“My men have become women”: Hdt. 8.88.3.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: SALAMIS STRAITS: EVENING
“the emerald-haired sea”: Timotheus of Miletus, Persians 791.31–34. Trans. J. H. Hordern; J. H. Hordern, ed., The Fragments of Timotheus of Miletus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
“spray [that] foamed”: Timotheus of Miletus, Persians 791.61–64., cf. 791.82–85. My translation.
“naked and frozen”: Timotheus of Miletus, Persians 791.98–99. My translation.
The Persians did not give up their resistance: Plutarch, Life of Themistocles 15.2, a detail that may have been drawn from Simonides’ poem about Salamis.
“At first the flood”: Aeschylus, Persians 412–422.
“The barbarian Persian army”: Timotheus of Miletus, Persians 791.86–89. Trans. J. H. Hordern.
“brave man”: Herodotus 8.95.1.
“best of the Athenians”: Hdt. 8.79.1.
“When God had given”: Aeschylus, Persians 455–464.
“Better plate your horns with bronze”: Hdt. 6.50.
“When the barbarians were put to flight”: Hdt. 8.91.1.
“The passage”: Hdt. 8.76.1, 91.1.
“Medizers, are we, Themistocles?”: a paraphrase of Hdt. 8.92.2.
He threw the attackers in disorder: The word thorubos is used here, too. Hdt. 7.181.1.
“He proved to be the bravest man that day”: Hdt. 7.181.1.
“Democritus was the third”: Simonides in D. A. Campbell, Greek Lyric, vol. 3., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), no. XIX, cited by Plutarch, The Malice of Herodotus 36.869d.
“sent by divine intervention”: Hdt. 8.94.4.
“Stranger, once we lived”: Plutarch, The Malice of Herodotus 39.870e = Campbell, Greek Lyric, vol. 3, no. XI.
“When all Greece was balanced”: Plutarch, The Malice of Herodotus 39.870e = Campbell, Greek Lyric, vol. 3, no. XII.
“This grave is Adimantus’ ”: Plutarch, The Malice of Herodotus 39.870f = Campbell, Greek Lyric, vol. 3, no. X.
“The rowers of Diodorus”: Plutarch, The Malice of Herodotus 39.870f = Campbell, Greek Lyric, vol. 3, no. XIII.
“throw themselves heart and soul into the fight against the barbarians”: Plutarch, The Malice of Herodotus 39.871a. My translation.
Ancient comics made hay: Jeffrey Henderson, The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 170.
“These statues of women”: Simonides, cited by Plutarch, The Malice of Herodotus 39.871b, and by Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 13.573c–e, in Campbell, Greek Lyric, vol. 3, no. XIV.
“chiefs”: Aeschylus, Persians 297.
An author of the Roman era: Diodorus Siculus 11.19.3.
“Be sure of this”: Aeschylus, Persians 431–432.
“The shores of Salamis”: Aeschylus, Persians 273–274.
“The sea-dyed”: Aeschylus, Persians 275–277.
“Lost from a ship of Tyre”: Aeschylus, Persians 964–965.
“And the starry sea”: Timotheus of Miletus, Persians 791.97. Trans. J. H. Hordern.
“Since the Greeks fought”: Hdt. 8.86.1.
“exhibited achievements worthy of mention”: Hdt. 8.92.1.
“an exhibition of . . . great and astonishing achievements”: Hdt. 1.1.1.
CHAPTER TWELVE: PHALERON
bronze medicine chests: found in Roman Naples, but since the city was a Greek colony, the chests may reflect earlier, Greek practice.
“A healer”: Homer, Iliad 11.514–515.
“Our struggle is not”: Herodotus 8.100.2.
“The Persians have”: Hdt. 8.100.4.
“all tore their tunics”: Hdt. 8.99.
“worse than a woman”: Hdt. 9.107.1.
“the admiral of the fleet”: Polyaenus, Stratagems of War 8.53.2, Excerpts of Polyaenus 53.4.
“the admiral”: See David M. Lewis, “Persians in Herodotus,” in P. J. Rhodes, ed., Selected Papers in Greek and Near Eastern History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 358–359.
the Roman era: Diodorus Siculus 11.2.2; Strabo 9.2.9.
Acarnania: the general Demosthenes (not the famous orator), after the battle of Olpae in 426 B.C. Thucydides. 3.114.
“If you and your house survive”: Hdt. 8.102.3.
“Ares”: Timotheus of Miletus, Persians 790. My translation.
“Send money”: Hdt. 9.2.3.
“They had been struck”: Hdt. 8.130.2–3.
