dangerously cramped and unwieldy manoeuvre. But, as there is no indication of the position from which the Persian messenger was observing, there are a number of possibilities, and, given the nature of the source, it is fairly pointless to debate their merits. Ameinias and other participants named by Herodotus may well have been in the audience in 472. However, as with Themistocles, the conventions of tragedy would not allow any of them to be named and Aeschylus’ focus on the clash of two civilizations, Hellene and Barbarian, ruled out parochial nationalism. But he and his fellow citizens knew who the real heroes were. Specific incidents mentioned by Aeschylus and Herodotus could have taken place more or less simultaneously at different points along the 3,000m line.
The battle would have entered its main phase with an increasing number of ‘dogfights’ flaring up with no major breakthrough. The Greeks probably had kept few ships back in reserve but the Persians will have sent in large numbers as soon as possible after sunrise, pressing in behind the assault squadrons. Herodotus gives about the same amount of space to the fighting at Salamis that he gives to the fighting at Thermopylae. However, here, he does not organize the narrative chronologically, but broadly divides it into two accounts of the battle, first from the Persian point of view and then from the Hellene, focusing on the performance and fortunes of the main contingents. He picks out the exploits of some individuals, giving most prominence to two central characters, Artemisia and Themistocles. Sadly, he gives only glimpses of the overall shape of the engagement. However, his placing of the Phoenicians opposite the Athenians ‘on the western flank, which was nearest to Eleusis’ and the Ionians ‘on the eastern flank, which was nearest to Piraeus’ clearly indicates that the battle commenced with the two fleets facing each other across the straits. Although Eleusis is actually some distance to the north of Salamis, the section of the straits (leading to Eleusis) in which the battle was fought runs from east to west.
The Phoenicians were facing the Athenians, positioned on the western flank, which was nearest to Eleusis. The Ionians were opposite the Lacedaemonians on the eastern flank which was nearest to Piraeus. Just a few of the Ionians followed Themistocles’ instruction to hang back and most of them did not. I could recite a long list of the Ionian commanders who took Hellene ships, but I shall name just two, Theomestor son of Andromadas and Phylacus son of Histiaeus.27 The reason I mention only these two is that Theomestor was installed as tyrant of Samos28 for the service he had done, while Phylacus was publicly honoured as a King’s benefactor and awarded a lot of land. The Persian word for King’s benefactors is orosangai. So much for those Ionians. The majority of their ships at Salamis were sunk, some destroyed by the Athenians, some by the Aeginetans.
Because the Hellenes fought with discipline and held their formation, while the Barbarians allowed theirs to be broken up and did not seem to be following any plan, the outcome was inevitable. Yet the Barbarians conducted themselves much better that day than they did off Euboea, for they all fought hard out of fear of Xerxes, each one thinking that the King was watching him personally. As for the rest of the Barbarians and the Hellenes on their side, I cannot tell you in detail how any individuals fought, except for Artemisia. This is what happened, and it made the King think even more highly of her.
