Salamis

by Christian Cameron

  When we were all together, as far as I could see – the marines in neat rows, and Leukas and Onisandros and Polymarchos, standing with Sittonax, the laziest deadly fighter I knew, my old Gaulish friend and my old sparring mate and newest marine – then our ship’s dog condescended to join us, running down the beach. He ran to me with a live rabbit still breathing in his mouth. I gentled him, gave him a hug and a long pat and beckoned Hector to give the dog a sausage, which he clearly craved. But the rabbit was from the gods and I slit its throat, as much a mercy as a sacrifice, and opened it over the fire.

  ‘Victory!’ I roared, before I had even glanced at its entrails. But the liver was whole and spotless – not all that usual with rabbits, let me tell you. I am no great diviner, but that rabbit was sent by Zeus and told me we would win.

  My people cheered and cheered and the men on other ships began to cheer, and the cliff above us echoed hollowly, as if the gods were shouting approval.

  One of our Gaulish wine barrels was open and Onisandros was serving a cup of wine to every man. I leapt on it.

  ‘Lydia!’ I said.

  They all froze.

  ‘Listen, brothers!’ I called. ‘Many times before today, I have heard men argue whether the hoplites or the rowers would save Greece.’ I paused.

  By the gods, it was quiet.

  ‘I tell you, we will only save Greece together. I tell you, today, any man who pulls an oar against the Medes is my brother, a descendent of Heracles, noble in his birth, free to walk the earth and defy his foes. I say that this is our hour, when the world will decide if indeed we are worthy of that freedom our fathers won. I say that those who die today will go with Hector and Achilles and the dead of Marathon, even if they were born of slaves and were themselves unfree, and those who live today having done their duty will be remembered as long as free men in any country walk under the stars. And as I make every one of you noble sons of Heracles, then every one of you must want nothing better than to die in arms, or live victorious. For I promise you, brothers, I will not leave the field today alive and beaten. If Greece, free, is a dream, I will die today, still dreaming. Will you, my friends, be my brothers?’

  Zeus, the noise they made. I was carried away – I was already with the gods and Athena said those words in my ear, yet even as their cheers rang like the voice of Poseidon echoing from the cliffs over my head, I heard a curiously high-pitched cheer from close at hand.

  I remembered it later.

  Themistocles held one last meeting. I confess that I think the man loved a council, where his particular merits shone forth at their best. Or perhaps he just liked to talk.

  It was greater than just a council, because he had there most of the trierarchs and navarchs, but also many of the helmsmen and marines, both captains and famous men. No one was forbidden to attend. The sun was not yet fully in the sky when he made his speech, and Eurybiades did nothing but bid us to hold our places, to back water when ordered and not break the line.

  I felt that Eurybiades’ speech was more to the point.

  But I’ll give Themistocles this, he was calm, dignified, and when he said we were assured of victory, he looked the part of a general.

  He gathered two dozen commanders as the marines and helmsmen ran for their ships. The morning breeze was stiffening to a wind, and we could see the Persian army marching along the roads opposite us, under the slopes of Mount Aigeleos.

  But between us and the Great King’s army lay one of the most awesome spectacles I have ever seen. The breeze was stiffening to a wind, but over the Bay of Salamis a morning fog lay. It clung to the water like smoke clings to the sacrifice on the altar, and the Persian fleet, their masts down, was only visible in the same way that a sharp-eyed hunter might spot a herd of deer on a foggy morning: by movement, and by fleeting gaps in the haze.

  But even with these disadvantages to sight, from our eminence we could see that the Persians had moved silently past the island Psyttaleia and that the island itself was crawling with Persian troops. They were moving to encircle our beaches – indeed, had almost done so already.

  Aristides nodded, tall and godlike in his panoply. ‘We’ll take the island,’ he said.

  ‘Not until I give the signal,’ Eurybiades said. ‘The Persians want a sea battle like a land battle?’ he asked. He didn’t smile or grin – that was not the Laconian way. But he exuded a steady confidence. ‘I will give them a battle that will remind them what is sea, what is land, and what is merely air.’

