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

by Barry Strauss

  The most important question left by the clash at Salamis is this: Why did the Greeks win the battle and the Persians lose? Herodotus, who understood Salamis as well as any ancient writer, gives his answer succinctly: good order versus disorder. The Persians fell apart; the Greeks did not. Herodotus writes:

  Since the Greeks fought [with each ship] in order and [with every ship] in the order of battle, while the barbarians neither remained drawn up in order of battle nor did they do anything wisely, it was only to be expected that things turned out for them as they did.

  But the student of history wants to go a step further and ask why the Persians fell apart. For this, there are three answers: shock, command, and geography.

  At dawn on September 25, the Persians were shocked to discover that the Greeks were ready to fight. The Persians were not prepared for this mentally or physically. They had expected an easy pursuit of a broken enemy, not a tough fight. Even at first light, the Greeks possibly kept the enemy off guard by sending the Corinthians northward on a phony flight. At Salamis the Greeks were in top form psychologically and had spent the night sleeping on dry land rather than in wakeful and exhausting rowing. Shock made it easier for the Greeks to break up the good order of the Persian fleet.

  Many Persian commanders were killed in battle, including the highest-ranking admiral, Xerxes’ half brother Ariabignes. Persian navies (and armies) were more vulnerable to decapitation than Greeks because Persia was more centralized. Nor did Persia encourage individual initiative the way the Greeks did, especially a democracy like Athens. Unlike the Greeks, Persian commanders had little loyalty to a cause; instead, they fought mainly to impress Xerxes. They had no incentive to fight to the death. The Persian way of command contributed to a breakdown of good order at Salamis.

  Finally, the Greeks took every advantage of the unusual geography of the Salamis straits. The narrow space made it impossible for the Persians to use their superiority in speed. By the same token, the channel turned the heaviness of the Greeks’ triremes from a liability into an advantage. And it turned the superiority of the Persians in numbers into a disadvantage, because their boats collided with each other. If, on a likely reconstruction, the regular morning sea breeze began to blow, the result would have unsteadied the Persian ships more than it did the Greeks’. So the straits’ geography contributed to the disorder of the Persian fleet.

  Shock, command, and geography: three simple building blocks, deployed in a deadly way, turned the battle of Salamis from a hammer blow by Persia into a trap laid by Greeks. Persia hoped to crush the Greeks with its superiority in numbers but blundered into an ambush in which its very mass worked against it. Rarely have so many been hurt so much by so few.

  Between the two of them, Athens and Aegina accounted for most of the Persian warships that were disabled during the battle. Both achievements were extraordinary, but Aegina’s was outsize, since its 30 triremes represented only one-sixth as many ships as Athens’s 180. No doubt Aegina disabled other enemy vessels in the morning besides the one rammed by the ship bearing the statues of the sons of Aeacus, but what really distinguished Aegina at Salamis was the ambush it carried out in the afternoon. The Aeginetans “exhibited achievements worthy of mention,” says Herodotus: high praise indeed, considering his promise in the opening sentence that his book would be “an exhibition of . . . great and astonishing achievements” so that they not be forgotten.

  THE RETREAT

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  PHALERON

  As the west wind picks up in the evening of September 25, it bends the crowd of warships like a field of grain in the afternoon breeze. The Persian navy is in flight, its men all but dead in their seats. On one of the triremes, the lookout gives the word that the enemy has stopped his pursuit, but the petrified rowers keep pulling. As they pass Piraeus on the port side and the pilot starts adjusting the rudder for the turn into Phaleron Bay, the captain shifts her thoughts to the shore. The queen of Halicarnassus is always thinking, and she knows that Xerxes will call a war council. She has to ponder how best to make use of the credit she will have won from ramming what she hopes the high command will have thought was an enemy ship. She understands not to overplay her hand, now that her forecast of naval disaster has come true. Meanwhile, as Artemisia knows, she must keep her men content and quiet about what they really did at Salamis: or so we might imagine.