At the point when the King’s fleet had been reduced to absolute confusion, Artemisia’s ship was being chased by an Athenian. She could not get away from it, for friendly ships were in her way and she was close to the enemy. So, she decided on a course of action which proved most effective. With the Athenian ship on her tail, she bore down and rammed one of the friendly ships; it was manned by Calyndians and had Damasithymus, king of Calyndos,29 on board. Maybe she had some quarrel with him while they were still at the Hellespont and did this intentionally, or maybe it was chance that put the Calyndian ship in her way: I can’t say. But when Artemisia rammed and sank it, she had the good fortune to benefit twice over. When the Athenian commander saw her ram a Barbarian ship, he thought that Artemisia’s ship was either Hellene or a deserter from the Barbarians fighting on his side, so he changed course to pursue other targets. And so it turned out that Artemisia managed to make her escape and save herself, and the trick she played won her high approval from Xerxes. For it is said that the King, as he watched the battle, saw her ship ram the other, and one of his attendants said, ‘Master, do you see how well Artemisia has been fighting? She has just sunk an enemy ship.’ The King asked if it was truly Artemisia who had done this and they confirmed it, because they clearly recognized her insignia on the ship and assumed it was an enemy ship that she had sunk. As I have said, all this was most fortunate for her, and additionally no one on the Calyndian ship survived to bear witness against her. It is said that Xerxes’ response to this was, ‘My men have become women, and my women men.’ Well, this is what they say Xerxes said. (8.85–88)
This is a great story that would have been treasured by the Halicarnassians. Also, Xerxes’ (alleged) exclamation neatly echoes Artemisia’s earlier frank appraisal of his men’s fighting qualities and chimes with Herodotus’ more general, quite regular comparisons of Hellene manhood to the Barbarian variety. However, if Artemisia’s ship was actually identifiable from Xerxes’ vantage point, which is doubtful given the probable distance, it is unlikely that the Calyndian king’s would not also have been recognizable. Earlier, Herodotus names Damasithymus as one of the leading commanders in the Persian fleet. This made him Artemisia’s peer and his insignia would presumably have been equally distinctive. Finally, Herodotus says later that the Athenians had put an enormous price on Artemisia’s head, ‘appalled that a woman should go to war against Athens’ (8.93). It does seem very unlikely that the Athenian commander, Ameinias, would have failed to identify her ship when he had it in his sights, when the Persian staff on shore hundreds of metres away could apparently pick it out in the melee.
In this struggle the general Ariabignes, son of Darius and brother of Xerxes, and many other famous Persians, Medes and allies fell. But only a few of the Hellenes died because they knew how to swim. When their ships were sunk, if they had not been killed in the hand-to-hand fighting, they swam over to Salamis.30 Most of the Barbarian dead were drowned because they did not know how to swim. Most of their ships were sunk at the point in the battle when those in the front line turned to fall back and those behind, trying to push through to put up a good show for the King, fell foul of the ships on their own side that were trying to get away.
At the height of all this confusion it happened that some Phoenicians who had lost their ships approached the King and blamed the Ionians for their destruction, accusing them of treason. But it turned out that it was not the Ionian commanders who were executed, but their Phoenician accusers who were rewarded in this way. As they were speaking, a Samothracian ship rammed an Athenian. While the Athenian ship was foundering, an Aeginetan ship rammed the Samothracian. But the Samothracians are javelin fighters and they swept the deck of the ship that had rammed them with their javelins, charged aboard and captured it. This incident saved the Ionians’ lives, for when Xerxes saw them performing this excellent feat he rounded on the Phoenicians and, laying the blame in every direction in his deep displeasure, gave orders that their heads be cut off to stop men who had revealed how base they were slandering their betters. Xerxes was seated at the foot of the mountain called Aigaleos that faces Salamis and whenever he saw one of his ships doing well in the battle, he asked who the commander was and the scribes wrote down his name, his father’s name and the name of his city. Ariaramnes, a Persian who was a good friend to the Ionians, happened to be amongst those present and he had some part in the Phoenicians’ evil fate. So Xerxes’ men dealt with the Phoenicians as instructed. (8.89–90)
Both the incidents above, Artemisia’s ruse and the Samothracian capture of the Athenian ship, took place in the latter part of the battle when the Athenians and the rest of the Hellenes were driving Xerxes’ fleet out of the straits with the Aeginetans harrying its flank. Thucydides, in his description of the battle of Sybota (fought off Corcyra in 433), gives a convincing impression of the nature of the fighting in the earlier phase when the Hellene and Barbarian fleets were locked together with neither giving way. He is writing from the perspective of a ‘modern’, Peloponnesian War-era naval commander:
When the signal flags had been hoisted, the two sides engaged and, in their inexperience, fought this sea-battle in the old-fashioned way with many hoplites on deck, and also archers and javelin men. It was a tough fight, not in terms of competing seamanship (techne), but more like a land-battle. For, when they rammed, it was difficult to pull back with the number of ships crowded together, and victory depended more on the hoplites on deck, who had to stand and fight on their stationary ships. There was no diekplous. It was a contest of guts and brute strength rather than tactical skill and there was a great deal of noise and muddle. (History of the Peloponnesian War 1.49)
It seems that the bulk of the fighting in this phase of the battle of Salamis was done in what Thucydides calls the ‘old-fashioned way’. Diekplous and periplous, manoeuvres that characterized the modern way, had already become the part of the Hellenes’ tactical vocabulary by the time of the battle of Lade in the first decade of the century. But Themistocles and his fellow-commanders do not appear to have attempted them in the fleet engagements of 480 because they could not match the skill and experience of their opponents with their ‘better-sailing’ ships. Instead they opted for the more static ‘land-battle at sea’ in the confined waters of the straits, to be fought out on deck by massed infantry as much as by manoeuvre and ramming. The battle of Sybota, a prelude to the Peloponnesian War, was fought between the Corcyreans, aided by Athenians, and the Corinthians and their allies. Thucydides points out that 270 ships were engaged there, making it a larger battle than any previously fought between Hellenes. At Salamis there were around three times that number locked in combat, with at least three times the ‘noise and muddle’.