“Diopeithes”: The inscription and the argument for the circumstances it commemorates can both be found in Werner Gauer, Weihgeschenke aus den Perserkriegen (Tübingen: Verlag Ernst Wasmuth, 1968), 40–41, 74, 134.
partial eclipse: Hdt. 9.10.3. The eclipse can be securely dated to October 2. If Cleombrotus was in fact about to attack the Persians, he was following a policy contrary to that suggested by Eurybiades, who wanted to give the Persians no reason to continue fighting; see the next chapter.
forty-five days: Hdt. 8.115.1. Herodotus might be referring to just the trip from Thessaly to the Hellespont, in which case another two to three weeks need to be added for the journey from Athens to Thessaly.
tough trip: Aeschylus, Persians 480–514. Aeschylus makes Xerxes’ return journey even more disastrous, but the story does not deserve the respect owed to the poet’s eyewitness description of the battle.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ANDROS
“the salvation of Greece”: Herodotus 7.139.5.
“Help yourself, for you are not Themistocles”: Plutarch, Life of Themistocles 18.2.
“swift ships”: Russell Meiggs and David M. Lewis, eds., A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century B.C., rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988, no. 26, 54–57.
“So let each stand his ground firmly”: Tyrtaeus, frg. 10 West, in M. L. West, Iambi et Elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum Cantati, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 174–175; Michael Sage, trans., Warfare in Ancient Greece: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 1996), 34.
“Forced to fight”: Hdt. 8.109.2.
“a great cloud of men”: Hdt. 8.109.2.
“Themistocles’ name”: Hdt. 8.124.1.
“If I came from”: Hdt. 8.125.2.
EPILOGUE: SUSA
The Great King’s expedition: The Greek orator Dio Chrysostom tells a similar story in 11.147–149.
“allies” but “the cities Athens controls”: Russell Meiggs, The Athenian Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 171.
“I have Themistocles the Athenian!”: Plutarch, Life of Themistocles 28.4.
“his bread”: Thucydides 1.138.5; Plutarch, Life of Themistocles 29.7.
Demaratus is supposed to have asked to enter the city of Sardis: Seneca, On Benefits 6.31.11–12. According to Plutarch, Life of Themistocles 29.5–6, the Great King angrily refused Demaratus’s request.
as an inscription of that date shows: Russell Meiggs and David M. Lewis, eds., A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century B.C., rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), no. 32, 69–72.
INDEX
Abdera, 224
Abrocomes, son of Darius, 35
Abydos, 137, 224
Acarnania, 216
Achaeans, 145
Achaemenes, son of Darius, 50–51, 127, 132, 174, 219, 251
Achaemenid Empire, 36
Acropolis, Athenian, 3, 4, 7, 58, 60–61, 100, 105, 116, 169, 179, 188, 203, 235, 237, 239–40
rebuilding of, 250
sack of, 69–72
Ada, queen of Halicarnassus, 97
Adimantus, son of Ocytus, 20, 81, 86–88, 111, 201–2, 250
Aeacus, 89, 121, 143, 169, 195, 208
Aegina, Aeginetans, 17, 60, 66, 75, 78, 79, 86, 89, 112, 116, 121, 135, 143, 145, 151, 163, 180, 195, 196, 236, 237
Athens’s rivalry with, 80, 168
at Salamis, 167–69, 191–92, 194–96, 207–8
Aeschylus, 5, 41, 79, 11
1, 131, 132, 144, 148, 154, 188, 194–95, 218
fate of, 249
launching of Persian fleet described by, 133–34, 139
at Salamis, 141–43
on Salamis battle, 158, 159–60, 164, 168–69, 170, 173, 176, 179–80, 188, 193, 204, 205
on Sicinnus’s secret mission, 113, 114–15, 117
Agbalus, 132
Ajax, legendary hero, 77, 89
akata (pointed-hull ships), 103
Alcibiades, 27
Alexander I, king of Macedonia, 56