  As the surviving ships pulled back up to the beach at Phaleron on the end of the worst day in the history of the Persian fleet, the men are likely to have scrambled ashore and rushed to their camp. The soldiers stationed there will have run down to the ships to help them, sending whatever slaves were available to carry off the wounded and the dead. The corpses would be cremated, the wounded brought to doctors.

  And there were many corpses. In the days after the battle of Salamis, the shores of Attica became the most ethnically diverse graveyard in human history to that date. It was a testimony to the diversity of the Persian Empire and to the folly of its leaders.

  As for the men injured in battle, those with flesh wounds to their limbs, simple fractures, or sprains had a fair chance of surviving. Wounds would be swabbed with myrrh, fig juice, or wine to reduce infection and stop the bleeding, and then they would be bandaged with linen or cotton. A fractured limb would be extended and adjusted; rubbed with an ointment containing a mixture of fat, resin, and herbs; and then carefully bandaged to effect a light compression. After a few days, the bandages would have to be checked and changed. Sprains and dislocations could be adjusted and the pain managed with herbs and massage, but not always with success. Xerxes’ father, Darius, for example, once suffered so much from a dislocated anklebone that not even his Egyptian doctors—then considered the world’s best—could heal him; only Democedes of the Italian-Greek city of Croton, who happened to be in the Persian Empire, was able to do the trick.

  The odds of survival were poor for anyone needing surgery. Ancient doctors carried bronze medicine chests, about five inches long by about three inches wide, whose tools included scalpels, hooks, forceps, and drills. Ancient surgeons were well aware of the importance of cleanliness. Greek and Near Eastern physicians had some success in extracting arrow- and spearheads from wounds. They had some ability to reinflate collapsed lungs, and they experimented with bores and augers to treat skull wounds. Yet the survival rates for most of these procedures were poor.

  “A healer is worth many men in his ability to cut out arrows and smear soothing medicaments on wounds,” says Homer. But it is doubtful that there were enough doctors available at Phaleron Bay for all the wounded after Salamis. So, as ineffective as most ancient doctors were by our standards, some men had to settle for even worse: fumbling medical help from their comrades or attempts at magic from the camp followers, who offered nostrums, spells, prayers, and amulets. The numbers of dead surely mounted in the hours and days after the battle.

  Meanwhile, the living could at least be fed and given water and wine to drink. After nearly twenty-four hours on the sea, they must have been as hungry and thirsty as they were tired. Still, the talk is likely to have turned to pulling out of Phaleron immediately that night, before the Greeks could attack them. As darkness fell, torches would have lit the dispirited camp. Moans of pain and crying for the dead would have mingled with rumor, blame, and scheming.

  Whether or not Xerxes visited the fleet that night, he was not idle. He felt danger hanging over him. Xerxes knew that when Darius invaded Scythia (today’s Ukraine) in 513 B.C., the Persian army had nearly been trapped when its bridge over the Danube had almost been cut. Now Xerxes feared for his bridges over the Hellespont. He intended that the remnant of the Persian fleet race back across the Aegean in order to protect the expedition’s lifeline.

  And yet he wanted to hide his plans. So immediately after the defeat at Salamis, apparently the very next day, Xerxes ordered his engineers to begin constructing a causeway between the mainland and Salamis. They tied together Phoenician merchantmen, presumably
ships that had brought supplies to Greece for Phoenician warships. The Persians planned to use these ships to serve both as a pontoon bridge and as a wall behind which they could build the causeway. In other words, since they had failed to reach Salamis by sea, they planned to attack it by land. They probably rowed the merchantmen into the straits along the Attic shore, guarding them with some of their remaining warships. With a large enough naval escort, the Persians might create the impression that they were planning another naval battle, which was just the disinformation that they wanted to feed the Greeks.

  On September 26, the day after the battle, Xerxes called a war council. Unlike the last time, Xerxes did not meet with all the kings and squadron commanders in his service. This time, he consulted only Persians, with the exception of Artemisia. The queen of Halicarnassus had emerged from the wreckage of the straits like Aphrodite arisen from the sea. She was now not merely the most powerful woman in Xerxes’ entourage, she was the most influential of all the king’s non-Persian allies.

