The two fleets were now advancing rapidly to one another in the straight channel which runs east from old Salamis town, of which the breadth is 2000 yards. The actual fairway may be about one mile in width. How much space in the line was allowed for each trireme in battle array is not known, but it can hardly have been less than sixty feet; and, if so, the utmost number of vessels in the front line of either fleet cannot have exceeded ninety. Both fleets must, therefore, in this order of advance, have been several lines deep. There was no room for the employment of sea-tactics other than those of the most simple kind. The battle must have been, from beginning to end, a terrific mêlée whose issue would depend on which side could fight hardest and longest. The circumstances were all in favour of the smaller fleet. THE BEGINNING OF THE ENGAGEMENT. The mere superiority of the armament of its crews must have gone far to decide the result, and the superior weight of its individual vessels could not fail to tell in a combat of this character. With the knowledge born after the event, it is easy to see that, despite the inferiority of numbers, the better-armed fleet must have won the day, provided both fought with equal courage; and the obstinate nature of the battle shows that, though there may have been cases of cowardice on both sides, these were the exception and not the rule.
The actual point of contact was, in all probability, north of and towards the eastern extremity of Kynosura.
From certain details which are given of the fighting, there is strong reason to suppose that the two fleets, either from accident or from design, were in somewhat of an échelon formation when the first contact took place. Æschylus says that the Greek right wing led the advance, and the remainder came behind. Æschylus also mentions,—and his evidence on this point is supported by Herodotus,—that a Greek ship began the battle by attacking a Phœnician vessel. As the Phœnicians were on the Persian right, this ship must have belonged to the Athenian contingent, which was on the Greek left; and the only conclusion to be drawn is that, despite the advanced position of the Greek right, the first contact took place at the opposite end of their line; in other words, the Persian right must have been equally in advance of its line. The wheeling movement, as has been already noticed, had not been a success; and the Persian vessels which passed through the strait east of Psyttaleia, and were on the outside of the movement, had got in front of that part of the fleet which passed through the channel west of the island, and formed its pivot. It is not difficult to perceive what happened. This eastern column of vessels had entered the narrow part of the strait with so extended a front that, when the time came for the western column to wheel into line with them, it was left with too little sea-room; confusion resulted, and the advance of the Persian left wing was delayed. It was no doubt the undue advance of the Persian right wing which made it possible for the Æginetans later in the battle to fall upon the flank of the Phœnician contingent, and to deal the blow which was subsequently regarded as being largely responsible for the victory won.
Of the picturesque individual details of the fight, but few, considering its magnitude, have survived; and these are not in all cases reliable. Yet it is possible, by comparing and collating the fragmentary accounts of the actual fighting, to form a general idea of its most striking incidents.
There must have been many interested spectators of the action, Persians on the mainland and Athenians on Salamis island, whose feelings must have resembled those with which the Athenian army watched the battle in the great harbour of Syracuse more than sixty years later.
Not the least interested of these onlookers was the Great King himself. Surrounded by some of his chief men, he took his seat on the slope of Mount Ægaleos above the Herakleion, at a point where, as Plutarch remarks, the strait contracts in width. He must have been stationed nearly opposite the town of Salamis, among the sparse pinewood which probably then, as now, covered the slope of the hill.
The Persian fleet seems never to have had the opportunity of recovering from the confusion into which it had fallen in the course of the wheeling movement. Plutarch says, moreover, that Themistocles had reckoned that the early morning wind, which raises somewhat of a sea in the strait, would have a much greater effect on the Persian vessels, which stood high in the water, than on the Greek ships. It would tend to throw them into confusion, and thus expose their sides to the charge of the hostile ships.[168]
THE BATTLE.
Of the form which the confusion took during the battle there is also a certain amount of evidence. The front ranks of the Persian fleet seem to have been unduly compressed laterally by the want of sea-room, and longitudinally by the pressure of the ranks behind them; and the confusion due to the last of these causes was much increased when the beaten front ranks were forced back on those in rear. The fleet was, indeed, too large for the area of operations, and some of the rearmost ranks apparently, at a period in the battle which is not mentioned, finding they could take no part in the fighting, backed and retreated to the broader part of the strait, south of Psyttaleia. The consequence was, according to Plutarch, that in the actual fighting the Greek fleet was not outnumbered; and this may well have been the case.
Little is said of the actual mode of attack employed by the Greek vessels; but, from what is related, it would appear that the Athenians, at any rate, relying on the structural strength of their ships, sought to ram the enemy with their bows, or shaved close past them in such a way as to break the oars on one side, and so render their vessels unmanageable for the time being; and then made use of the opportunity to charge them sideways at their weakest point. Boarding must, in many cases, have been resorted to, for which purpose thirty-six men were available on the Attic vessels,—eighteen marines, fourteen hoplites, and four bowmen. It may be conjectured that any superiority which the Persians possessed in respect to their crews would consist in the higher efficiency of their bowmen, javelinmen, and such-like. It was, therefore, greatly to the advantage of the Greeks that the confinement of the space within which the action was fought rendered it not merely possible, but necessary, to fight at close quarters. A rather striking instance of what might have happened in this respect, had the sea-room been somewhat greater, is related by Herodotus. It occurred probably towards the end of the battle, when the retreat of many of the Persian ships had relieved the pressure in the strait. A Samothracian craft had sunk or waterlogged an Athenian ship, when it was itself attacked and waterlogged by an Æginetan vessel. Despite its desperate situation, its crew, which consisted of javelinmen, cleared the decks of its assailant with their weapons, and took the ship. The whole incident runs so entirely counter to Herodotus’ marked partiality for the Athenians, that there is no reason to doubt its genuineness.