Alexander III (the Great), 173–74, 237, 246, 250, 251
Alexibia, 202
Alexippos, Athenian slaveholder, 146
Ambelaki Bay, 77, 145, 162
Ambracia, 78
Aminias of Pallene, 165–66, 167, 170, 175–77, 180–81, 182, 185, 186, 188–89, 199, 200, 251
Anatolia, 4, 44, 45, 132, 237, 251–52
Anaxandrides, king of Sparta, 31
Anaxilas of Naxos, 69
Androdamas, 184
Andros, 228, 231
geography of, 230
Greek siege of, 235–36
Antidorus of Lemnos, 24
Anysus, 125
Aphetae, 19
Apollo, 62
archers, xviii, 70, 133, 146, 164, 165, 176, 177, 187
equipment of, 131–32
Archimedes, 3
Areopagus, 66
Argonauts, 146
Argos, 49, 243–44
Ariabignes, son of Darius, 127, 132, 157–59, 173, 174, 204, 207, 216
Ariaramnes, 184, 185–86
Aristeus, son of Adimantus, 202, 250
Aristides, son of Lysimachus, 119–22, 150, 157, 194, 197, 240, 241, 249
Aristides (grandson), 249
Aristides Quintilianus, 160
Aristonice, 63
Aristophanes, xx, 98, 247
Aristotle, 149, 180, 247
Artabanus, son of Hystaspes, 38–39, 40, 44, 72
Xerxes’ conversations with, 46–47
Artaüctus, Xerxes’ brother-in-law, 149
Artaünte, Xerxes’ sister-in-law, 225
Artaxerxes I, king of Persia, 174, 245–46, 248
Themistocles’ audience with, 243, 244, 248
Artemisia, queen of Halicarnassus, 2, 6, 27, 56–57, 105, 106, 107, 118, 132, 174, 211, 223, 225, 251
character background of, 93–95, 96, 97
at Salamis, 178, 180–83, 185–87
in strategic debate, 100–102
Xerxes’ gifts to, 215–16
Xerxes’ private conference with, 214–17
Artemisia II, queen of Halicarnassus, 97
Artemisium, battle of, 4, 11–30, 50, 51, 85, 98, 105, 128, 143, 160, 163, 172, 184, 218–19, 227, 232, 240
devastating storms in, 18–19, 21, 24–25, 26, 35–36, 104
diekplous maneuver in, 21–22, 24, 26
Euboean bribe in, 19–20
first Greek attack in, 21–24
Greek battle plan in, 21
Greek command structure in, 17–18
Greek forces in, 17–18
Greek retreat in, 28–29, 65–66
losses in, 26
Persian attack in, 25–26
Persian battle plan in, 20–21
Persian forces in, 17
Persian strategy in, 16
second Greek attack in, 25
strategic importance of, 15–16
Themistocles’ propaganda scheme in, 27–30
Asonides of Aegina, 198
Assyrios, Athenian slave, 146
Athens, Athenians, 1–2, 27, 78, 79, 85, 87, 97, 145, 152, 162, 163, 194, 195, 207, 220, 232, 237
Aegina’s rivalry with, 80, 168
Corinth’s rivalry with, 80–81, 152, 201
Delian League and, 241, 245
democracy in, 13, 65, 67–68, 196, 240
evacuation of, see Athens, evacuation of
geography of, 57–58
Golden Age of, 250
as imperial democracy, 247–48
navy of, 3–4
Persian occupation of, 54–55
Persian relations with, 3–4, 13–14
population of, 60
sufferings of, 240
Themistocles’ unpopularity in, 240–41
triremes of, xviii—xx
walls of, 2, 241
Athens, evacuation of, 59–60, 81–82
Cimon and, 64–65
Delphic oracle and, 62–64
democracy and, 61–62, 67–68
sack of Acropolis and, 69–72
Themistocles and, 61–62, 64–67
Themistocles Decree and, 61–62
vote for, 61–62
Atossa, daughter of Cyrus, 37, 132
Attica, 57, 59, 66, 83, 103, 153, 160, 230, 236–37
second Persian invasion of, 220–21
aulos (pipe), 163–64
aura (sea breeze), 153, 165, 171, 176
Babylon, 38
Bactria, Bactrians, 131–32, 204
Boeotia, Boeotians, 54–55, 56, 61, 75
Calymnos, 96
Cambyses, king of Persia, 46
Caria, Carians, xix, 27–28, 96–97, 100, 131, 132, 134, 138, 139, 172, 204, 215–18, 219, 221, 223
at Salamis, 176–77
Carnea festival, 76
Carthage, 43, 79
Carystus, 236
cavalry, 42, 64
Cenchreae, 76, 102
Ceos, 75, 78, 135
Chalcis, 17, 18, 19, 78
Chersis, 24, 132
Chios, 27, 59, 117
Cilicia, Cilicians, 4, 95, 101, 105, 128, 131, 138, 139, 204, 206, 214, 219
Cimon, son of Miltiades, 64–65, 250
Cleinias, 27
Cleombrotus, 224
Cleomenes, king of Sparta, 196–97
