The assembly consisted of only the marines. It may seem strange that the rowers were not invited, but this was standard procedure in the pre-battle assemblies of ancient Greek navies. An assembly of the marines of over three hundred ships amounted to more than three thousand men; to include the rowers would have meant an assembly of more than sixty thousand men, and there wasn’t a hillside in Greece big enough to accommodate such a crowd. Besides, it would have delayed the fleet’s embarkation dangerously to wait until after the assembly to fill so many ships with so many men. Far better to have the rowers file onto their benches aboard ship first, while the assembly was in session, and then to have the marines clamber onto the deck.
The purpose of the assembly was to inspire the men. Greek generals usually addressed their troops before sending them into battle. The rowers certainly needed to be inspired as well, but perhaps the marines seemed to be in greater danger, considering that they sat on deck and might well have to engage in hand-to-hand fighting.
But there was a final reason to address the marines and not the rowers, and that was the prestige of the armed man. Marines carried sword and spear but rowers did not. In 480 B.C., the marines were probably drawn from the social class that supplied Greece’s infantrymen: the men of middling wealth, most of them farmers. These men came from families that, for generations, had supplied the backbone of the Greek armies. The rowers, meanwhile, certainly included men of modest wealth: the rowing benches could not be filled without them. But many of the rowers were poor men, sometimes dirt-poor, and Greek manpower needs dictated that they would even include slaves. Poor men in Greek land armies served only in a supporting role, as light-armed troops, and sometimes served not at all. By addressing the marines, therefore, the commanders paid homage to the martial tradition of the Greek people. They also reminded the marines, at least symbolically, that they were elite troops.
So the marines gathered round. Each is likely to have worn a short-sleeved, belted tunic and perhaps also a cloak against the morning chill on the water. He would be carrying a shield, a spear, and a sword. Many would be wearing a breastplate.
Various commanders spoke, but Themistocles seemed to say things best. What the others said is not recorded, and only the gist of his remarks survives. Herodotus reports:
All his words contrasted the better with the worse in human nature and the human condition. He told the men to choose the better, he finished his speech resoundingly, and he gave orders to board their ships.
At first sight, Themistocles’ words are disappointing. Then, on a second look, they reveal the eloquence of simplicity. There may have been no better way to tell the men how much depended on their behavior during the next day.
Or maybe, for once, Themistocles knew when to hold his tongue. Nothing that he said could have affected the men as powerfully as the sacrifices or the prayers or the omens. Indeed, at the very last minute, when Themistocles had finished and the marines were boarding their ships, another augury of success appeared. The trireme from Aegina, sent to fetch the statues of the sons of Aeacus, arrived. If seventy thousand voices had cried out in unison “The gods and heroes are with us!,” the effect could not have been greater.
If Themistocles noted the arrival from Aegina with approval, he no doubt focused on the fleets. His men, fresh from a night on shore and fired to avenge their gods and defend their homes, faced an enemy whose ships were still finding their places in line and whose captains had perhaps begun to fret. The Persians had expected to find a broken fleet on the verge of flight; instead, they faced a battle-ready foe, while they themselves had tired crews and boats positioned for the wrong assignment. Within the space of a day, the Greeks had gone from despair to the real possibility of victory. The gods had given the Greeks an opportunity that most of them had never imagined.
The gods, that is, through their faithful servant, Themistocles. The Athenian was irreverent to men but he was a lifelong devotee of Artemis. He owed the goddess more than a goat for the advantage bestowed upon the Greeks by his ruse with Sicinnus. And yet, it may be that Themistocles had still more tricks to play before the battle began. The ancient sources are so difficult on this subject that we can do no more than judge these tricks as plausible: we do not know if they actually happened or if they only grew in legend later. But when dealing with Themistocles, it would be unwise to ignore any possible ploy.
