It was Themistocles’ victory. He had cajoled, threatened, and finally deceived the Spartan admiral into remaining there instead of retiring to the isthmus. He craftily persuaded the Persian monarch to attack the Greeks in narrow waters where numbers were only an obstacle; the fleet which won the day was his creation. The battle has gained its deathless glamour from the picture of Xerxes sitting on the hill above, enthroned on marble, to watch the engagement taking place at his feet. In that narrow strait between Salamis and the mainland, and in that lucid atmosphere, every detail of the fight must have been visible to the monarch, and his courtiers, his eunuchs, and his concubines. There was no smoke or dust; the manœuvre was simply “full speed ahead and ram,” steering, if you could, so that the metal prow of your ship struck the enemy obliquely, and sheared off the whole row of protruding oars on one side. Then, unless the enemy sank under the impact, it was a case of hand-to-hand fighting with spear and shield against arrows and scimitars.
Thus there was no need of the lines at the isthmus. Athens had conquered at sea as she had conquered on land at Marathon. Xerxes fled home with the bulk of his army in mighty dread lest his bridge over the Hellespont should be broken.
He left behind him a great force under Mardonius, a force of picked Persian cavalry and infantry, which for some time devastated Northern Greece and perpetrated a second sack of Athens. At last it came to the great campaign of Platæa (479). Here the Spartan infantry got its opportunity and proved worthy of it, though the Athenian hoplites slew their thousands also. So at length the Persian peril rolled away and Greece was able to breathe again.
This whole episode was the great achievement of the Greeks in the field of action. It passed into the realm of heroic history. It is almost the only historical episode which the drama, usually devoted to heroic and epic subjects, was permitted to use. No public oration was complete without a reference to it. Vase-painters also depicted the story of Darius and Xerxes as they did that of Hector and Priam. It remained on the border-line of the permissible, however, for when temple sculptors wished to allude to it they generally did so under cover of Homeric contests between Greeks and Trojans or mythological battles between gods and giants or Lapithæ and Centaurs. The memory of this united action had some influence in counteracting the local separatism of the Greeks.
The side of this great contest which chiefly concerns us is its effect in promoting Athenian civilisation. Salamis and Platæa had pushed Athens forward into the front rank of Greece, to a position almost on a level with Sparta herself. It is true that she still had to ask Sparta’s permission, or to trick her into acquiescence, before she could build the walls she desired. But above all it was a triumphant vindication of the policy of Themistocles. Even Aristeides, who had come home to help his country in her hour of trial, had to admit that. Henceforth he seems to be working with Themistocles on the democratic side. For Salamis had outshone even Marathon. The “nautical rabble” had justified itself. The party of cautious hoplites, who feared democracy, no longer controlled the policy of the state. Instead, they remained on their devastated farms, grumbling at the “demagogues,” and issuing forth to support conservative politicians like Kimon and Nikias. Their great champion in literature is Aristophanes, who loves to depict the old Marathon men as the real bulwark of the state. When Athens was rebuilt Themistocles saw to it that the Peiræus should henceforth be part of the city, connected with it by long walls. The Peiræus stood for naval interests and naval empire, for commerce (though not for peace), and for democracy. It was not so far off but that the voters could flock up to Athens when an Assembly was to be held. It contained a large population of resident foreigners.
This was how Athens became a democratic city-state.
Plate XXXVIII. PERICLES