Plutarch, more interested in his subject’s character than his greatest achievement, gives only a little space to the battle of Salamis in his Life of Themistocles. But he does add detail and colour to Herodotus’ account:
Themistocles is thought to have selected the best time to fight with as much precision as he selected the place. This is because he was careful not to send his triremes into attack on the Barbarians until the hour of the day in which a fresh breeze blows in from the sea and drives a swell through the straits. This breeze was not a problem for the Hellene ships, as they were low in the water and relatively small. But it was disastrous for the Barbarian ships, with their towering sterns, lofty decks and heavy displacement. When it struck them, it swung them broadside-on to the Hellenes. Then they darted into the attack, following Themistocles’ lead because they had confidence in his tactical understanding. They were up against Xerxes’ admiral Ariamnes31 on a huge ship, showering arrows and javelins off it as from a city wall. He was a brave man, the most powerful and just of the King’s brothers. Two Athenians, Ameinias of Decelea32 and Socles of Paeanea, rammed him head-on and the two ships were locked together by their bronze beaks. Ariamnes tried to board their trireme but the two Athenians held him off and hurled him into the sea with their spear thrusts. Artemisia recognized his body drifting amongst the other wreckage and recovered it for Xerxes. (Themistocles 14)
Themistocles’ successful exploitation of local weather conditions as remarked on here has been incorporated in modern reconstructions of the battle, and local knowledge must have given the Hellenes some advantage. But Herodotus makes it clear that the Hellenes were in no position to delay contact when the enemy bore down on them at sunrise. Secondly, Xerxes’ ships would have had no more difficulty than the Hellenes in coping with any breeze or the light swell that it blew up. The seagoing and fighting capabilities of the non-Hellene ships in the Persian fleet are discussed in the Introduction (from here). The clash Plutarch describes may well have been replicated many times over in the battle.
Herodotus continues and concludes his account of the battle:
The Athenians and the Aeginetans did the most damage to the Persian fleet. When the Barbarians were put to flight and trying to get out of the straits and back to Phalerum, the Aeginetans were lying in wait for them in the channel and did famous deeds. For while the Athenians were dealing with those ships that put up some resistance or were trying to make their escape in the confusion, the Aeginetans dealt with those that were trying to get out of the straits. So, any that escaped the Athenians ran straight into the Aeginetans.
Themistocles, in pursuit of an enemy ship, came alongside Polycritus son of Crius, an Aeginetan, who had just rammed a Sidonian ship. This was the one that had captured the Aeginetan ship that was patrolling off Sciathos with Pytheas son of Ischenous on board, the man whose courage had so amazed the Persians that they kept him on their ship after cutting him to ribbons. This Sidonian ship carrying him in the Persian fleet was now captured in turn, so Pytheas was brought back safe to Aegina. When Polycritus saw the Athenian ship, he identified it as the flagship from its pennant and called out to Themistocles, taunting him and reproaching him for the allegation that Aegina had medized, aiming these disparaging remarks at Themistocles as he rammed the enemy ship.
