CHAPTER FOUR
SALAMIS
He is dressed in a long, coarse, woolen garment wrapped tightly around his body. Draped over his shoulders, the crimson-colored cloak extends to his ankles. Carefully braided strands of his long hair run down both his chest and back. His bronze helmet is crowned with a transverse crest as a mark of his high rank. He carries a wooden staff as a sign of office. He is barefoot.
His face, or what is visible of it under the helmet, has the lean look of a lifetime of rugged training. If his eyes betray any expression, it is probably the dispassion that the Spartans considered to be almost always appropriate, except when they were mourning the death of a family member in battle, in which case they were supposed to smile from pride. The Spartans were a paradoxical people, and in Eurybiades son of Eurycleides, their ironies reached a peak. This description of him is an educated guess, but the burdens that he bore were all real.
He was the commander in chief of the Greek navy, and on Salamis on September 23, it was his job to hammer out a common strategy among his squabbling allies. In Salamis the goats were grazing and the Greeks were butting heads. The role of conciliator did not come easily to a Spartan, but neither did the role of admiral. The Spartans were a nation of infantrymen. Sparta’s navy was small and unimportant, a mere concession to the geographical accident that Spartan territory extended to the sea. Yet as navarch, “admiral,” Eurybiades exercised power that would have been denied to him on land. Only a king could command a Spartan army on land, and Eurybiades was a commoner.
Eurybiades was an ambitious man but a feeble manager. As far as we can tell, he had neither strong opinions nor deep insight. He was not about to whip the bickering Greeks on Salamis into shape. But he was a patriot and had the one touch of greatness of knowing when to yield to a better man.
The war had swollen the size of Salamis’s population. In peacetime there were perhaps 5,000 to 10,000 inhabitants on the island; suddenly, another 100,000 to 150,000 people had arrived. That included the personnel of more than three hundred triremes of the Greek fleet as well as a large portion of Athens’s civilian refugees. And at times it might have seemed as if every last Greek on Salamis was at odds with all the others. The locals were no doubt tired of the newcomers even as the less scrupulous tried to squeeze a few extra coins out of them. The rowers complained about their captains. The captains complained about their commanders. The commanders of each city-state’s contingent complained about the other city-states’ contingents. Everyone appeared to have his own strategy and was ready to defend it to the death. Meanwhile, the Greeks looked across the straits at the empty countryside of Attica and waited for the barbarians. For two weeks Persia’s forces had been lumbering in, from the first fast horsemen to the last camp followers.
“Pounded by the sea,” as Sophocles calls Salamis, and short on arable land, the ancient island, like its modern counterpart, is likely to have housed fishermen in nearly every cove. Each morning in the predawn hours when the water was at its calmest, and so least likely to disturb their nets, they headed out to sea. But even if every fisherman on Salamis had doubled his catch, the islanders still could not have fed all the immigrants. The Athenians no doubt ferried over grain and other supplies to the island, but there was a limit to the amount they could have provided. Nor was it practical for them to carry over freshwater, which is usually at a premium in Greece.
The refugees had reason to be frightened, the sailors had reason to be vigilant, and everyone had a right to be tired. The civilians had been uprooted; the naval personnel had been rowing and fighting for more than three weeks. During that time the seamen had also had to repair ships, cremate the dead, practice maneuvers, and mount a major evacuation. And, with all the to-ing and fro-ing, most of them had traveled five hundred miles and more. Yet the biggest battle still lay before them.
This was Salamis at the beginning of the fourth week of September of 480 B.C., a harbor turned into a safe haven and a backwater turned into a naval base. That the Greek fleet was at Salamis at all was itself the result of a Themistoclean ruse. After Artemisium, when the Athenians learned that there would be no infantry stand in Boeotia, they asked their allies to stop at Salamis on their way back home to Aegina, the Peloponnese, or the island of Ceos. The Athenians needed to evacuate their people from Attica. Afterward it would be convenient for them to meet the allies at Salamis to plot the fleet’s next move. The allies agreed. Meanwhile, reinforcement ships, which had not been at Artemisium, had gathered at Pogon, near Troezen, on the western side of the Saronic Gulf. They made for Salamis as well.
