The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece -- and Western Civilization

by Barry Strauss

  Xerxes dismissed these objections, according to Herodotus. And he sent Artabanus back to Persia to protect Xerxes’ “household and tyrannical rule” as sole guardian of the royal scepter. Xerxes demonstrated his political skill by deftly disposing of a defeatist while also showing him respect. But the king also took Artabanus’s words to heart. He called a meeting of the leading Persians and warned them to steel themselves in order not to shame their glorious heritage. The Greeks were brave men, he said, and the Persians would have to be braver if they were to prevail.

  At Abydos in about May 480 B.C., before his men crossed the Hellespont, Xerxes ordered a marble throne, which was now placed on a hillside. From there, the king had a panoramic view of the plains and beaches filled with his soldiers and the Hellespont crowded with his ships. He ordered a trireme race; his wish was carried out immediately; the winners were the Phoenician ships of the city of Sidon. Xerxes rejoiced at the splendor of his forces and then he did a strange thing: the Great King began to cry.

  Herodotus reports the reason for Xerxes’ tears. It had suddenly occurred to the king that in a century, he writes, not one of the men he saw would still be alive. So brief is our time on earth. But perhaps there was another reason for his tears. Maybe he had reflected on the huge risks that lay ahead for his magnificent army and navy, and maybe that was what made Xerxes weep.

  The Great King might have remembered those tears after Thermopylae. Perhaps he had to fight them back in a conversation after the battle with one of the most striking of his advisers: Demaratus, the exiled king of Sparta.

  Demaratus had not seen Sparta in seven years. He was a middle-aged man who might have yearned for his lost throne, but Demaratus is unlikely to have harbored illusions about Sparta’s willingness to take back a traitor. But because he was a Spartan and, as he believed, a descendant of Heracles himself, he might not have cared. Demaratus was a man who relished vengeance. And, as Herodotus points out, whoever took on Demaratus came to a bad end.

  The Spartans had the greatest infantrymen in the ancient Mediterranean. Demaratus knew it, but it had taken Thermopylae to convince the Persians. Xerxes could no longer deny what his men were up against. Nor could he take lightly the advice of his resident Spartan.

  In Herodotus, Demaratus plays the role of the wise exile who tells the king a hard truth at his own life’s risk. Demaratus warns Xerxes that the Greeks will fight; that the Spartans will fight hardest; and that the Great King, therefore, had better scrap his strategy and come up with a new war plan. It is a good story, flattering to Demaratus, and many scholars doubt it. They suggest that Herodotus picked up the tale from one of Demaratus’s sons and passed it on.

  But the historian was no pushover. He may well have interviewed Demaratus’s descendants, but he was not about to buy snake oil from them. Rather than going into rapture over Demaratus’s straight talk, Herodotus reveals the Spartan as a swindler. It took an exile like the historian to expose the confidence job of a sacked king and fugitive turncoat like Demaratus.

  Demaratus was as unsentimental a veteran of political infighting as Sparta’s stubborn society had ever produced. His reported comments at the Persian court, that he feared flattery more than insult and bribery more than rejection, have the sour flavor of personal knowledge. On a likely reconstruction, Demaratus reigned in Sparta for over twenty years, from ca. 515 to ca. 491 B.C. After a very hard-fought power struggle, Demaratus was deposed, fell afoul of the new king, and eventually fled Sparta. He made his way to the man known as the friend of the friendless: the Great King.

  It was about 487 B.C. and Persia had already become a haven for losers in Greece’s power battles. Darius welcomed Demaratus in the grand manner, making Demaratus his bandaka, and a favored one at that. Darius knew that Demaratus was an invaluable source of information and potentially an ally, if restored to his throne.

  But Demaratus’s qualifications as military adviser were mixed. On the one hand, as a former king, Demaratus knew Spartan politics and had commanded the army. On the other hand, there is no evidence that he ever had gone into battle, except for a late and questionable report that he led an army against the walls of Argos—when they were defended by the city’s women! The men, it seems, had been slaughtered in battle by a Spartan force led by a rival of Demaratus. Headed by the Argive poet Telesilla, the Argive women are supposed to have circled the walls and defeated Demaratus and his men.