The first trick has to do with the role of Corinth in the battle. Years later, around 430 B.C., when Corinth and Athens had become the bitterest enemies, the Athenians insisted that, at the outset of the battle of Salamis, the Corinthians hoisted their sails and fled instead of fighting. In other words, they behaved just as the Samians had at Lade in 494 B.C. Yet all the other Greeks denied this. Furthermore, before 430 B.C. the Athenians had allowed the Corinthians to set up victory monuments on Salamis. Herodotus, who reports the facts, is neutral.
The story about Corinth might amount to nothing more than slander, but then again, it might contain a grain of truth. Suppose the Corinthians indeed had raised their sails and fled, but only to deceive the Persians. In that case, the Persians would believe with certainty in the Greek collapse. Softened up by deception, they would have been shocked by the fury of the Greek charge. In the meantime, the Corinthians could have quickly furled their sails and entered the battle.
The second trick, involving winds and waves, is even more complex. It is said that only the fishermen really know the winds. To earn their livelihood, fishermen must know when it is safe to go out to sea and when they must stick to shore; they need to know if they can sleep until dawn or if they must be up earlier, in order to find a smooth sea on which to toss their nets. A good fisherman can make a fair guess, the night before, about the winds that the next morning will bring.
A smart naval commander knows, therefore, that fishermen are valuable resources. We may imagine that Themistocles took the trouble to get to know the fishermen on Salamis personally. In his usual politician’s manner, he might have learned their names, kissed their babies, and asked about the winds.
It seems a good guess that as soon as he finished addressing his marines that morning, Themistocles had his finger up to the wind, because the fishermen had already given him information. They had told him that within two hours of dawn, the aura would begin to blow.
The aura is a sea breeze. In the region of Attica, it blows in from the south, off the Saronic Gulf. The aura is a gentle breeze, rarely blowing as much as four or five nautical miles per hour. In the Attica region, the aura usually begins to blow between 8:00 and 10:00 A.M. Another common phenomenon is for the aura to be proceeded by a north wind, blowing off the land.
If Themistocles expected an aura on the morning of September 25, the information might have been of great interest to him. He knew that the aura was intensified by the narrow Salamis straits, by what meteorologists today call the channeling effect. No doubt he had seen the results himself. He did not expect a hurricane, but he knew that the aura would make boats bounce and waver on the water. And that might make a difference in the battle.
Here the historian enters intriguing if dangerous ground. Herodotus says nothing about the winds at Salamis. Then again, he says nothing about the winds in any naval battle. Our information comes from Plutarch. Although he wrote six centuries after Salamis, Plutarch had access to several fifth century B.C. accounts besides Herodotus, accounts that no longer survive today. Plutarch was, in general, a careful scholar, with a habit of labeling tall tales clearly. He was a Greek to boot, so he knew the weather.
Plutarch reports that Themistocles waited for the aura before he gave the order for the Greek triremes to charge. He waited for “a brisk breeze . . . from the sea and a swell to roll down the straits.” He expected that these conditions might give the Persians trouble because he knew that their triremes “rose high in their sterns, and had bulwarks and would come down heavily.” In other words, the waves would upset the Persian ships because of their height. Themistocles wo
rried little about the effect of the swell on the Greek ships, because “they had light drafts and lay low in the water.” Indeed, Themistocles may have been right, because other evidence confirms that Phoenician triremes contained bulwarks. This feature, aimed at protecting the large number of men on deck, rendered the ships vulnerable to wind.
We might also add that the Greeks had the advantage of knowing what awaited them. The Persians, by contrast, were sailing blind: they had no locals to ask about the wind, since Attica had been evacuated. They had to rely on the exiled family of the ex-tyrant of Athens, most of whom hadn’t seen Athens in thirty years, and none of whom was likely ever to have spent much time with the fishermen there.
If Plutarch is right, then Themistocles had yet another card to play against the Persian fleet. But only a very few men of the tens of thousands in the Greek fleet can have shared his knowledge of the strategic overview. Most of them made out only the threatening mass of the enemy triremes and the back of the oarsman astern of them or the early light reflected on a forest of spear points or the blood dripping from the sacrificial goat’s throat.
