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

Page 32

by Barry Strauss


  “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

 

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