Corcyra, Corcyreans, 79, 81
Corinth’s conflict with, 187–88
Corinth, Corinthians, 17, 61, 76, 78, 79, 86, 88, 162, 195, 238
Athens’s rivalry with, 80–81, 152, 201
Corcyra’s conflict with, 187–88
at Salamis, 163, 194, 200–203
Themistocles and role of, 151–52
Cos, 96
Crius of Aegina, 191, 196–97
Croton, 78, 194, 250
Cunaxa, battle of, 174
Cyberniscus, son of Sycas, 132
Cychreus, legendary king of Salamis, 169
Cyclades, 78, 104
Cyme, 20
Cynegirus, son of Euphronius, 141–42
Cynosura, 77, 135, 136, 162, 197
Cyprus, Cypriots, 4, 24, 43, 95, 101, 105, 128, 132, 138, 139, 161, 206, 214, 219
Cyrus II (the Great), king of Persia, 36, 37, 41, 46, 82
Cyrus the Younger, 174
Cythera, 50, 51
Cythnos, 78
Damasithymus, king of Calynda, 97, 132, 181–83, 186, 187, 188, 205
Darius I, king of Persia, 14, 31, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 44, 46, 48, 94, 132, 157, 212, 213, 244, 251
Darius III, king of Persia, 173–74
Delian League, 241, 245–46, 249, 250
Delos, 245
Delphi, 3, 55, 79, 97, 201, 223
booty awarded to, 237
oracle of, 62–64, 87
Demaratus, king of Sparta, 31, 47–50, 184, 251
Democedes of Croton, 212
Demochares of Thoricus, 146
democracy, 13, 65, 146, 164, 196, 207, 222, 238, 240, 243
evacuation of Athens and, 61–62, 67–68
imperial, 247–48
Democritus of Naxos, 170, 199–200
Dicaeus of Athens, 184–85
diekplous maneuver, 21–22, 24, 26
Diodorus of Corinth, 200, 202
Diodorus Siculus, 138
Dog’s Tomb, 68
Dorians, 95, 96, 145
Doriscus, 42
Dryopes, 145
earthquakes, 89, 100, 121
Egypt, Egyptians, xix, 4, 95, 97,
99–100, 101, 127, 138, 139, 148, 161, 185, 204, 206, 214, 218–19
Persian distrust of, 128, 129
in revolt against Persia, 38, 105, 248–49
Eleusinian Mysteries, 76–77, 169, 183
Eleusis, 76–77, 138, 169
Ephesus, 223
Ephialtes, son of Eurydemus, 34
Epidaurus, 78
Eretria, 59, 78
Eshmunazar, king of Sidon, 125
Ethiopians, 46
Euboea, 15, 19, 25, 35–36, 78, 104, 160, 230, 235, 236, 245
Eumenes of Anagyrus, 200
eunuchs, 53–54
Euphrantides the seer, 149
Euripides, 60, 247
Euripos, 16
Eurybiades, son of Eurycleides, 18, 19–20, 73–74, 80, 81, 111, 148–49, 227, 234, 239, 240, 241, 251
in councils of war, 82–83, 87–89, 111–12, 231–33, 236
Themistocles’ meeting with, 85–86, 87
Eurymedon River, 57
Fates, 178
Gaugamela, battle of, 250
gauloi (rounded-hull ships), 103
Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse, 79
Gobryas, Persian noble, 38, 99, 157
Gorgus, king of Salamis (Cyprus), 24, 132
Great Mother, cult of, 111
Greece, 2, 4, 7
funeral practices of, 146–47
geographic extent of, 16
religion in, 62–63, 71
Halicarnassus, 95, 96–97
hand-to-hand combat, 167
Hellenic League, 13, 17, 65, 79, 80, 89, 223
Hellespont, 35, 127, 137, 159, 213, 221, 222, 228, 231, 233
bridges of, 44–45, 65, 104, 224, 244, 245
helmsman, 146, 165, 166, 180–81
ramming tactic and, 180–81
Helots, 50
Heracles, 35, 47
Heraclides of Mylasa, 26
Hermione, 78
Hermotimus the eunuch, 53–56, 58–59, 72, 223, 251
Herodotus, 1, 7, 8, 36, 40, 44, 55, 56, 59, 65, 97, 104, 110, 111, 119, 152, 153, 167, 188, 218, 224, 225, 229, 233, 237, 239, 247, 252
on Artemisia of Halicarnassus, 95, 96, 98
on Athenian democracy, 13
on battle of Artemisium, 18–20, 23, 24–25, 26, 27, 30
on battle of Salamis, 161, 168, 170, 172, 173, 174, 179, 182, 185, 189, 197, 198, 201, 202, 204, 206, 208, 221
career of, 3
described, 2
on Persian fleet’s mobilization, 133–39
on Persian strategy, 41, 42
on role of Demaratus, 48–49
on sack of Acropolis, 70–71
Salamis inquiries of, 5–7
on Sicinnus’s secret mission, 113–15
The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece -- and Western Civilization Page 32