  Then he ordered the Aeginians to stay fully armed and ready to launch, bows out, on their beaches, covered by Aristides and his hoplites and the Athenian corps of four hundred archers – enough skilled bowman to clear the decks of five ships in a single mighty volley.

  ‘Circumstances have changed, but not so much,’ he said. ‘Note how far their lead group has advanced,’ he said, pointing.

  Cimon spoke up. ‘Phoenicians,’ he said, looking under his hand. ‘I’d wager my life on it. Almost to Eleusis.’

  ‘You may have done,’ Eurybiades said. ‘You, Cimon – and you, Plataean – will take your ships off the beaches and bear away west, as if fleeing. Xanthippus, you will follow them.’ He nodded. ‘When you see the gold shield flash you will engage, and not before. Every stade you can make on them westward that allows you to turn the battle back to the east will be the better for us.’

  Men looked confused. ‘You want us to fish-hook to the west and drive back east on your command,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said.

  ‘Lade in reverse,’ Cimon said cheerfully. ‘We’ll remind the Phoenicians of how well they fought there.’

  ‘The Corinthians will face east against the Egyptians, in case they weather the island and approach from the west. I have sacrificed and prayed that they may not, as then the Corinthians will be our reserve.’ Eurybiades waited, as there was a babble of complaint. He rode it out with his impassivity. ‘You will not advance until I send a pentekonter for you.’

  Adeimantus nodded, pleased, I think, to be held back from the fighting.

  He looked at Themistocles. The wily Athenian nodded, as if they’d planned the whole talk like a play, each with his part. Perhaps they had. Themistocles, at least, was committed. No one now talked of surrender or flight. Even Adeimantus – I wish to give the slug his due – was armoured, alert, and committed.

  ‘What we must do, in the first minutes of the action, is turn the battle,’ he said. He pointed out over the straits.

  Below us on the beaches, men were restless. Helmsmen shouted up at us, as if they thought we were not aware of how close the Persians were. It takes strong nerves to talk to your officers in the very face of the enemy, but it also wins battles. Eurybiades was such a man. He seemed as calm as a man about to go hunt hares, or have a walk in his vineyard.

  Themistocles went on. ‘The Persians intend to fight with their line from east to west,’ he said. ‘We will turn them and force them to fight with their backs to the straits, and a north-south axis.’

  We could see that even as the Persian ships deployed, more ships were passing behind the lead divisions. To my eye it looked as if they’d left themselves too little margin for error, too little rowing room.

  And I liked our plan.

  I’d heard it in the early hours of the morning. I knew the plan, and I liked it. And I liked that we would start with three of our largest squadrons apparently running west for open water along the coast – deserting. Just as the Persians expected.

  ‘Not until I raise the gold shield,’ Eurybiades said.

  I nodded, and so did Cimon. I assume the rest of the navarchs nodded as well.

  ‘Let’s do this thing,’ Eurybiades said.

  ‘Remember,’ Themistocles began, but the older Spartan cut him off.

  ‘The time for talking is done,’ he said, mildly enough. ‘Now, we fight.’

/>   As we walked away, Adeimantus remarked, as if to the air, ‘The old Spartan knows who he can trust! The Corinthians have the place of honour, in reserve – the balance of the battle.’

  Cimon ignored him.

  I managed a smile. ‘You know, Adeimantus, I have been in forty or so fights, and no one has ever once suggested that I be in reserve.’

  He flushed, Cimon laughed, and several men patted me on the back.

  I do get in a good thing from time to time.

  The fog still lay over the bay, although it was burning off. The sea smelled beautiful and the breeze was almost a wind – more wind, in fact, than any captain wanted for a sea fight. It made our launching off the beaches tricky, to say the least, catching us broadside the moment the bow anchor-stones came in and threatening every ship with being laid broadside in a light surf. But we didn’t have any trierarchs – or helmsmen – so inexperienced.

  We launched well enough, but we were ragged getting into formation and Xanthippus’s helmsman cursed Seckla like a man buying a bad horse in the agora, and his imprecations carried across the water. Strangely, we could hear the Persians, too, even with the thigh-high waves – nothing for a sailor to fear, but unusual in the bay.