The surviving Barbarian ships escaped and got away to Phalerum and the protection of the land forces. In this sea-battle the Aeginetans were spoken of as the Hellenes who fought the best, and after them the Athenians, and individually named were Polycritus the Aeginetan and the Athenians Eumenes of Anagyrus and Ameinias of Pallene, the one who pursued Artemisia. If he had known that she was on board that ship, he would not have given up the chase until he had either captured her or been captured himself. These were the orders given to the Athenian commanders and a prize of 10,000 drachmas was also on offer for whoever took Artemisia alive, so appalled were they that a woman should go to war against Athens. But, as I have already said, she escaped with the rest of them, those whose ships had survived, to Phalerum. (8.91–93)
As there were only 30 Aeginetan ships in the battle, Herodotus may be exaggerating the scale of their contribution, but theirs was one of the most experienced naval contingents on the Hellene side, and it is possible to envisage it positioned as a reserve in Ambelaki Bay and darting out into the flank of the retreating Persians. Herodotus clearly relished the stories of the rescue of Pytheas and the sharp exchange between the former enemies, Polycritus and Themistocles.
Aeschylus moves in one line from the opening clash to a graphic description of the disastrous rout that closed the battle. He powerfully evokes the horror of the Persian defeat and accurately summarizes the main cause of it but, like Herodotus, he offers little in the way of descriptive detail on tactics or combat. Of course, their audiences could readily fill this out from personal experience of naval combat or from the shared memories of friends and relatives.
At first the great stream of Persian ships held its own,
But, when the mass of them crowded into the narrows,
Far from giving support, they crashed into each other
With their bronze-beaked prows shattering all their rowing gear.
The Hellenes systematically worked their way around them
And struck from all directions.
Capsized hulls covered the open water
Clogging it with wreckage and the dead.
The shores and reefs were draped with corpses.
Every ship was flying in chaos,
Every ship, that is, in the Barbarian fleet.
The Hellenes, like fishermen netting tuna or some other haul of fish,
Battered and skewered with broken timbers and splintered oars,
And screams and groans filled the salty air
Until black-eyed night brought the horror to an end.
(Persae 412–28)
Themistocles’ plan had worked. He had drawn the enemy into a space in which their superior numbers and ‘better-sailing’ ships gave them no advantage, and met them on the Salamis side of the straits with his flanks protected by Enchantress 1 to the left and the tip of Cynosoura to the right. The Hellenes were probably lined up two-deep with some reserves held back in Ambelaki Bay and off Paloukia beach. The Corinthians would have made their decoy run early enough for the gap left by their 40 triremes to be filled before the two fleets engaged. The Persian line, perhaps three-deep initially, became deeper as it compressed on its approach to the shorter Hellene line. Their helmsmen had very little room for manoeuvre; evasive action led to crippling collisions and the more freely moving Hellene triremes were able to exploit the mounting chaos ‘systematically’ like a wolf pack herding and picking off a large flock of sheep. A turning point may have been the moment when the Corinthians rejoined the battle and helped the Athenians roll up the Persians’ left and start to drive them back down the straits. One of the Hellene trophies was set up on Enchantress 1; a second trophy on Cynosoura was perhaps intended to celebrate the ejection of the Barbarians from the straits. In the course of the fighting, the blockading squadrons may have entered the straits to join the battle and made the situation worse when they met the retreating assault squadrons.
Another Persae, a highly wrought solo ode (nomos in a different usage of the word) sung to the lyre and first performed about 70 years later, compresses the action into even fewer lines. Its writer, composer and performer, Timotheus was from Miletus, the most renowned citharode (lyre-player and singer) of his time and highly regarded as an innovative composer. Like many classical and romantic opera librettos, his verse, when divorced from its musical accompaniment, tends not to be of the highest literary quality. But what a word-picture he paints with his lurid palette! His audiences were Hellenes who would have been wearily familiar at first- or close second-hand with the realities of combat at sea in the grim closing years of the Peloponnesian War. In that period, ironically, Persian gold was to underwrite the Spartans’ war effort leading to their ultimate success in 404. Timotheus’ celebration of the great victory at Salamis in which Athens played such a decisive part would have been especially comforting and inspiring for citizens, still heavily bruised by the disastrous failure of their Sicilian campaign and knocked about by political upheaval, which even overturned democracy for a period:
Spray flying from the oars,
The fleets sweep together
Ploughing through the swell
Ram teeth bared.