Somewhere in the crowd, either on a trireme or in the ranks along the shore, a poet, we may imagine, intermingled obligation with iambic meter not yet sung. Phrases like “lord of the oar,” “rich in hands and rich in rowers,” “to join in battle with their triremes’ rams,” and “to shut out the invincible wave with sturdy walls” rushed through his mind in turn. Yet however many lines he may have spun, Aeschylus kept returning to one verse in particular: theoi polin soizousi Pallados theas. “The city of Athena will be rescued by the gods.”
As for Themistocles, he had achieved all that he had sought. In spite of every effort by his allies to avoid it, in spite of every effort by his enemies to wage it on better terms, one cunning Athenian had created a clash of a thousand warships precisely where he wanted it, and precisely when. Themistocles had arranged the perfect battle. All that remained was to fight it.
THE BATTLE
CHAPTER NINE
SALAMIS STRAITS: MORNING
The admiral Ariabignes, commander of the Ionian and Carian squadrons in the Persian fleet, son of Darius and half brother of His Majesty the Great King Xerxes, sits in the stern of his flagship. The ship, which is unusually large, has a towering stern and high bulwarks. We may imagine Ariabignes in the stern, shortly after dawn on September 25, pondering his uncertainty. Perhaps he absentmindedly fingers the twists of the gold torque that hangs heavily around his neck. The noble blood of Gobryas, a Persian of great courage, runs in Ariabignes’ veins, and it is too rich for seawater. But battle is battle, wherever it takes place, and the admiral is a seasoned warrior. He knows that confusion gets in the way of victory, and he has reason to be confused.
He had expected to catch the cowardly Greeks in the act of sneaking out of their harbors on Salamis during the night, which is why the entire Persian fleet has been deployed in darkness in the straits. Yet not a Greek ship has budged all night except for a trireme that rowed into rather than out of the straits; unbeknown to Ariabignes, it was Aristides’ ship. If indeed the forty Corinthian ships had hoisted sail at dawn and fled, then Ariabignes might have been reassured: how like the Greeks to be so paralyzed by talk that they could not even turn tail in a timely manner. But still, he might wonder why the other Greek triremes had not followed the first to flee.
It is unlikely that Ariabignes suspects that the Persian fleet has blundered into a trap. Royal admirals do not like to admit mistakes, especially not mistakes that might discredit their brother on the throne. Xerxes himself had ordered the navy into the straits, and Xerxes himself was there at Salamis. Aeschylus writes of the king:
He had a seat in full view of the army,
A high hill beside the broad sea.
Xerxes observed the battle from the slopes of Mount Aegaleos on the mainland. The Great King sat on a golden throne, looking down like a god from Olympus on the men who were about to die for the sake of his ambition.
Ariabignes might have comforted himself with the thought that his men would fight well regardless of what awaited them. If the sight of Xerxes on high were not enough to ensure their loyalty, then the presence of Iranian and Sacae marines on every ship should have made up for it. Since the Great King’s ships had crossed the Hellespont in May, only six triremes, all Greek, had defected from the Persian navy to the enemy side. So Ariabignes might have reasoned, but it is doubtful that he had an inkling of what lay ahead.
Meanwhile, about a mile away on the other side of the straits, the Greeks made full use of the advantage they had over the Persians: the knowledge of the truth. They prepared to shock the enemy with an attack.
Surprise is a weapon. Often underestimated, it is one of the most effective and cheapest of all force multipliers as well as one of the most versatile. It is possible to surprise an enemy not only in the time or place of battle but in the manner of fighting. Ariabignes and his other commanders knew that the entire Greek navy faced them. What they did not know, and what they could perhaps hardly fathom, was that the Greeks were ready to do battle. And yet, that morning at around seven o’clock if not earlier, events would force Ariabignes into admitting the truth. The Persians had been swindled.
Themistocles knew, as a modern military maxim puts it, that it is devastating to “come down on the enemy with thunder before he sees the lightning.” The ancients put it more simply: panic, they believed, is divine. And so, the Greeks on Salamis unleashed the storm of war on an enemy that had expected a drizzle.