  As far as is known, therefore, Demaratus was no great warrior. Nor did his advice to Xerxes attest to military genius. Herodotus records three conversations during the Persian invasion of Greece between the Great King and the Spartan exile: one at Doriscus and two at Thermopylae.

  They must have made an odd pair, the King of Kings in his purple robes and gold jewelry and the austere Spartan, raised in a country whose citizens slept on straw pallets and allowed their sons only one cloak a year. Nor did Xerxes have to rough it on the road. The royal tent was a veritable palace in miniature. To judge from later copies, the tent stood about fifty feet high and was about twenty-five hundred feet in circumference. It boasted embroidered hangings lavishly decorated with animal themes as well as precious metals everywhere. Gourmet meals were served on gold and silver tables for diners on beautifully draped gold and silver couches. There were even golden bridles and a bronze manger for the horses.

  At Doriscus, Demaratus warned Xerxes that no matter how greatly they were outnumbered, the Spartans would fight. And the Spartans, he pointed out, were great warriors. They would obey the command of their law and fight to the death.

  At Thermopylae, Demaratus appeared on the scene to decipher a strange report brought back from the Greek camp by a Persian spy. The spy had caught the Spartans outdoors drawn up in lines, but they practiced maneuvers that left him baffled. While some of the Spartans exercised naked, others combed their hair. Xerxes, too, found this behavior odd, but Demaratus explained that the Spartans were in the habit of grooming their hair before risking their lives. What the scout had seen, therefore, was a deadly sign of Spartan ferocity.

  After the battle at Thermopylae, Xerxes summoned Demaratus again. The Spartan had correctly predicted Sparta’s tough stand, so Xerxes asked Demaratus for information and advice. How many more Spartans were there? And how might Persia defeat them?

  Demaratus might have been thrilled at these questions because they opened the door for revenge on Sparta. He told Xerxes that Sparta had eight thousand soldiers, all as good as the men who had fought at Thermopylae. In order to beat them, he advised the Great King to change his strategy. Xerxes should force the Greeks to divide their armies by sending a force to attack Sparta’s home territory and thereby compel the Spartan army to return home. Meanwhile, the main Persian forces could defeat the rest of the Greeks.

  Demaratus had a plan all ready: send three hundred triremes—almost half of the remaining Persian fleet—to Cythera, an island off the south coast of the Peloponnese. Using Cythera as a base, the Persians could raid Spartan territory and perhaps raise a revolt of Sparta’s enserfed agricultural laborers, the Helots. These workers, always eager to rebel against the lords who mistreated them, represented Sparta’s Achilles’ heel.

  “If you spring from this island,” Demaratus said, “you will frighten the Spartans. And with a foreign war in their own land, they will no longer be fearsome and even if the rest of Greece is under siege they will not come to the aid with their infantry. When the rest of Greece is enslaved, only a weak Sparta will be left.”

  If Xerxes had followed Demaratus’s advice, the Great King would never have risked his entire navy in a single battle. After his losses of ships and men to the wind and Greece’s gains at Artemisium, Xerxes could hardly have been eager to take a chance like that. And if he could keep his navy intact, Xerxes might win the war. But Demaratus had outlined a bad strategy. Had the Persians followed it, they would not have faced a do-or-die naval battle: they would have faced two die-or-die naval battles.

  The Persian fleet of
about 650 triremes still outnumbered the Greeks, who could not muster more than about 350. But the Greeks had the advantages of home waters, short supply lines, and maritime expertise. If Persia divided its fleet, then the Greeks would equal its numbers and could attack the Persians at will and in two stages. The Persians would have risked losing everything.

  Xerxes’ brother Achaemenes, commander of the fleet, was present at the conference, and he seethed at Demaratus’s proposal. After pointing out its strategic weakness, he accused Demaratus of treason and jealousy, which he said was typically Greek.

  Xerxes offered a courtly defense of his bandaka while conceding Achaemenes’ point about the prevalence of jealousy. But Demaratus was Xerxes’ guest, and Achaemenes would have to keep his hands off the Spartan. Still, the Great King accepted Achaemenes’ policy advice. The fleet would remain united. There would be no expedition to Cythera.

