(2) How can a movement on such a scale have been carried out during the night, unknown to the Greek fleet on the opposite side of the narrow strait? Any one who has been to Salamis can only give one answer to this question.
(3) What possible protection on either flank would the narrow seaway have afforded to the Greek fleet when advancing to meet the Persians in this position? It must have been outflanked.
How, then, did it come to pass that in after-time the success at Salamis was ascribed to Themistocles’ strategy, and this not merely in the tradition of the battle, but by the commanders who actually fought there? The success of that strategy was absolutely dependent on the narrowness of the possible front of the fighting line.
(4) If such were the position of the two fleets when the fatal morning dawned, they must have been in full view of one another, at a distance of a few hundred yards, across the narrow strait.
Æsch. Pers. 400.
If so, how is it that the evidence of the eye-witness Æschylus is utterly at variance with such a supposition?
It is really only possible to come to one conclusion on the subject. As a description of the movement made in the night by the Persian fleet, this passage in Herodotus is wholly mistaken. He has almost certainly used in his description notes of the movements of the fleet made in the actual battle, for the very good reason that he had previously used his notes of the night-movement in describing a movement which he supposed to have taken place on the previous afternoon. Either he did not possess or he overlooked any note which he had made on the blocking of the western strait; and in order to describe what he knew to have taken place, as his reference to the arrival of Aristides shows, he stretched what was probably only a note on the advance of the Persian right wing in the battle, such as actually took place, as is known from other evidence, into an advance of that wing so far as the narrows by the island of St. George.
It is now possible to hazard a conjecture as to what he means by the “west wing” in his description of the movement. It is probable that when he used this term he had in his mind the position of the fleet as he supposed it to be, not when the movement started, but when the movement was complete; and it is noticeable that in chapter 85 he expressly speaks of the wing which would be the eastern wing in the original position, as the western wing.
THE MORNING OF THE BATTLE.
Occasion will be taken in discussing the details of the actual battle to point out how nearly Herodotus’ description of the movement during the night, when this exaggerated advance of the Persian right wing has been eliminated, coincides with such evidence as is extant elsewhere on the movements in the actual battle.