Xerxes / Makers of History

by Jacob Abbott

The Persians sent off the two hundred galleys with great secrecy, not desiring that the Greeks should discover their design of thus intercepting their retreat. They did discover it, however, for this was the occasion on which the great diver, Scyllias, made his escape from one fleet to the other by swimming under water ten miles, and he brought the Greeks the tidings.[E]

The Greeks decide to give battle.
Euripus and Artemisium.

The Greeks dispatched a small squadron of ships with orders to proceed southward into the Euripus, to meet this detachment which the Persians sent round; and, in the mean time, they determined themselves to attack the main Persian fleet without any delay. Notwithstanding their absurd dissensions and jealousies, and the extent to which the leaders were influenced by intrigues and bribes, the Greeks always evinced an undaunted and indomitable spirit when the day of battle came. It was, moreover, in this case, exceedingly important to defend the position which they had taken. By referring to the map once more, it will be seen that the Euripus was the great highway to Athens by sea, as the pass of Thermopylæ was by land. Thermopylæ was west of Artemisium, where the fleet was now stationed, and not many miles from it. The Greek army had made its great stand at Thermopylæ, and Xerxes was fast coming down the country with all his forces to endeavor to force a passage there. The Persian fleet, in entering Artemisium, was making the same attempt by sea in respect to the narrow passage of Euripus; and for either of the two forces, the fleet or the army, to fail of making good the defense of its position, without a desperate effort to do so, would justly be considered a base betrayal and abandonment of the other.

Advance of the Greeks.
The battle.
A stormy night.
Scene of terror.

The Greeks therefore advanced, one morning, to the attack of the Persians, to the utter astonishment of the latter, who believed that their enemies were insane when they thus saw them coming into the jaws, as they thought, of certain destruction. Before night, however, they were to change their opinions in respect to the insanity of their foes. The Greeks pushed boldly on into the midst of the Persian fleet, where they were soon surrounded. They then formed themselves into a circle, with the prows of the vessels outward, and the sterns toward the center within, and fought in this manner with the utmost desperation all the day. With the night a storm came on, or, rather, a series of thunder-showers and gusts of wind, so severe that both fleets were glad to retire from the scene of contest. The Persians went back toward the east, the Greeks to the westward, toward Thermopylæ—each party busy in repairing their wrecks, taking care of their wounded, and saving their vessels from the tempest. It was a dreadful night. The Persians, particularly, spent it in the midst of scenes of horror. The wind and the current, it seems, set outward, toward the sea, and carried the masses and fragments of the wrecked vessels, and the swollen and ghastly bodies of the dead, in among the Persian fleet, and so choked up the surface of the water that the oars became entangled and useless. The whole mass of seamen in the Persian fleet, during this terrible night, were panic-stricken and filled with horror. The wind, the perpetual thunder, the concussions of the vessels with the wrecks and with one another, and the heavy shocks of the seas, kept them in continual alarm; and the black and inscrutable darkness was rendered the more dreadful, while it prevailed, by the hideous spectacle which, at every flash of lightning, glared brilliantly upon every eye from the wide surface of the sea. The shouts and cries of officers vociferating orders, of wounded men writhing in agony, of watchmen and sentinels in fear of collisions, mingled with the howling wind and roaring seas, created a scene of indescribable terror and confusion.

The violence of the sudden gale was still greater further out at sea, and the detachment of ships which had been sent around Eubœa was wholly dispersed and destroyed by it.

A calm after the storm.

The storm was, however, after all, only a series of summer evening showers, such as to the inhabitants of peaceful dwellings on the land have no terror, but only come to clear the sultry atmosphere in the night, and in the morning are gone. When the sun rose, accordingly, upon the Greeks and Persians on the morning after their conflict, the air was calm, the sky serene, and the sea as blue and pure as ever. The bodies and the wrecks had been floated away into the offing. The courage or the ferocity, whichever we choose to call it, of the combatants, returned, and they renewed the conflict. It continued, with varying success, for two more days.

Terror of the Eubœans.
Their plans.

During all this time the inhabitants of the island of Eubœa were in the greatest distress and terror. They watched these dreadful conflicts from the heights, uncertain how the struggle would end, but fearing lest their defenders should be beaten, in which case the whole force of the Persian fleet would be landed on their island, to sweep it with pillage and destruction. They soon began to anticipate the worst, and, in preparation for it, they removed their goods—all that could be removed—and drove their cattle down to the southern part of the island, so as to be ready to escape to the main land. The Greek commanders, finding that the fleet would probably be compelled to retreat in the end, sent to them here, recommending that they should kill their cattle and eat them, roasting the flesh at fires which they should kindle on the plain. The cattle could not be transported, they said, across the channel, and it was better that the flying population should be fed, than that the food should fall into Persian hands. If they would dispose of their cattle in this manner, Eurybiades would endeavor, he said, to transport the people themselves and their valuable goods across into Attica.