Shortly before 7:00 A.M., as soon as Themistocles and the other Greek generals had finished their send-offs and the marines had boarded their triremes, an order was passed from ship to ship. Up the row of triremes moored in the harbors and opposite the beaches of Ambelaki and Paloukia bays, the command went out, perhaps by sounding the trumpet, perhaps by raising a purple flag, perhaps by holding aloft a gold or silver shield—or perhaps by doing all three: the Greeks would launch their ships.
On the far side of the straits, the first sign of trouble for the Persians was an unexpected sound from the Greek harbors. “A song-like shout sounded triumphantly from the Greeks,” reports Aeschylus, “and at the same time, the island’s rocks returned the high-pitched echo.” This was the paean.
It was a peculiarly Greek custom, Dorian in origin but eventually adopted by the other Greeks. Aeschylus describes the paean as a “holy cry uttered in a loud voice, . . . a shout offered in sacrifice, emboldening to friends, and dissolving fear of the foe.” When an army marched into battle or a navy left the harbor to wage war at sea, the men sang the paean. It was a combination of prayer, cheer, and rebel yell.
The Persians had heard the paean before, most recently at Artemisium and Thermopylae. But in the last weeks, as they beat down nearly defenseless foes in Euboea, Phocis, and Attica, they had become used to its absence. It was the last thing they had expected this morning. Aeschylus is blunt about its alleged effect on the Persian audience aboard ship:
All the barbarians felt fear because they had been deprived of
What they expected. The Greeks were singing the stately paean at that time
Not for flight but because they were hastening
Into battle and were stout of heart.
Next the alarmed Persians heard the blaring of the Greek trumpets, an unambiguous call to arms. The ancient trumpet, or salpinx, was a long, straight, narrow tube flaring into a small bell. The salpinx ranged from two and a half to about five feet long: the salpinx was hardly handy, but it was certainly loud. Homer compares the sound of the salpinx to the terrible cry of Achilles. An ancient music critic, Aristides Quintilianus, calls the salpinx “a warlike and terrifying instrument,” “masculine” and “vehement.”
Next came the sound of enemy oars being rowed on command, crisply and in unison, in what Aeschylus calls “the regular stroke of the rushing oars together.” Ominously, the Greek word for stroke, embole, is the same word used for “charge�
�� or “ramming.” There was no mistaking the meaning of that sound.
By now, the Greeks had left the shadow of the shore and were clearly visible to the Persians. Only a few minutes had passed between the sound of the paean and the sight of the enemy. Unlike the Greeks, who had put together a battle plan on shore and had enjoyed at least a little time to think things through, the Persians had to scramble.
From his flagship, Tetramnestus, king of Sidon, no doubt assessed the situation. Two other Phoenician monarchs were also present nearby: Matten, king of Tyre, and Merbalus, king of Aradus. Since the three of them represented the greatest naval tradition in the world, they are likely to have responded calmly. But a surge of emotions, from the lowest seaman to the loftiest courtier, stood in the way of an unperturbed reaction to the Greek challenge. Besides, the Persian commanders Megabazus and Prexaspes had the final say, and they probably did not enjoy the same ease at sea as the Phoenicians.
We can only imagine the range of feelings on the Persian ships. For the captains, it may have been fear; for the rowers, fury; for the pilots, frustration; for the squadron commanders, finger-wagging; for the skeptics, self-satisfaction; for the admirals, fantasies of revenge. The Phoenicians blamed the Ionians; the Ionians blamed the Egyptians; the Egyptians blamed the Cypriots; and everyone blamed the Persians. And it’s likely that the Persians nervously fingered their necks, thinking of Xerxes’ anger at those who failed him.
Whatever their feelings, the Persians were professional enough to hustle into order. To their credit, they rowed out from the coast of Attica toward the far side of the straits in order to meet the Greek fleet. “When they [the Greeks] launched their ships,” writes Herodotus, “the barbarians were upon them without delay.”
The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece -- and Western Civilization Page 18