  In council, Mardonius advised Xerxes to make little of Salamis. “Our struggle is not to be decided by pieces of wood but by men and horses.” And he added:

  The Persians have nothing to do with what has happened, nor can you say that somehow we have been cowardly men. If the Phoenicians and Egyptians and Cypriots and Cilicians have been cowards, this disaster has nothing to do with the Persians.

  It was a sentiment to strike a chord in the Persian elite. When the bad news from Salamis reached Susa, the Persians

  all tore their tunics and cried and made boundless lamentations and blamed Mardonius. The Persians did this not so much because they grieved about the ships as because they feared for Xerxes himself.

  In strategic terms, the ships were at least as important as the king, but the Persians thought just the opposite.

  After hearing from Mardonius and his other Persian advisers, Xerxes did an extraordinary thing. He dismissed them and his bodyguards as well. For once, the royal tent was empty except for the Great King and the counselor who most inspired confidence. If he had listened to Artemisia’s advice before Salamis, he might now be the master of Greece. At least he had finally learned whom to trust.

  Artemisia might be forgiven if she had stopped to savor the moment. After all, she was the half-Cretan widow of the petty ruler of a small Anatolian city nearly two thousand miles away from the imperial capital. She had barely escaped with her life from a naval disaster, and she had done so only by treacherously turning on her ally in full view of witnesses. She was a woman in a society whose ruling elite considered it the most terrible insult to call a man “worse than a woman.” And yet she had climbed the peak of power.

  If he had not done so already, Xerxes was soon to honor her with the prize for bravery in battle. The story is told that Artemisia received a full suit of Greek armor as a sign of her achievement. At the same time, Xerxes gave a spindle and distaff to “the admiral of the fleet.” A distaff is a rod on which wool is wound before being spun into thread. In Greece, it was a symbol of womanhood. So to give a distaff to a naval commander was surely an insult.

  We do not know which commander is meant by the phrase “admiral of the fleet”: the chief candidate is probably Megabazus son of Megabates, one of the two Persian commanders of the Phoenician squadrons (along with Prexaspes son of Aspathines). Megabazus may have held a hereditary position as “the admiral,” to judge from official documents at Persepolis. In the Roman era Megabazus was called the admiral in chief of 480 B.C., which may be an echo of such a status. But Megabazus’s fortune may have sunk after Salamis, since neither he nor the other two surviving Persian admirals, Achaemenes and Prexaspes, was reassigned to a naval command the following year.

  If the spindle and distaff were an insult, the full suit of Greek armor was meant as a compliment. In both Greece and Persia, prowess in battle, especially land battle, was considered the height of manliness. And surely Xerxes’ gift represented nothing but the best in materials and craftsmanship: certainly something with the finest horsehair for the plume and with a design incised on helmet, breastplate, and greaves, and with a stunning blazon on the shield, perhaps one of the lions or winged bulls favored in Persian art.

  If it is really true that Xerxes gave Artemisia a Greek suit of armor, as opposed to Persian armor, that might reflect the standards of Caria, where Greek influence was very strong and soldiers were armed in the Greek fashion. In Athens, a suit of armor and a wreath were the standard prize for valor. The Persian monarchs were nothing if not sensitive to the customs of their subjects.

  But no one at the time would have considered Xerxes overly generous in his gift to Artemisia. After all, Theomestor was rewarded with the tyranny of Samos, and Phylakes was given an estate and enrolled among the King’s Benefactors. Two generations later, the rather poor country of Acarnania rewarded an Athenian general with not one but three hundred suits of armor. But that general had won his battle; Artemisia merely salvaged some specious honor during a disaster.

  The conference met in Xerxes’ tent on September 26: it was the hour of Xerxes’ anxiety, and Artemisia was there to reassure him. Leave aside her charm and coquetry: Artemisia was the best naval strategist in Xerxes’ service. His half brother, the Carians’ and Ionians’ commander, the admiral Ariabignes, was dead; his brother Achaemenes, commander of the undistinguished Egyptian fleet, was disgraced, as were the three Phoenician kings and the two Persian admirals, who outranked the kings. Samian and Samothracian captains had scored kills in the battle, and so had others. But Artemisia alone had predicted the disaster that would lie ahead if the Persians fought at Salamis. On top of that, she had fought brilliantly, or so it appeared to Xerxes and his courtiers.

