To be sure, the fight at the Isthmus would be bitter. But the Persians could virtually double the odds in their favor if they ferried troops by sea and landed them in the Greek rear, thereby surrounding the enemy. It might be another Thermopylae.
In order to carry out encirclement, the Persians would have to move their fleet from Athens to the Isthmus. A good harbor was available at Cenchreae, a Corinthian port on the Saronic Gulf and close to the wall. But landing at Cenchreae would not be easy, since the shore would almost certainly be lined with Greek troops.
Besides, the Greek fleet might see the Persians sail from Phaleron and then leave Salamis and follow the Persians to Cenchreae. Neither side would risk battle on the open sea, where survivors could not swim to safety; trireme navies always preferred to fight within sight of shore. But once the Persians drew close to Cenchreae, if the Greeks attacked, then the Persians would have to fight off a coastline held by the enemy, ready to capture or kill any Persian who managed to swim to shore.
In short, it would be risky for Persia to move its fleet to Cenchreae, which may explain why Artemisia never mentioned the possibility. But without the fleet, the Persians would face nearly as hard a fight at the Isthmus as at Thermopylae. They would have to face eight thousand Spartans instead of three hundred. Xerxes could hardly have relished the prospect.
The alternative was to break the Greek fleet at Salamis. And that meant either waiting for Greek treason or collapse, or fighting a battle. No doubt the Persians were already looking hard for potential Greek traitors. Because they could attack any fleet that tried to resupply Salamis, they held the island effectively under siege. But time was not on Persia’s side.
In late September in Athens, there is about twelve hours of daylight. The days are shorter than in summer, and the stars have shifted in the night sky. Here and there one even sees a fallen leaf. On the hills as evening falls, a stiff breeze often blows. Some nights, the breeze turns into a cold wind. Camped out under the foreign skies of Athens, many a Persian might have thought of the change of seasons. It was fall, and winter would follow.
The sailing season in the ancient Mediterranean was short, especially for triremes. As fragile as they were fast, triremes risked ruin in rough waters. They preferred to sail only between May and October, and preferably, only in the summer months. In late September, it was just about time for the Persian fleet to return to their various home ports.
And they had to eat. Attica had been stripped of every food item the Athenians could take, though no doubt there was still something for the hungry: fruit on the trees, water in the springs and cisterns, and birds and rabbits in the fields. Yet most of the Persians’ supplies had to be brought to Attica. Land transportation was slow and expensive, so the supply highway had to go by sea. Since triremes were too light to carry cargo, the Persians brought food on a flotilla of provision boats. These consisted both of Greek akata, which were medium-sized, pointed-hull vessels rowed by a crew of thirty to fifty men, and Phoenician gauloi, which were larger and rounded-hull sailing ships. Some Persian provision vessels had been lost in the storms of August but not all, and new ones may have arrived in convoy with the trireme reinforcements that came from Greece.
One expert modern estimate concludes that the Persians needed a minimum of eighty-four supply ships shuttling back and forth between Attica and the supply depots in Macedonia in order to feed their army and navy at Phaleron. Not even the Great King’s seasoned bureaucrats would have found it easy to provide such logistical support, but they might have been able to pull it off. Maybe the secret was cutting a corner here and covering up a shortfall there. The upshot is that the oarsmen at Phaleron might have been hungry, too hungry to pull hard in battle. But that is speculation.
The Persians could not wait at Phaleron forever. No doubt they considered landing troops on Salamis and advancing on the Greek ships. There are good harbors on the west coast of the island, and it is a short march overland eastward to the Greek positions. But the Greeks surely guarded every landing ground with armed men. Another possibility was to build a bridge across the mile-wide Salamis channel and march the men across, the way Persia had bridged the Hellespont. But the twenty-four-foot depth of the Salamis channel would have rendered this a difficult undertaking even with control at sea. As long as the Greek navy was at large, it would take a naval battle in order to protect the builders, which brought the Persians back to the need to fight at sea.