They close, and curving prows
Rip through the fir-tree limbs.33
A strike on one side shatters oars
And throws the rowers all one way.
Then, on the other side, a second strike
Smashes more banks of oars and seafaring pine
And hurls the rowers back again.
Ships stripped of their limbs
Show their flax-girt hulls.34
Some overturn, blasted by thunderbolts of lead.35
Others founder as metal-capped rams
Sheer off their ornamented stern-posts.
Like an inferno spreading,
Thong-spun javelins leap from many hands
And find their mark in quivering flesh.
Flaming brands36 like roasting spits shower down
And from the bowstrings arrows fly,
Winged, far-shooting darts of bronze
Heaping slaughter upon slaughter
Until the emerald tresses of the ocean
Turn crimson round the ships
And shouts and shrieks fill the air.
So, the Barbarian fleet was driven back
Over the shining fish-garlanded folds
Of Amphitrite’s robe.37
(Persae 1–39)
A few lines further on, Timotheus piles on the metaphors to add yet more lurid detail:
The Barbarian fleet fell back in hasty flight
And the battle lines crashed together
Caught in the long neck of the straits.
The ships’ mountain-feet38 ripped from rowers’ hands
Smashed their mouths’ bright-shining offspring.39
The waters were strewn with constellations
Of breathless, lifeless bodies
And the beaches were heaped with corpses.
(Persae 86–97)
And his lines on a drowning landlubber Persian are equally graphic:
He was a man from the plains,
Lord of lands a day’s journey wide.
With his feet and hands
He pounded the water,
A floating island battered by the ocean.
And each time the wind fell in one direction
It rose against him from another,
And Bacchus had no part
In the foaming floodtide
Surging through his gullet.40
Desperate and crazed, with chattering teeth
He spluttered curses at the ocean,
His mortal destruction.
(Persae 40–71)
Ineffectually, he reminds the sea that the Great King ‘has yoked your turbulent neck with bonds of hemp’ (meaning the ‘neck’ of the Hellespont) and warns that ‘his roving seamen will control his plains’. He ends with a curse, then dies:
‘Your rage brings woe,
Hated from ancient times,
Fickle bosom-friend of the swift-drenching wind!’
Breathless, he cried out
And from his grimly frothing mouth
He spewed up deep-sea brine.
(Persae 79–85)
When the Persians had finally been driven out of the straits, the Hellenes could deal with the Barbarian force that had been landed on Psyttaleia during the night. Herodotus and Plutarch present this as a major operation involving hoplites. Pausanias in his Guide to Greece gives a more realistic idea of its scale:
I drew attention to the excellence of the Athenian Aristides son of Lysimachus a little earlier. This is what he did in the affair at Salamis. He gathered together a large force from the Athenian hoplites who were lined up along the beaches and led them in an assault on the island of Psyttaleia, and they slaughtered all the Persians who were on that small island. (Herodotus 8.95)
Aristides, observing that the small island of Psyttaleia that lies in the channel off Salamis was full of enemy troops, landed boatloads of the most committed and warlike citizens on the island, joined battle with the Barbarians and killed them all, except for the most notable amongst them, who were taken alive. (Plutarch Aristides 9)
Here they say that about 400 of the Persians landed, and when the fleet of Xerxes was defeated, these also were killed after the Greeks had crossed over to Psyttaleia. (Guide to Greece 1.36)
Aeschylus gives a fuller and grander account as the Messenger continues his report to Queen Atossa:
The scale of disaster that followed
Was twice as terrible as that which came before.
Men of Persia in the prime of life,
Finest spirits of most noble birth
And foremost in loyalty to the King
Have met an ugly death, inglorious fate!
