The discomfiture of his fleet rendered Xerxes powerless for the time; and, recognizing the extent of the misfortune which had befallen him, the mighty lord of so many nations, so many tributaries, and so many slaves, rent his robes, and burst into a flood of tears.
Thus ended the great battle of Salamis, which decided the fate of Greece.
The forces of the several independent Greek States returned to their homes, where their arrival was celebrated with great rejoicing, and sacrifices to the gods.
Xerxes, as soon as he realized the extent of the disaster which had befallen him, resolved at once to return with all possible expedition into Asia. His chief counsellor in vain advised him not to be downcast by the defeat of his fleet: “that he had come to fight against the Greeks, not with rafts of wood, but with soldiers and horses.” In spite of this, Xerxes sent the remnant of his fleet to the harbors of Asia Minor, and after a march of forty-five days, amidst great hardship and privation, arrived at the Hellespont with his army. Famine, pestilence and battle had reduced his army from a million or more to about 300,000.
The victory at Salamis terminated the second act of the great Persian expedition. The third, in the following year, was the conclusive land battle of Platæa, and subsequent operations. These secured not only the freedom of Greece and of adjoining European States, but the freedom and independence of the Asiatic Greeks, and their undisturbed possession of the Asiatic coast—an inestimable prize to the victors.
II.
NAVAL BATTLE AT SYRACUSE. B. C. 415.
This battle was not only remarkable for its desperate fighting and bloody character, but for the fact that the complete and overwhelming defeat of the Athenians was the termination of their existence as a naval power.
An Athenian fleet had been despatched to the assistance of the small Greek Republic of Ægesta, near the western end of Sicily, then threatened by Syracuse.
The Athenian fleet numbered one hundred and thirty-four triremes, 25,000 seamen and soldiers, beside transports with 6000 spearmen and a proportionate force of archers and slingers. This considerable armament was designed to coöperate not only in the reduction of Syracuse, the implacable enemy of the Ægestans, but also to endeavor to subdue the whole of the large, rich and beautiful island of Sicily, at that time the granary and vineyard of the Mediterranean.