Salamis was simply a meeting point. No ally had agreed to fight a battle there. On the contrary, the obvious move might have seemed to move the fleet to a harbor at the Isthmus of Corinth. The Greek alliance’s army was making its stand there, and surely it made sense to have the navy nearby.
At the very end of August the Spartans received news of the disaster at Thermopylae. The full moon of August 19 had marked the end of the Olympic Games as well as of the Carnea, a Spartan festival. During the festival religious scruples added to the arguments of Spartan doves against mobilizing in any large number. Now that they had satisfied the gods and Thermopylae had fallen, the Spartans immediately called their army out in fall force and marched to the Isthmus. Here, joined by troops from Corinth and from a dozen or so other Peloponnesian city-states, they blocked the main road and began building a wall across the narrow Isthmus, at its narrowest less than five miles wide. They worked night and day on the project, using stone, bricks, timbers, and sand baskets.
Corinth had an excellent harbor on the Saronic Gulf not far from the wall, at a place called Cenchreae. It is understandable if Corinthians and other Peloponnesians preferred to fight there rather than at Salamis.
Yet the fleet was at Salamis and any movement would have seemed like a retreat. Themistocles, who wanted to fight at Salamis, knew that, just as he knew that Athens’s approximately two hundred triremes made up more than half of the Greek navy. Athens had a great deal of clout.
Salamis is an island of modest dimensions. It is about thirty six square miles in area, making it about twenty-five times smaller than Attica. It is an island of low hills, whose highest point is a mountain in the south rising 1,325 feet.
Salamis is a horseshoe-shaped island, containing about sixty-four miles of coastline, with its hollow side facing west. Nestled along the western coast of Attica, Salamis stretches as far west as Megara, the city-state whose territory lay between Athens and Corinth. On the coast opposite Salamis to the north, between Megara and the city of Athens, lies the Athenian town of Eleusis. The sea widens into a gulf here. Eleusis was sacred to Demeter, goddess of agriculture, and home of the Eleusinian Mysteries, an annual ritual offering hope of life after death.
In the northeast corner of Salamis is the long and narrow Cynosura peninsula. In Greek, Cynosura means “dog’s tail.” Cynosura juts into the sea, pointing like a dagger northeastward toward Piraeus and the city of Athens beyond. Just northeast of Cynosura lies the islet of Psyttaleia; together the islet and the peninsula all but block off the eastern end of the Salamis straits from the Saronic Gulf. Traveling westward in the straits, about three miles to the west of Psyttaleia one reaches another islet, known today as St. George. Between the two islets, on the northeast side of Salamis and opposite the Athenian mainland, lies the harbor of the ancient city of Salamis.
This harbor, today known as Ambelaki Bay, is an excellent natural anchorage. About one-quarter mile wide at its mouth, it is always calm. The Kamateró peninsula rises to the north, protecting the harbor from the north wind, while south of the harbor the Cynosura peninsula offers shelter from both the south wind and the waves of the Saronic Gulf.
We may imagine that in 480 B.C. part of the Greek fleet was based in Ambelaki Bay. As the site of the classical city, Ambelaki Bay would have been outfitted with a quay for docking ships. But the fleet was large enough that its ships would have spilled over to th
e next bay northward, Paloukia Bay. Sheltered from the winds by the Kamateró peninsula and by St. George, Paloukia Bay is lined with sandy beaches, ideal for mooring triremes.
Mythology made Salamis home to King Ajax, son of Telamon, a stalwart of the Greek army at Troy. A huge man, Ajax was known as the “bulwark.” As a hero, Ajax represented the triumph of brawn over brains, that is, the opposite of his archenemy, the wily Odysseus. Though based on Ajax’s island, the Greeks would have to emulate Odysseus if they were to defeat Persia. And they would have to match their words with deeds.
Some of the evacuees were no doubt billeted in Salamis’s homes and public buildings, but there could hardly have been room for very many. The captains might have stayed aboard their ships, perhaps in makeshift cabins, but a trireme was too cramped to sleep more than about half of its crew. Many if not most of the newcomers to Salamis would have camped out.
Conditions could hardly have been luxurious. In normal times, it was considered scandalous for a captain to give his oarsmen time off to get washed in the public baths, just the sort of thing to make them too soft for battle. In the emergency of 480 B.C., there was no time for such extravagance, and if there was a bathhouse in Salamis, it could not have fit even a fraction of the men crowded onto the island.