  We hear nothing of an interpreter at Artemisia’s private session with Xerxes. Unless one is to be supposed, we must conclude that the supple queen had learned to speak good Persian, since the King of Kings would hardly have stooped to speak in a language other than that of the ruling people.

  Mardonius had suggested that Xerxes choose between two courses of action. Either the king should order the full Persian army into action against the Greeks at the Isthmus or he should have the entire navy and a portion of the army withdraw from Greece entirely, and Xerxes with them. In that case, Mardonius would stay and command the rest of the army; and he promised to subject all Greece to the Great King’s authority. Mardonius preferred the second course of action, says Herodotus, because it might allow him to reestablish his reputation after the failure of the expedition for which he had beaten the drum so loudly.

  Xerxes asked Artemisia which course of action she recommended. She replied that Mardonius should be left in Greece with a portion of the army. In that case, the risks would all be his, while Xerxes could take the credit if Mardonius managed to succeed. Nor need the king concern himself about any Greek threat. “If you and your house survive,” Artemisia said, “the Greeks will have to run many races for their lives and possessions—and they will have to do so often.” Besides, she added, he had in fact burned Athens.

  Artemisia had told Xerxes what he wanted to hear. Even if every man and woman in his entourage had told him to stay, Herodotus adds cattily, Xerxes was too frightened to have remained in Greece. Yet even Herodotus concedes that Xerxes made a considered and timely decision. Xerxes had lost a battle, but he did not give up the war. The only question was the strategy with which to fight. The king was quick to grasp the full extent of the naval disaster. With equal speed, he understood that the results of Salamis raised a more important issue than Greece: Ionia.

  At Salamis, the Greeks had won control of the sea. Unchecked, they could in time use it to wrest back the empire’s hard-won gains of the last generation: northern Greece, the Aegean islands, and, the greatest prize of all, Ionia. The question was how to keep the Greeks in check.

  In just a few days, in fact, in as little as twenty-four hours, Xerxes came up with an answer, a new strategy that he immediately began to put into prac
tice. Conquering Greece was no longer his priority. Because it could no longer turn the enemy’s flank by sea, his army would not attack the Greeks at the Isthmus. Instead, his policy would be to withdraw all the Persian navy and part of the Persian army. Xerxes left just enough military force on the Greek mainland to keep the Greeks off balance and disunited. In the meantime, he would personally relocate to the part of the empire that most needed his attention: Ionia. Within two months of Salamis, Xerxes had moved to Sardis, the provincial capital. He would stay there for the next year, until the autumn of 479 B.C.

  It turned out very badly. Within a year of deciding to withdraw from Athens, Xerxes had lost not only the Peloponnese, but nearly all his possessions on the Greek mainland as well as the main Greek islands of the eastern Aegean, with the city-states of Ionia and Caria on the way out. The other islands would follow a year later. Twenty years after the outbreak of the Ionian Revolt, in 499 B.C., a Greek alliance on the mainland was driving the Great King out of the Aegean and back from the Aegean coast of Anatolia.

  What went wrong? Xerxes made three mistakes, but calling off the Isthmus attack and withdrawing to Sardis was not one of them. In fact, it made perfect sense to pull back from Greece. Conquering the Peloponnese—the only part of Greece still free of the Persians—would have brought Xerxes glory and a source of mercenaries but little else. The Persian Empire was vast and rich, but Greece was small and poor. In spite of the elegant meters of Aeschylus’s choruses and the 200,000 words of Herodotus’s Histories, in spite of the stockpiles of booty taken from the Persians and the marble monuments that would commemorate Greek victory, in spite of the skill of its spearmen and the force of its fleets—in spite of all that, Greece had little to offer. The Persian kings already had more wealth in the city of Persepolis than there was in the entire Greek peninsula.