That, in turn, increased the pressure on Persia’s diplomats to find a Greek traitor, and on Persia’s recruiters and agents to find more men and ships. Between the storms and unrepaired losses, the Persian fleet on the day after Artemisium had declined from a total of 1,327 triremes to about 650, about half its original size. Tens of thousands of men had been lost in storms and battle as well. In the three weeks since then, reinforcements had arrived from mainland Greece and the islands. “The farther the Persian went into Greece, the more the nations that followed him,” writes Herodotus.
Impressed by what he had learned of the size of these reinforcements, Herodotus went out on a limb. “In my opinion, at any rate, the Persians were not less in number when they invaded Athens both by land and in their ships than they were when they had reached Sepias and Thermopylae.” Few scholars are inclined to agree with him. Herodotus himself had commented on the storm that wrecked two hundred Persian ships off Euboea that “it was all done by the god so that the Greek force would be saved and the Persian force would be not much greater than it.” It does not look as if that verdict was reversed in less than a month and from regions not known for large navies.
Central Greece was populous but neither it nor the Cycladic Islands were in a position to provide the Persians with many ships, let alone hundreds and hundreds. The Persian fleet is unlikely to have commanded more than seven hundred triremes at Salamis. When Herodotus speaks of massive reinforcements, either he is referring only to manpower and not ships or he is simply wrong.
No doubt the Persians had taken their new recruits out to sea at Phaleron and given them the chance to row or serve on deck as marines. But the Persians would have noticed that every one of their reinforcements was Greek and so not entirely trustworthy. There was also reason to distrust some and perhaps all of the allies accused by Artemisia. The Cypriots had joined the Ionian Revolt of 499 B.C. The Egyptians, too, had revolted from Persia and more recently—in 486. At Artemisium the Egyptians might have won the prize for valor from Xerxes, but perhaps that was more of a goodwill token on his part than a reward for services rendered. The Cilician squadron had been defeated by the Athenians on the second day at Artemisium. We know nothing of the Pamphylians (originally thirty ships), but they were a people of Greek descent and hence of questionable loyalty.
Disloyalty, a drop in the number of ships, possible supply problems, and dangerous terrain: there were so many reasons for Xerxes to avoid a battle at sea. But Xerxes might have reasoned that at Artemisium the enemy had enjoyed the advantage of surprise; at Salamis the Persians would not underrate the foe a second time. He might also have reckoned on momentum. Spurred by their success at the Acropolis, his soldiers would bear down on the dispirited Greeks, whose panic the day before might have been reported to him by spies.
Xerxes may have come to the conclusion that heaven had suddenly dropped victory into his lap. The first of two enemy capital cities had fallen. The Greek army and navy remained intact, but they were in disarray. The enemy army was improvising a hasty defense; the enemy fleet was divided and on the verge of panic. A short, sharp move by Persia might be enough to push the Greeks over the edge. The invading force that had already taken Athens might end the season yet at Sparta.
And so, the navies would fight at Salamis. That master of manipulation, the Great King, had decided to tie his fate to an image. He had been taught the power of images from childhood on. The avenger, rising over the straits of Salamis on his throne, looming against a backdrop of honorable smoke from justly ruined temples, w
ould spur his ships to success. The struggle might be severe, but in the end the Persians would win, just as they had at Thermopylae. Who knew? His agents might even find a convenient traitor soon. Not for Xerxes the return home with his hands half empty.
No sooner had the king spoken than the order was given to launch the ships. This had been expected: fleets do not spring into action at a moment’s notice, at least not successful fleets. Besides, Xerxes had already prepared to take up a position on land at the edge of the battle. As the order was passed from squadron commander to captain to crew, tens of thousands of men lined up, climbed wooden ladders at the water’s edge, and boarded their ships.
Artemisia’s response to Xerxes’ verdict is not recorded. She was a woman of valor, but she was no Antigone: she was willing to speak truth to power but not to engage in civil disobedience. When the ships rowed out of Phaleron Bay, Artemisia and her men were among them.
