A defeat of such magnitude sustained in the presence of Xerxes himself could not but lead to fierce dissensions among the various contingents of the Persian fleet. The Phœnicians, that trading people which Persia had always treated with marked favour at the expense of their rivals, the Ionian Greeks, had to justify to their master the fact that they had been the first to retire, whereas the Ionians had resisted to the last. If Herodotus is to be believed, H. viii. 90; D. xi. 19. they adopted the bold line of accusing the Greek contingents of cowardice in the fight. This charge, said to have been made while the fight was in progress, was immediately refuted by the gallantry of the Samothracian crew in capturing the Æginetan ship which had disabled their vessel. The accusers were executed; and, if Diodorus’ story be true, the Phœnicians were so alarmed at the prospect of what might happen to them from the angry Xerxes that, after retiring to Phaleron in the afternoon, they fled in a body under cover of night to the Asian coast. As, however, no trace of such a detail is found in any other historian, and their statements are wholly inconsistent with it, it cannot be regarded as serious history.
It was not, perhaps, until after the war was over that the Greeks acquired sufficient perspective to gauge aright the full significance of their victory on this day. It absolutely destroyed the very foundation of the great strategical plan on which the invasion had been conducted—the combined action of the fleet and army.[170] Never, perhaps, has the influence of sea-power been more strikingly exemplified in warfare than in the total reverse of circumstances which resulted from Salamis. Up to this time the naval power of Persia had been supreme in the Ægean and Eastern Mediterranean for many years past; and the attempt which the Ionians had made to break it at Ladé had by the completeness of its failure merely served to establish it on a firmer basis. But from Salamis onward the decline was rapid, and the Persian navy was never again as an unaided unit formidable in the Ægean.
Salamis was also decisive of the war in which it was fought. Having lost the command of the sea, the Persians could not possibly maintain, in a poor country such as Greece, the overwhelming land force with which they had invaded it. The mere question of supplies rendered the rapid withdrawal of the major part of it an imperative necessity. MARATHON, SALAMIS, AND PLATÆA. Persia did not, indeed, give up the struggle, but she was obliged to continue it with a force so reduced in numbers that the Greeks were able to match it in fighting, if not in actual numerical strength. Salamis was the turning-point of the war. Platæa was the consummation of Salamis. After Salamis Southern Greece was safe. Mardonius might have maintained himself for some time in the rich lands of Bœotia, he might even have attempted to include that region within the imperial frontier, but he could not have carried on a sustained campaign in the poor districts to the south of the line of Kithæron-Parnes line. The salvation of the North was won at Platæa.
In consideration of the circumstances, is it presumptuous to hazard the opinion that Sir Edward Creasy was not wholly justified in preferring Marathon to Salamis as one of the “fifteen decisive battles of the World”? The decisive battles exemplified in his book are, with the exception of Marathon, chosen apparently as marking the time at which the tide of affairs of world-wide moment definitely turned to an uninterrupted ebb or flow. But they are in nearly every case the outcome of a chain of events extending, in many instances, over a series of preceding years. If the first link in the chain is to be regarded as decisive of the whole series of events, then, perhaps, the choice of Marathon may be justified; but, on the same principle of choice, the decisive battles of the world would have in many cases to be sought for in comparatively obscure engagements. But if, as is the case with most of the instances Sir Edward Creasy adduces, the supreme decisive moment in a great situation is to be taken, then Salamis, not Marathon, is to be chosen in the great Persian war of the first quarter of the fifth century. The actual records of the time conspicuously fail to support the view that from Marathon onward the tide of the struggle with Persia flowed uninterruptedly in favour of the Greeks.
CHAPTER X.
FROM SALAMIS TO PLATÆA.