  This was a key moment in the war. The Persian high command considered an alternative strategy but rejected it. Like most military decisions, the choice was made not on military grounds alone but in the heat and dust of the political arena.

  In his three dialogues with Xerxes, Demaratus displayed the single-mindedness of a delusional man. His Spartans were ten feet tall. Before Thermopylae, he made the Spartans into supermen. After the battle, he had them represent the sole obstacle to a Persian victory in Greece. Never mind the Athenians and their navy: focus on the Spartans and win the war. This was less the advice of a strategist than the obsession of an avenger.

  Sparta’s infantrymen did pose a threat to Xerxes’ troops. But Xerxes’ best strategy against Sparta was to destroy the Greek navy. After doing so, Persia could move its soldiers by sea and land them anywhere in Greece at will. Persia could crack the Greek alliance and pick off its enemies one by one. So Xerxes kept the fleet undivided and headed for Athens. Everything would depend on his making the right decisions there, of course, but without a united fleet, he would not have even the chance.

  One Spartan king had died trying to stop Persia’s march southward, and another had put his life on the line in an endeavor to deflect it. Leonidas would be remembered as a Greek hero, Demaratus as a traitor, but neither succeeded in keeping Xerxes from his determined course. Whether it was the will of the gods or the stubbornness of the Great King, the Persians would not be denied their appointment in Athens.

  One day after his men had finally broken through at Thermopylae and Artemisium, Xerxes gave the order. The mighty force began to march, sail, and row its way south. All eyes now turned toward Athens.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ATHENS

  Though tall and long-limbed, he has put on weight. He is smooth-skinned and beardless and has a full head of hair, which he wears twisted into tight curls. He is a grown man but retains the high-pitched voice of a boy. And he is present, along with the generals, politicians, priests, ambassadors, bodyguards, secretaries, attendants, chefs, dressers, flatterers, mistresses, and illegitimate children who make up Xerxes’ retinue, as the Great King enters Athens.

  Like the other dignitaries of the Persian court, he is dressed in a long, flowing robe decorated with embroidery. Since he stands high in Xerxes’ eyes, his cloak may well be a royal gift, dyed a kingly purple or scarlet. His outfit is completed by a cloth hat and a pair of sandals and a great deal of gold jewelry: armbands, anklets, a torque, and—one last touch—a pair of earrings, probably elaborate, perhaps a combination of gold and faience beads. He is perfumed, of course.

  His name is Hermotimus and he is a eunuch. This description of his appearance is an educated guess, based on ancient evidence. But much else about Hermotimus is certain. Castrated as a boy, he had been sent as a gift for Xerxes to Susa, the winter capital of the Persian Kings. He had served the Great King so well that Hermotimus was now first among the royal eunuchs. Eunuchs had a reputation for intrigue, but apparently they made up for it by their industriousness and attention to detail. Because eunuchs had no children of their own, the Persian kings prized them for their loyalty. Eunuchs inspired special trust in Persia as managers, watchdogs, and gatekeepers in the royal palaces, especially in the harem, where they served the royal women and children.

  It was probably around September 20 when Hermotimus entered Athens, about three weeks after the battle of Thermopylae. The distance between Thermopylae and Athens, by the shortest possible route on ancient roads, was just over 140 miles. The Persians no doubt wanted to pursue their enemy hotly and rapidly. But the best that they could do was to send an advance force ahead, probably consisting of cavalry and elite troops. The bulk of Xerxes’ big and heterogeneous army moved only very slowly, perhaps at a rate of about ten miles a day, including one day’s halt every seven to rest the animals. Further slowing the army was the need to conquer Phocis and Boeotia before reaching Attica.

  Xerxes’ full army probably took over two weeks to reach Athens. Assuming it took a few days to regroup after Thermopylae, the army might have begun its march south around September 1 and reached Athens by about September 20. The Persian advance guard presumably covered the distance at a much more rapid pace.

  Herodotus suggests that the Persian fleet reached Athens’s main harbor, which was at Phaleron Bay, only nine days after the final battles at Artemisium and Thermopylae. He implies, furthermore, that the Persian army had reached Athens before the fleet. Assuming that the army, in this case, refers to the advance guard, then the first Persian land forces reached Athens around September 5, while the fleet reached Phaleron around September 7. The bulk of the Persian forces were far behind.