The Persians made for the straits of Salamis, the entrance to which lies about four miles to the northwest of Phaleron Bay. There, they divided themselves into lines and squadrons unmolested by the enemy. Presumably they took up their formations just outside the entrance to the Salamis channel, spread over a five-mile-wide waterway between Salamis and the mainland. The Persians hoped to draw the Greeks out of the narrow straits, but the enemy never appeared. As the light of day gave out, the order was given for the Persians to return to Phaleron. On September 24, the sun sets at Athens at 7:19 P.M., so we may imagine the Persians beginning their retreat around 6:00 P.M.
The Persian commanders were probably not surprised that the Greeks had not accepted a challenge to fight in unfavorable waters. But that was perhaps not the whole story. The Persians might also have been making the first move in a game of psychological warfare. By lining up at the entrance to the Salamis straits, they demonstrated to the Greeks both their aggressive spirit and their renewed numbers. The Greeks on Salamis saw the full force of the fleet that faced them. Any hope that the Persian navy had been ruined in central Greece by storm and battle was now dashed at the sight of this shipshape and well-reinforced armada.
Nor was the navy the only weapon deployed by Persia. That night, when the Greek fleet had returned to Salamis, the Persian army began marching toward the Peloponnese. In the night sky, the sound of tens of thousands of men and horses tramping westward through Attica would have carried across the straits to the Greek camp. In fact, the Persians might have ordered their men to hug the shore, the more to frighten the enemy. With luck, the terror of the Persian advance might split the Greeks at Salamis, forcing part of the fleet to hurry toward the Isthmus and the other part to fall into Persia’s hands, either through defeat in battle or through treason.
The Persian fleet headed back to Phaleron, where it planned to moor overnight. The men probably took their regular evening meal and then prepared for what lay ahead the next day, when they would enter the straits and provoke the great battle that the commanders wanted, all of them except Artemisia. Then news arrived that changed everything.
CHAPTER SIX
FROM SALAMIS TO PHALERON
A man sits in a small wooden boat. It may be an Athenian dispatch boat, or perhaps it is one of the hundreds of fishing boats on Salamis. In order not to attract attention, only two men are rowing the vessel, as we may imagine. As they make their way in the dark past the barely visible hill of Munychia—lit by a small number of lamps—toward Phaleron Bay, the little crew feels every wave against the thin hull. And the sea outside the Salamis channel, unprotected by island or peninsula, is rougher than the waters inside the straits. Earlier that same evening, the mighty Persian fleet, about seven hundred triremes strong, had rowed these very waters, moving from Phaleron to the mouth of the Salamis straits and then reversing course. Now the tiny vessel is following in the Persians’ wake. It is nighttime on about September 24.
The man is simply dressed, in a tunic and boots, perhaps with a cloak to protect him against the sea breeze and with a well-fastened hat. No doubt he is not carrying the gnarled stick usually held by someone in his position of responsibility over children. He is probably unarmed, so as to make his peaceful intentions clear.
If he looks worried, it is not just because his companions are rowing him in the dark, which is never without risk, or even merely because they are headed for the enemy encampment, always a perilous place to land. Rather, he is worried because he knows that he is carrying the weight of the war, because it is on his words that the fate of Greece depends. This is a huge burden for a man without a country or a family name or even his freedom.
In later years the rumors about him flew. He was a Persian, no, a eunuch; he was a prisoner of war, no, a slave; he carried out his mission at dawn, no, at night. Some scholars deny that his celebrated deed ever took place. In that case, his story hoodwinked not only Herodotus but the people of Thespiae as well. After the Persian Wars, the inhabitants of this small Boeotian city made Sicinnus—we call the man simply Sicinnus, for we know neither his father’s name nor his country of origin—a citizen, and at Themistocles’ suggestion. As if that wasn’t boon enough, Themistocles also made Sicinnus a rich man.
We can be sure that Sicinnus was Greek. Greek cities, such as Thespiae, did not enfranchise Persians, nor did they enfranchise eunuchs, since one of a citizen’s duties was to furnish the city with Greek children. His name may indicate that Sicinnus came from Phrygia, a district in northwestern Anatolia. Phrygia was famous for its cult of the Great Mother, a goddess to whom Themistocles, too, was devoted. Since Phrygia was under Persian rule, Sicinnus might have been familiar with Persian ways, and perhaps he even spoke Persian. As for his status, Sicinnus was indeed a slave, and it is plausible that he was once a prisoner of war as well, since many slaves owed their status to the misfortune of war. Themistocles must have freed him sometime after 480 B.C. before recommending Sicinnus for citizenship in Thespiae.