After the defeat of Salamis, the position of the whole Persian expedition was one of extreme danger. The command of the sea had been lost for the time being, and the chances of its recovery were remote. A fleet which had been so severely handled was not likely to fight so well on a second occasion, even if it were possible to induce it to assume once more the offensive. It was infinitely more probable that the Greeks, who had hitherto acted almost entirely on the defensive, would now realize that they were in a position to become the attacking party. The question of the moment seemed to be how the Persian naval force could make good its retreat without exposing itself to further, and, it might be, irreparable, disaster. Xerxes, with the characteristic selfishness of a despot, seems to have concerned himself with making his own escape secure, and to have merely troubled himself about that of the fleet in so far as his own safety was dependent upon it. He had reason to doubt the loyalty of the Ionian contingent. It had, indeed, fought well in the battle; but the reverse which had been experienced would inevitably tend to quicken whatever element of disloyalty it contained. His main anxiety was for the bridge across the Hellespont.
The account which Herodotus gives of the measures which he took to give the Greeks the impression that he meditated a second attack, and to hide his intention to retreat, is of so strange a character that it has been largely discredited by modern authorities. PERSIAN COUNCIL OF WAR. H. viii. 97. “He set to work,” says the historian, “to carry a mole across to Salamis, and he tied Phœnician merchant-ships together, to act as pontoons, and as a defence. He further prepared for battle, as though about to fight a second sea-fight.” These preparations, so it is said, deceived all his own people save Mardonius, who, knowing his master well, was not under any illusion as to his real intentions.[171]
H. viii. 100.
The evident alarm and despair with which Xerxes regarded the situation rendered Mardonius uneasy. An adviser whose counsels had ended in disaster,—and he was mainly responsible for persuading the king to undertake the great expedition,—might well be anxious as to the consequences which the failure might have for himself. Whether Herodotus had any real authority for his account of the advice which he represents Mardonius to have given Xerxes at this time, may perhaps be suspected; but the main outlines of it are worth quoting, even if they only reproduce what some contemporary Greek imagined that advice to have been. He is represented, in the first place, as seeking to minimize the disaster by arguing that it had only fallen upon one branch of the service, and that the land-army was in no wise impaired in efficiency by what had happened. If he did actually use this argument, he can only have used it because he thought that it was a sufficiently good one for the man to whom he was speaking. He had himself commanded the expedition of 492; and though on a much smaller scale, that venture had been brought to a premature conclusion by the storm which wrecked his fleet off Mount Athos. Mardonius was the last man who ought to have deceived himself as to the significance of the disaster at Salamis. Two courses, he said, were still open,—either to march with the whole army against the Peloponnese, or for Xerxes to withdraw with the major part of the land-forces, and leave him three hundred thousand men wherewith to complete the conquest of Greece. Such is the advice as reported. Whether a march on Peloponnese was possible at this time cannot be said, since the state of the Persian supplies is not known. In any case, Xerxes had no stomach for such a venture, and adopted the alternative suggestion, which offered a greater chance of security to his all-important self. H. viii 102. Moreover, this was the view of the matter which the astute Artemisia, whom he called into counsel, put before him.[172]
It must of necessity remain a matter for doubt whether Mardonius ever gave such advice. The retirement of the fleet to the Asian coast would give the Greeks the naval command of their side of the Ægean, and, that being so, the real line of communications was lost, and the alternative route by land along the North Ægean would be, even if it could be regarded as effective, liable to be cut by an attack from the sea. On the other hand, it is possible that he reckoned that he might maintain himself for some months, even for a year, on the food-resources of Thessaly and Bœotia; and in that space of time much might happen to reverse the ill-fortune of the moment. Besides all this, even if the conquest of Greece as a whole could not be effected, there did remain the possibility of advancing the Persian frontier south from Macedonia even as far as Kithæron, and of robbing Greece of her richest lands. That the Greeks feared something of this kind is shown by their subsequent advance to Platæa. That move was so inconsistent with the whole plan on which they had conducted the campaign on land, that it can only be accounted for on the hypothesis that they were actuated by some such fear.