There is an island just off Salamis,
Small and not a good place to drop anchor.
Pan, who loves to dance, haunts its shore.
The King despatched those men there with this charge
To kill enemy Hellenes who would be easy prey
When they abandoned ship and sought safety on the island,
And to rescue friends from the channels of the sea.
How badly he misread events!
For when some god had granted Hellas glory in their ships,
That same day, Hellenes, fully armed in bronze,
Leapt ashore and made a circle all around the isle.
There was nothing our men could do, nowhere to turn.
Many were struck down by stones flung at them,
Or by the arrows that showered from bowstrings.
And then they charged in one great rush
And hacked at the wretches’ limbs and butchered them.
Xerxes wailed as he watched this great disaster,
For he was seated with a clear view of all his forces
On a lofty headland close by the sea.
He tore his garments with bitter groans
And gave immediate orders to his land force
Urging it to disorderly flight.
That is the second disaster you must lament.
(Persae 433–71)
Aeschylus does not depict a classic hoplite action, rather suggesting that a mixed force with a large, light-armed element dealt with the enemy force on Psyttaleia. With the Athenian triremes heavily manned for a ‘land-battle at sea’, as described by Thucydides, there may not have been a very large body of Athenian hoplites on Salamis to call upon for this operation. The later tradition may be a reflection of political rivalry between the property-owning classes, who filled the hoplite ranks, and their lowlier fellow citizens who rowed the triremes; Aristides was champion of the former, Themistocles of the latter. If, as is likely, there was a lot of fighting on deck, defending their own or attacking the enemy’s, the contribution to victory of the hoplites did not actually require extra recognition. But their traditional role was in land-battles.
When the engagement was broken off, the Hellenes towed all the disabled ships that were still in the straits back to Salamis in readiness to fight again because they expected the King to carry on with the ships that were still available to him. A west wind took hold of many of the disabled ships and carried them to the part of the coast of Attica that is called Colias. So, the prophecies about this battle which the oracles Bacis and Musaeus41 had written were fulfilled, and also the prophecy many years earlier of Lysistratus, an Athenian soothsayer, concerning the wrecks that were carried to shore there. The Hellenes had previously been quite unable to interpret his words, ‘The Colian women will cook with oars’. But this was to happen after the King had marched away. (8.96)
Neither Herodotus nor Aeschylus quantifies the losses on either side but a Roman source, possibly with access to some earlier record, states quite plausibly that the Greeks lost over 40 triremes and the Persians more than 200. The loss of life on the Persian side would have been proportionately higher because of their larger deck crews which included Persians, Medes and Sacae who mostly could not swim. On this arithmetic, Xerxes, with the uncommitted Egyptian squadron as a nucleus, still had numbers in his favour, but the crews that had escaped from the straits were demoralized and many of the ships would need work to make them battleworthy again. His reaction to the day’s defeat would not have been as extreme as Queen Atossa’s, as imagined by Aeschylus: ‘Aiai! A vast ocean of disasters has swamped the Persians and the entire Barbarian race’ (Persae 433–34). He had taken and destroyed Athens and become master of central and northern Greece, and, though he had lost a battle at sea, his massive land army was intact and undefeated. However, he was a long way from home and the centre of empire, and the campaigning season was drawing to a close.
When Xerxes fully understood the scale of the calamity, he became afraid that one of the Ionians might advise the Hellenes to sail to the Hellespont and destroy the bridges, if they did not think of it themselves. He would then be cut off in Europe and in mortal danger. So, he began to plan his escape but wanted to conceal this from both the Hellenes and his own men. He attempted to build a causeway over to Salamis, lashing together Phoenician cargo ships to form both a pontoon bridge and a boom,42 and he also prepared his fleet for action as if he was going to fight another battle. All who saw Xerxes doing these things did not doubt that he fully intended to stay and fight. But Mardonius, who knew very well from experience how the King’s mind worked, was not taken in.
