No reliable statement survives of the losses in men sustained by either side. Those of the Persians must have been very large, and those of the Greeks in a battle of such a nature, and so prolonged, cannot have been otherwise than severe. Probably the Persian losses were never even approximately known, and, in the confusion of the time, those of the Greeks never accurately ascertained. Herodotus says that many of the Greeks from the disabled vessels escaped by swimming to Salamis, and that the total loss on the Greek side was not very great; but the very circumstances of the battle make the latter statement hardly credible. Among the Persian killed was Ariamnes, the admiral in command, a son of Darius and brother of Xerxes. He seems to have fallen early in the fight; many other prominent Persians shared his fate. Their defeat was not due to cowardice. Herodotus expressly says that they fought better than at Artemisium.
The losses in ships are stated by Diodorus to have been forty on the Greek side, while the Persians lost two hundred, not counting those which were captured with their crews. It is very possible that these numbers represent something like the truth.
After the battle each of the fleets retired to its temporary base of operations, the Persian to Phaleron, the Greek to Salamis.
In each of the two passages in which he mentions the retiring places of the fleets, Herodotus makes incidental statements of considerable historical importance. He describes the Persian retirement as having been “to Phaleron, to the protection of their land-army.” Perhaps he means that this was merely a part of their land-forces, the other having been despatched, as he has already stated, H. viii. 70, ad fin. on the night preceding the battle, on its march to the Isthmus. But if that be not the case, it would seem as if the march had been countermanded, and the army brought back in consequence of a change of plan.
Speaking of the return of the Greek fleet to Salamis, Herodotus makes it plain that the Greeks were inclined rather to under-estimate than to over-estimate their success in the battle.
THE CORINTHIANS AT SALAMIS.
They expected that the king would make a second attack upon them with the ships which still remained to him. To those possessed of knowledge after the event, it may seem strange that the Greeks should ever have entertained this feeling. It would appear as if they had been so stunned by the immensity of the struggle in which they had been engaged, that they were unable rightly to assess the enormous moral damage they had inflicted on the foe.
The details of the battle which are recoverable at the present day indicate clearly that to the Athenians and Æginetans the Greeks owed their victory; and to them indeed their contemporaries awarded the palm.
Of the behaviour of the other individual contingents nothing can be said to be known. Herodotus does, indeed, relate a story, which he expressly states to be of Athenian origin, to the effect that the Corinthians under Adeimantos retired from the Greek line, and began to make their way to the western strait, but were stopped by a mysterious messenger, who announced the victory of the Greeks; whereupon the would-be runaways returned to Salamis. Herodotus evidently places no credence in the tale; nor need the modern world do so. He says, moreover, that its truth was denied by all the other Greeks.
If it had any foundation whatever in fact, it may be that the Corinthian squadron was detached to observe the narrows near the island of St George with a view to guarding against attack from the rear by the Persian contingent which was known to be watching the western strait. As the tale stands, it can only serve as a remarkable example of the extent to which misrepresentation could be carried in Greece under the impulse of the bitter enmities of a later time.