  My ships came off the beach. I only had four, Lydia included: Harpagos in Storm Cutter, Moire in Amastris, Giannis and Megakles in Black Raven. Athena Nike lay useless, her bows stove in, on the beach of Aegina to the south. My other ships were now crewed by Athenian citizens and not Plataeans. Ah, I lie. I had five – Naiad of Mithymna, my capture turned ‘free Greek’. I left Theognis as the helmsman, but I sent away half of his marines, and replaced them with young Pericles, with his father’s permission, and Anaxagoras, and a captain, a Spartiate provided by Bulis, named Philokles. It was the only ship with an ‘allied’ crew; I added twenty of my Plataean rowers and took twenty men of Lesvos aboard Lydia. But I still didn’t trust Naiad in the first line, and I told Harpagos and Moire to keep eyes on her. Had Aristides not taken command of the hoplites, I’d have offered him the command.

  But four ships or five, it wasn’t the sort of fight where I was needed to tell my captains what to do. My duty was simple: to follow Cimon, to row as far west as I could manage; and then to obey the signal.

  There’s something every sailor and every oarsman loves about duplicity. Perhaps it is the touch of the criminal in every man, but all our lives we’re told to avoid duplicity, to be honest – and then, when you are told that it is your duty to act a part and deceive your enemies, it can be great fun. I promise you, as our ragged line, a column of triremes three wide and thirty or more ships long, raced west under oars, I heard an oarsman grunt ‘We’ll be at the isthmus in no time, mates!’ and another pretend to weep from fear. It was not, perhaps, good enough for Dionysus and Aeschylus, but I promise you that our ill-kept column that scattered over a third of the bay to the west would have convinced anyone we were fleeing in panic.

  The problem was that the Persians couldn’t see us very well. They could hear that something was up, but they couldn’t see.

  We kept rowing west, along the beaches of Salamis. The Corin­thians were off, now – I passed Lykon, just coming off the beach, and I waved. The bay was full of men I knew. But visibility was a stade or a little more, and while I could see Cimon on his helm-deck just ahead, I couldn’t be positive that the ship two behind me was Ameinias of Pallene in Parthenos, although I was fairly sure.

  Every stade gained of westering was good.

  Behind us, someone began to sing the paean. I’ve heard dozens of suggestions – some say it was the Athenians behind us, under Themistocles, some say it was Aristides and the hoplites, and some say it was the Aeginians. It didn’t fit with our deceptive plan – in fact, had the Persians only known us, they’d have known when they heard the paean that we meant to fight, and indeed, I heard years later from Artemisia that all the Ionians knew what was up as soon as they heard it.

  This too had an effect on the battle, as the Ionians began to deploy out of their columns into their battle lines, facing neither east–west nor north–south, but about halfway between, and opening a large gap between their own westernmost division, led by the ships of Ephesus and Samos, and the Phoenicians who had the vanguard of their fleet and were already level with the town of Eleusis.

  What we didn’t know yet was that the Great King himself had set his throne on the cliffs below Mount Aigeleos and was watching, and that every contingent in the Persian fleet knew that he was watching. The Phoenicians had been defeated by us several times – badly handled at Artemisium – and the presence of the Great King stiffened their spines and put them on their honour, if they have any. They were in the lead, the vanguard, and they were determined to be aggressive. After half an hour of listening to the muffled sounds we made with our oars and our shouting getting off our beaches, they heard the paean, and determined to attack. But – and this is important – they were determined to attack in their new manoeuvre, and they came forward in long columns, so that every captain, in turn, could find a hole in our dispositions and break through. This Phoenician tactic – I’ve spoken of it other nights – was called by us diekplous. The captain of the lead ship looked for an opening – like the break in a dam, or the hole in a bridge – and he shot for it with all his speed, passing through the gap, raking the oars of ships on either side, and then wheeling rapidly into a flank if he could, with his mates crowding in behind.

  At Artemisium we’d solved this dilemma two ways. In the first fight we formed a great wheel, our hulls so close that we left them no gap through which to exploit us. And in the second fight we were so practised that by backing water we kept our lines closed, and when we attacked, it was we, not they, who exploited errors in their formation.