While doing all this, Xerxes sent a messenger to Persia to announce the disaster. This second messenger, coming in soon after the first, caused the Barbarians such distress that they all tore their clothing and cried out with endless wailing, and they put the blame on Mardonius. It was not the loss of their ships so much as fear for the safety of Xerxes himself that put them in this state. This was the feeling in Persia from the message’s arrival until Xerxes’ return.43 (8.97–100).
Herodotus states earlier that Gelon of Syracuse won his victory over the Carthaginians at Himera on the same day as the battle of Salamis but offers no description of the campaign. The Sicilian Diodorus Siculus, placing it earlier in the year, concludes his account of it by rating it as highly as the two great Hellene victories in Greece:
Many writers compare the battle to the one the Hellenes fought at Plataea and compare Gelon’s generalship to the ingenuity of Themistocles, and, because of each man’s extraordinary merit, some rate one most highly and some the other. It turned out that Gelon won his victory on the same day that Leonidas and his men were coming to the end of their fight against Xerxes at Thermopylae, just as if it had been divinely ordained that both the fairest victory44 and the most highly renowned defeat45 should take place at the same time. (Library of History 11.23)
A different result would have tipped the balance of power in Sicily significantly in favour of the Carthaginians and Phoenicians and their Hellene allies, and could have had damaging repercussions for Hellas as a whole, whatever the outcome of Xerxes’ invasion. In the short term, Hamilcar’s invasion made it impossible for Syracuse and other potentially sympathetic Sicilian powers to assist in the defence of Greece. So even if the scale of this particular clash is exaggerated by Diodorus, and whether or not there was any Persian involvement, it was more than a sideshow in the events of 480.
Notes
1 Later sources identify Mnesiphilus as a mentor to Themistocles. His intervention is likely to have been a fiction introduced into the tradition by Themistocles’ detractors. But there is evidence that an Athenian of this name was important enough to be nominated for ostracism in Themistocles’ time.
2 The ships were beached rather than at anchor off-shore and the crews camped out on the shore, but it does appear that commanders stayed on board, probably sleeping in the small cabin at the stern; senior crew members may also have slept on deck or in the central companionway.
3 Olive wreaths at the Olympic Festival.
4 A stateless person might also be an outlaw, denied isonomia, ‘equality under the law’.
5 Athens appears to have had no historic claim to this city, but the general idea was not unrealistic and Themistocles had daughters named Italia and Sybaris, suggesting some connection.
6 These were important preparations for imminent battle. Ajax, prominent in the Iliad, and Telamon, his father, were local heroes of Salamis. Aeacus, son of Zeus, the local hero of Aegina, was father of Telamon and Peleus, who were respectively fathers of two of Homer’s greatest heroes, Ajax and Achilles. Telamon and Ajax were associated with the island of Salamis. Effigies of such heroes were believed to give support in battle, and fetching the Aeacidae was an important piece of the Hellenes’ preparations.
7 This plain was to the north-east of Eleusis and the north-west of Athens and crossed by one of the main roads Xerxes’ army could have taken from Boeotia into Attica. It is likely that the two Hellene exiles were there because they had entered Attica that way with the army, or with a part of it. ‘Ravaging’ was as much to do with living off the land as laying waste to it.
8 Demeter, the grain goddess, and Persephone, her daughter, were important deities of crops and vegetation.
9 Iacchus was the patron of the initiates (Greek-speaking men only, excluding murderers). An effigy of the god was carried along the Sacred Way in an annual procession from Athens to Eleusis and repeatedly and loudly acclaimed by name.
10 Without dishonour she could have sent her son to lead her modest squadron and Xerxes would have put no pressure on her as a subject to join the campaign. It is not clear if the five ships were her entire command or only the Halicarnassian component of it.
11 Time presumably spent repairing battle-damage and resting crews.
12 Ceos, Naxos, Cythnos, Siphnos and Melos.
13 Paros was a large and prosperous island in the Cyclades. After the war Paros escaped reprisals by paying reparations to the Hellenes, or, allegedly, by bribing Themistocles to let them off. It clearly suited them to be ‘left behind’ and perhaps they had been trustingly tasked with watching over the channel between Cythnos and Ceos, two of the islands which had not medized. This channel was at the western end of the most direct route from Ionia to the Saronic Gulf.
