Herodotus mentions that the Egyptian contingent numbered 200 (vii. 89).
[162] This would account for the fact implied by Æsch. Pers. 400: the two fleets when they started their movement were not in sight of one another, though, very shortly after the movement began, the Persian fleet was visible to the Greeks. The latter would first catch sight of it after it rounded the Kynosura promontory and the island.
[163] Cf. Arist. 8, where the revocation is said to have taken place τρίτῳ ἔτει after the sentence.
[164] Cf. Stein’s brief note on the translation of the words στὰς ἐπὶ τὸ συνέδριον in H. viii. 79.
[165] In so far as I know, this last very important point was first raised by Prof. J. B. Bury in an article in the Classical Review on “Aristides at Salamis.”
[166] This is Professor Bury’s suggestion. It is open to the objection that Herodotus expressly mentions the arrival of this vessel (H. viii. 83) immediately before the battle began. But this objection is not by any means insuperable. It is much more probable, under the circumstances, that Herodotus made a mistake as to the time of its arrival, than that it managed at the time he mentions to force its way through the blockading fleets at either end of the strait.
[167] It would seem as if it were a description of this movement, taken from his notes on, or sources of information for, the details of the battle, which Herodotus has used by mistake in describing the movement of the Persian fleet during the night. He has, of course, intensely confused the original description by reading into it what he knew to be the object of that night-movement—the surrounding of the Greek fleet by blocking the issues both to east and west of it; but, eliminating this motive from his description, it is possible to see that in its original form it must have resembled very closely the description of the advance of the Persian fleet which has been drawn from the details which Æschylus and Diodorus give.
H. viii. 76. “The west wing put out and made a circling movement towards Salamis.” It has been already pointed out that by “west wing” Herodotus evidently means, not the west wing in the original formation, but the west wing when the fleet had completed the movement, and had taken up the position which he imagined it to have assumed when the movement was complete. This “west wing” would be the east wing in the original position. That it cannot have been the original west wing has been pointed out in a previous note.
If this correction be made, Herodotus’ language in describing this movement is peculiarly applicable to the movement of that part of the Persian fleet which entered the strait by the channel east of Psyttaleia—ἀνῆγον κυκλούμενοι πρὸς τὴν Σαλαμῖνα; and the applicability becomes still more striking in view of the evidence, which will be given later, that this wing of the Persian fleet got in advance of the other.
The left wing, which would use the channel west of Psyttaleia, is equally referred to in the words: “Those about Keos and Kynosura put out in order,” to which he adds, in accordance with his knowledge that part of the object of the night-movement was the blocking of the straits, “And they occupied the whole strait as far as Munychia with their ships.”