The rowers would have to bathe in the sea or go dirty. But if the Athenians had planned ahead properly, they were probably not hungry. Since Athens’s leaders had expected to use Salamis as a base, they are likely to have stored big supplies of food there for the Greek fleet.
Twenty-two Greek cities were represented at Salamis, for a total of more than three hundred ships. Six states from the Peloponnese provided vessels: Sparta, Corinth, Sicyon, Epidaurus, Troezen, and Hermione. In central Greece, Athens and Megara contributed ships, while Ambracia and Leucas represented northwestern Greece. From the islands there were ships from the city-states of Chalcis, Eretria, and Styra in Euboea, Aegina in the Saronic Gulf, and from the Cyclades, Ceos, Naxos, Cythnos, Seriphos, Siphnos, and Melos. Croton in Italy was the only western Greek city to take part. It sent one trireme, but its crew may all have resided in Greece: political refugees, they were eager to find a patron to help them return home and overthrow their enemies.
Most of these states provided only a tiny number of ships. Leucas, for instance, sent only three triremes; Cythnos sent only a trireme and a penteconter; while Melos, Siphnos and Seriphos sent only penteconters—two from Melos, one each from Siphnos and Seriphos. With its defection at Artemisium, Lemnos provided one trireme. These numbers speak eloquently of financial and demographic poverty and of loyalty to the Greek cause. Plataea, which had sent men to Artemisium to help fill the rowers’ benches of Athens’s triremes, was not represented at Salamis. After Artemisium, the Plataeans had hurried home to convey their families and property to safety.
Several of these states were in the process of being swamped by the Persian tide. Plataea, Chalcis, Eretria, and Styra had fallen. Athens was in the process of evacuation, and once the Persians reached Athens, nothing stopped them from overrunning Megara, the next city-state to the west. Troezen was crowded with Athenian refugees. Except for Seriphos, Siphnos, and Melos, the other Cycladic ships came from states that had submitted to Persia. The commanders disobeyed orders and joined the Greeks.
Still, the allies might have been disappointed at their inability to attract more ships to Salamis. There was one prominent no-show. The Corcyreans had promised ambassadors of the Hellenic League to fight for Greece and against slavery. The western Greek island of Corcyra (modern Corfu) had even launched sixty triremes, a fleet second only to Athens’s in size. But the Corcyreans sent the ships only as far as Cape Taenarum in the southern Peloponnese in order not to anger Xerxes—the eventual winner of the war, they were sure. To the Greeks they pleaded the excuse of the Etesian winds, the powerful nor’easter that sometimes blows in the fall and stops navigation cold.
Then there was Sicily. Its leading Greek city-state was Syracuse, ruled in 480 B.C. by a tyrant named Gelon. The Hellenic League had asked Gelon for help against Persia. He promised a huge number of ships and men but named too high a price: supreme command. Both the Spartan and Athenian ambassadors who went to see him refused. Besides, Gelon had a war with Carthage on his hands. In the end, Gelon sent only a representative to Delphi, carrying a treasure to give as a gift to Xerxes, should the Great King prevail.
The three biggest contingents at Salamis were from Aegina, with 30 ships, Corinth, with 50 ships, and Athens, with 180 ships, about half of the triremes in the Greek fleet; Sparta contributed only 16 ships.
The Greeks had 368 ships at Salamis, as a reasonable reading of the tricky evidence concludes. To take only fifth century B.C. sources: the playwright Aeschylus says that the Greek numbers at Salamis “amounted to thirty tens of ships, and another ten elite ships”; the historian Thucydides reports a claim that the Greeks had 400 ships of which two-thirds (i.e., 267) were Athenian. Aeschylus’s figures are imprecise and poetic; Thucydides’ are imprecise and attributed to a bragging speaker fifty years after the battle. Herodotus’s numbers are better, if problematic.
Herodotus says that the Greeks had 378 ships, of which 180 were Athenian. He also adds that two ships defected to the Greeks from the Persians, bringing the number of ships to an even 380. Unfortunately, when Herodotus cites the ship numbers city-state by city-state, the figures add up to only 366 ships. Herodotus also specifies that the Greek fleet at Salamis was larger than the Greek fleet at Artemisium, which eventually numbered 333 ships. Assuming that Herodotus’s city-by-city figures are more accurate than his total, it would seem that the Greeks had 368 ships (366 plus the two defectors) on the day of the battle of Salamis.