14 Tyre and Sidon were the leading cities of Phoenicia. In Xerxes’ navy ‘the best of all the ships were supplied by the Phoenicians, and the best of these were from Sidon’ (7.96).
15 On the coast road that linked Attica and the Isthmus. Just after Megara it ran along a ledge high above the sea. It may not have been made impassable (this never happened in the Peloponnesian War) but the Hellenes could certainly have made it more difficult for large numbers of cavalry or footsoldiers.
16 From Phleious, a little west of Corinth.
17 They badly needed to replace the 700 hoplites lost at Thermopylae, the core of their adult male citizen-body.
18 Salamis.
19 This touch of practical experience would have resonated with men in the audience who had rowed in the fleet.
20 Here Herodotus, dramatically sustaining his metaphorical treatment of this extended debate as a battle, uses the word othismos, ‘shoving’, which is often applied to the climax of a hoplite engagement when the two sides are locked together, shield against shield (see here).
21 Perhaps all they could see during the day was the blockading force strung out between Psyttaleia and the mainland.
22 Tenos is a small island on the eastern edge of the Cyclades.
23 These important relics may indeed have been shipped from Aegina to Salamis, but this is more likely to have been done before the Persians had blockaded the eastern entrances to the straits.
24 The location is unknown but it may not have been far along the shore and was perhaps on a promontory which temporarily concealed the Corinthians whilst they paused before rejoining the battle.
25 A classic ramming manoeuvre, sweeping in to ram the enemy ship’s stern and, here, with spectacular results.
26 The metaphorical use of doru, ‘spear’ (but also ‘timber’), is particularly powerful in the context of Aeschylus’ description of Xerxes’ invasion as ‘victory for the Dorian spear’.
27 Not the tyrant of Miletus, but a Samian of the same name.
28 For less than a year as Samos joined the Hellene Alliance in 479 and he was presumably ousted.
29 Calyndos was an important city in the border country between Caria and Lycia so a close neighbour to Halicarnassus.
30 It was not necessarily true that all Hellenes could swim but highly likely that very few of the Barbarian troops on board Xerxes’ ships had this ability. If, as the context suggests, Herodotus is referring specifically to Hellenes on the Persian side, he is implying here that the fighting took place closer to Salamis than the Attica shore.
31 Herodotus names an Ariamnes in the staff of Xerxes’ army but does not identify him as one of his brothers. Plutarch may have confused him with Ariabignes, the foremost Persian casualty (8.89).
32 This may be the same Ameinias as mentioned twice by Herodotus, but he gives Pallene as his deme.
33 The oars.
34 This may refer to the fibre used with pitch in caulking, or to reinforcing cables around or along the hull below the waterline.
35 This is an anachronistic reference to a ship-to-ship weapon introduced later in the 5th century, a heavy weight suspended from the yardarm and dropped onto enemy ships from alongside.
36 There is no earlier reference to the use of incendiary missiles in naval battles, but Herodotus does mention fire-arrows in his account of the Persians’ attack on the Acropolis in 480. Here, context and vocabulary suggest, again anachronistically, more substantial missiles, perhaps fired from ship-borne artillery, of which there is no earlier record.
37 Amphitrite was a sea-nymph.
38 The oars, again (made of wood from fir trees grown in the mountains).
39 Teeth.
40 Likening the drowning man to a vomiting drunk.
41 Bacis and Musaeus were the authors of collections of prophecies which were widely consulted in the 5th century as an alternative to asking questions of the major oracles.
42 As previously discussed, this could not have been built any distance out into the channel without protection and logistical support from the Persian fleet. If this had been viable before the battle, it was much less so afterwards.
43 Herodotus later tells us that Xerxes did not hurry back to Susa but spent some time womanizing in Sardis after he had crossed over into Asia.
44 A phrase Herodotus preserves for the battle of Plataea.
45 Especially renowned in its most extreme mythology.