  I was not a great navarch at Artemisium and even less so at Salamis, but I suspected – and now I am sure – that the greatness of the Phoenician fleet was past, possibly gone in the constant drain of their best captains throughout the long years of the struggle for the Ionian and Aeolian cities. While the Great King triumphed in the Ionian Revolt, Phoenicia suffered in every battle – twenty ships here, forty ships there. I am going to guess that there comes a point in the loss of your best captains when you cannot easily recover all that skill.

  It was not that the Phoenicians were bad sailors or fighters. It was merely that they had fallen from being the best. But they clung to a set of tactics that had been developed for aggressive, trained trierarchs and superb helmsmen who had long experience of each other and their enemy, and they tried to use it in a choppy sea, against an enemy line they couldn’t make out in the fog.

  Remember that there was a stiff breeze blowing, although already, an hour after sunrise, it was dying away. Remember that it brought a choppiness to the bay that none of us had really anticipated. And remember that they had been up all night.

  I thought all of these things as I listened and watched to my starboard side, to the north. I heard a horn, and another. There was shouting.

  Then I saw a sight that burned itself on my eyes like a view of a god. Two images I can summon in the eye of the mind at will – Briseis’s naked body the first time I saw her undress in Ephesus, and this.

  The morning haze flashed.

  And then, again. Flash.

  Flash.

  Flash.

  It was – unearthly.

  And then, suddenly, the flashes were everywhere, like a line of fire when peasants and slaves burn the weeds out of the fields.

  And then, Poseidon! – a line of bows began to emerge from the haze – a line of ram bows that seemed to fill the whole of my eye, and the flash was the sun shining on their oars, carried into the fog. All the oars moved together on each ship, and there were dozens, hundreds of ships, like a swarm of fireflies at nightfall. And these were just the leaders of their columns.

  I have never seen anything to match it, except Brise
is.

  And they were coming at our naked flank, out of the fog, at ramming speed.

  Behind me, someone quicker witted or with a better sight line had already turned out of the line, ‘fleeing’ west.

  He had the right notion, whoever he was. We had no sea room to back water, and we might have outrun the Persians to the west, but we couldn’t guarantee it.

  The man who turned out of the line without orders was Ameinias of Pallene.

  Well, I never said I was a Spartan, either. I followed him.

  ‘Hard to starboard! Ramming speed as soon as she’s round,’ I called.

  Seckla nodded. I remember that he used the lean of the ship’s hull to spit over the side. The starboard-side rowers reversed benches smoothly, gave two hard strokes, and reversed again. Hah! I had never commanded such a vessel with such men. She was dry and light as air and rowed by Argonauts.

  We went round faster than I can tell it. The heads of the Phoenician columns were flying at us out of the fog, but Moire was with me immediately. Harpagos followed me, and Giannis followed Moire, and Naiad came after, so we were a compact squadron of five, and when we went, the entire ‘western’ Athenian division turned, almost as one, column into line, and in pretty good order, with Ameinias leading a compact wedge on the leftmost flank. Cimon in Ajax was less than a ship’s length behind me, perhaps half a stade to the west, and four of his ships were beyond him, off to the west.

  We turned from a mob fleeing west to a line abreast racing north in a few beats of a calm man’s heart, and even at ramming speed the trierarchs and the helmsmen were adjusting their places. We were not in three crisp lines, but rather in a series of compact squadrons as helmsmen closed up tight to ships they trusted.

  I remember that I paused, waved to Cimon, and then clapped Seckla on the shoulder. He’d already chosen his first target.

  I was merely an elderly marine. He smiled, I smiled, and then I was running forward.

  From the bow, I could see the backs of my ten marines and my three archers. And I could see the Phoenicians coming down on us. They were flat out, at the full ramming speed you need to get an instant ship-kill. But they were widely spaced because of their ­columns, and there were curious gaps between ships – just to the east of me, there was a gap two or three stades wide before the rest of the Phoenician fleet, the Ionians, who’d formed a more traditional line, could be seen. The sun was now burning off the haze rapidly.