Sparta had been made commander of the allied fleet, probably at the meeting at Corinth in the autumn of 481 B.C. when the Hellenic League had been formed. The natural commander of the fleet would have been an Athenian, presumably Themistocles, but the other Greeks resented Athens’s new naval power and feared Athenian muscle flexing. They insisted on a Spartan commander or they would dissolve the fleet. The Athenians yielded, and the Spartan government named Eurybiades.
Two city-states probably led the charge against the appointment of an Athenian as commander: Aegina and Corinth. Aegina is an island in the Saronic Gulf, south of Salamis, about thirty-three square miles in size. Located about seventeen miles from Athens, Aegina and its conical mountain (about 1,750 feet high) are clearly visible from the Acropolis. Like many neighbors in ancient Greece, Athens and Aegina were longtime rivals. In later years, Pericles expressed Athens’s habitual contempt for its neighbor by describing Aegina as “the eyesore of Piraeus,” referring to Athens’s main port after 479 B.C. Eyesores, of course, need to be rubbed out, and under Pericles, Athens smashed Aegina’s power once and for all. In 480, however, the rivalry was still burning.
Though small, Aegina before the days of Themistocles was a greater naval power than Athens. The Aeginetans were a maritime people who took the turtle as the symbol on their coins. For two decades before 480 B.C, Aegina and Athens waged a very violent war. In 490, on the eve of the Persian landing at Marathon, only Spartan intervention prevented Aegina from joining in the attack on Athens. The two states laid down their differences in 481 at the conference establishing the Hellenic League; no doubt Athens’s sprint ahead in the arms race, by deciding in 483 to build a two-hundred-ship navy, encouraged Aegina to think peace.
Corinth smarted from less nasty wounds. Traditional rivals, Athens and Corinth had avoided all-out war. But Themistocles hardly endeared Athens to Corinth when he arbitrated a dispute between Corinth and Corcyra in the latter’s favor. Corcyra was a naval power and a former colony of Corinth that had little love for its mother city. Looking even farther westward, Themistocles also strengthened Athens’s connections with the Greek city-states in Italy and Sicily.
None of this Athenian interest in the west could have pleased Corinth, which had long had maritime connections there. By mo
dern roads Corinth and Athens are fifty-five miles apart. Ancient Corinth was a wealthy city, grown rich on the oil of the olive trees that grew well in its fertile soil, on maritime trade, and on prostitution. Long the home of a tyranny that was famous for its vices, Corinth in 480 B.C. was now an oligarchy that preferred to sell vice to others. Corinthians were jealous and suspicious of an Athens that had once been a backwater but that had outstripped Corinth first as a trading center and now, recently, as a naval power.
The Corinthian admiral in 480 B.C. was Adimantus son of Ocytus. Corinth was an ally of Sparta, but Corinth loved its luxuries, and Adimantus was no doubt better dressed than Eurybiades. For that matter, he was probably better dressed than Themistocles. Unlike Athenians, Corinth’s oligarchs had no need to look like men of the people. We may imagine Adimantus in an elegant cloak of woven linen, cream-colored with a dark purple edging. His bronze breastplate no doubt featured incised musculature. His helmet, also bronze and made out of a single sheet of metal, was surely of the Corinthian style: close-fitting and custom-made, with a nosepiece and eyeholes. The helmet’s lower edge might have been decorated with a delicate, incised, spiral border. The helmet would give in to a blow without cracking, while padding underneath cushioned the impact. Adimantus may have worn a roll of cloth under his greaves to avoid chafing. His shield may have been emblazoned with an image of Pegasus, the winged horse that was a symbol of Corinth.
Between the return of their fleet from Artemisium and the arrival of the Persians, the Athenians had only five or six days to complete their evacuation. We do not know if the allied ships at Salamis helped the Athenians evacuate Athens or if they stood and waited. No doubt a steady stream of eleventh-hour transfers of people, property, and supplies across the narrow channel from Attica to Salamis was still flowing when the first hoofbeats of the enemy horses were heard. At any rate, even before the enemy had appeared, Eurybiades called the generals of the allied states to a council of war at Salamis. The date was about September 23.
The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece -- and Western Civilization Page 10