As a slave, Sicinnus played a hallowed role in a prosperous Greek household: he was paidagogos to Themistocles’ sons. The paidagogos was both more and less than a modern pedagogue. He had to take the boys to school and home again each day, carrying their belongings, a lamp, and sometimes even a tired boy or two. He also had to supervise them in the streets and divert them from any of the various temptations offered by a booming town like Athens. The paidagogos did no formal teaching, but he bore a general responsibility for the boys’ moral education. In short, a paidagogos had to be firm, alert, of good character, and, above all, trustworthy. No wonder Themistocles entrusted him with so important an assignment.
For the mission did take place. There is no reason to deny it except for its improbability, and that is a poor argument, since history is full of the improbable. Not just Herodotus, a Halicarnassian who wrote two generations after the events of 480 B.C., but Aeschylus, an Athenian who wrote in 472 B.C., confirms Sicinnus’s deed. They differ about the details, but reports of secret missions often do conflict, and besides, Aeschylus and Herodotus wrote in different genres (respectively, tragic poetry and history), for different audiences, and for different purposes. Stark disagreements between the two should not surprise us.
But having asserted that Sicinnus’s mission really did happen, we cannot understand its purpose or its results without looking back at the circumstances surrounding it. It began earlier that evening of September 24 on Salamis.
On the previous night, September 23, the showdown between Themistocles and Adimantus had ended up with Eurybiades’ decision to keep the fleet at Salamis. But the Peloponnesian crews were not happy with the choice. The more they heard about the defensive works at the Isthmus, the more they wanted to abandon Salamis. On top of that, the afternoon of September 24 brought the entire Persian fleet to the entrance of the Salamis straits, offering battle. And after the enemy navy retreated to its base at Phaleron, the enemy army began marching along the Attic coast, westward toward the Isthmus.
As the day of September 24 wore on, the Peloponnesians began gathering in sma
ll groups and whispering. They kept their voices down but their dander up; they were simply amazed at the bad decision that Eurybiades had made. They were afraid of being stuck in Salamis on the verge of fighting a naval battle for Athens, and if they lost, they would be trapped, unable to defend their homeland. Perhaps they griped about how a fast-talking Athenian had pulled the wool over the eyes of a stalwart but simpleminded Spartan. Finally, the discontent broke out in public. Itching to join the stand at the Isthmus, “the men who were wasting their time in Salamis with all the ships were so terror-stricken that they no longer obeyed the commanders,” as a later historian put it.
Eurybiades had lost control of his fleet. Perhaps another man might have done better, but he would not have found it easy. The Greeks rarely valued obedience above saying what was on their minds, not even now, when Greece itself was at stake.
By now, it was nighttime. Yet another assembly was called. The Peloponnesian commanders spoke at length and did not mince words. Athens, they said, was lost: it was, to use the traditional term, “land that had been captured by the spear.” The thing to do was to leave Salamis at once and take their chances at the Isthmus. The Athenians, of course, disagreed. They, along with the Aeginetans and the Megarians, argued for staying and fighting at Salamis.
But it was no use. Or so Themistocles thought: he reached the conclusion that his policy would be rejected. Plutarch claims that the Greeks actually decided to withdraw that night, and went so far as to give orders for the voyage to their pilots. No doubt before that happened, Themistocles slipped out of the meeting discreetly and found Sicinnus. The ancient sources give the impression that the idea of Sicinnus’s mission was a sudden burst of inspiration on Themistocles’ part, born of desperation, but it seems more probable that the Athenian had planned things in advance. Themistocles was nothing if not perceptive, and he surely had noticed before how shallow support for his position was among the Peloponnesian crews.
The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece -- and Western Civilization Page 13