  Along with Xerxes and his men, Hermotimus had proceeded south from Thermopylae into the mountainous regions of Doris and Phocis. They had as guides Greeks from Thessaly, pro-Persian sorts who hated their neighbors in Phocis more than they did any foreign invader. Led by these men, the Persians wound their way through the upland valleys of rocky Phocis, plundering and burning property, including a temple of Apollo. Most of the inhabitants had taken to the hills for safety, but a few unlucky souls fell into Persian hands. The women were gang-raped so violently that they died. The region of Doris, a friend of both Thessaly and Persia, was spared.

  On the border of the region of Boeotia, Xerxes divided the army into two divisions. The smaller of the two headed westward for the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, the wealthiest and most prestigious shrine in the Greek world. The larger division, which was headed by Xerxes, drove south in carts through Boeotia toward Athens. Delphi was awash in gold and silver gifts from the faithful, including a refined-gold statue of a lion that allegedly weighed 570 pounds. Xerxes was said to be eager to bring home such trophies, but the fabulous treasures eluded him. A violent thunderstorm on the outskirts of Delphi struck the army with lightning and sent rocks crashing down from Mount Parnassus, which panicked the superstitious men into turning back.

  The Boeotian towns of Plataea and Thespiae were not as lucky. They alone of the city-states of the Boeotian plain had supported the Greek cause. The other cities, led by Thebes, had joined the Persians. The Greeks had a verb for this; “to Medize,” after the Medes, a separate Iranian people from the Persians but close enough for the Greeks: Greeks were always vague about the facts of those whom they called barbarians.

  Being a military people, the Boeotians knew how a soldier itches for loot when he sees a city gleaming in the sun, and they did not want to run the risk of tempting the Persian army. So, for good measure, when they Medized, they hosted Macedonian ambassadors, men who had been sent by Xerxes’ trusted friend, the Macedonian king Alexander (an ancestor of Alexander the Great). Having no such protectors, Thespiae saw its territory ravaged, and Plataea was burned. The inhabitants of both places had already taken refuge in the Peloponnese.

  Xerxes’ army next marched over the mountain pass into Athenian territory. What Hermotimus thought, as the wagon, on which he no doubt traveled, crested the hills and offered him his first glimpse of the territory of Athens, can only be guessed. But we would not be su
rprised if his mind turned to punishment. Xerxes was about to discipline the Athenians for having burned Sardis and for having humiliated his royal father’s men at Marathon, to say nothing of having broken their promise of submission. Hermotimus knew, as few others did, that justice requires paying people back in their own coin. Herodotus says, in fact, that no one ever did a better job of getting even than did Hermotimus.

  Hermotimus came from Pedasa, a city in Caria, located just a few miles from Halicarnassus, Herodotus’s hometown. Pedasa was inhabited by the Leleges, a non-Greek people of whom little is known today. One striking detail is the legend that in times of trouble, the priestess of Athena in Pedasa grew a beard, perhaps a symbol of even the women’s willingness to fight for the defense of their land.

  Tough, warlike, and dug into their well-fortified cities, the Pedasians held out against Persia’s initial conquest in 546 B.C. and fought fiercely when they joined the Ionian Revolt in 499 B.C. Maybe it was then, when Persia suppressed the rebellion, or maybe it was in the course of some unrecorded pirate raid, that young Hermotimus was captured and enslaved. It happened that he was an especially good-looking boy, and he came from a region, Caria, that was known for its supply of good-looking boys.

  Xerxes brought Hermotimus along to Greece in 480 B.C. The king trusted the eunuch enough that, upon their eventual return to Anatolia, he made Hermotimus the secondary guardian of certain of the king’s illegitimate sons, who had been present during the expedition. Queen Artemisia of Halicarnassus was in charge of getting the boys home safely. It was not unusual for members of the royal household to accompany the king on campaign. Among Xerxes’ illegitimate sons in Greece was presumably Tithraustes, who, fourteen years later, in 466, commanded a large Persian navy against the Greeks at the battle of the Eurymedon River in Anatolia. At Athens in 480, he would have to be satisfied with observing.