Meanwhile, that angry controversy among the Grecian chiefs, in the midst of which Themistocles had sent over his secret envoy, continued without abatement and without decision. It was the interest of the Athenian general to prolong the debate, and to prevent any concluding vote until the effect of his stratagem should have rendered retreat impossible: nor was prolongation difficult in a case so critical, where the majority of chiefs was on one side and that of naval force on the other—especially as Eurybiades himself was favourable to the view of Themistocles. Accordingly, the debate was still unfinished at nightfall, and either continued all night, or was adjourned to an hour before daybreak on the following morning, when an incident, interesting as well as important, gave to it a new turn.
The ostracised Aristides arrived at Salamis from Ægina. Since the revocation of his sentence, proposed by Themistocles himself, he had had no opportunity of revisiting Athens, and he now for the first time rejoined his countrymen in their exile at Salamis; not uninformed of the dissensions raging, and of the impatience of the Peloponnesians to retire to the isthmus. He was the first to bring the news that such retirement had become impracticable from the position of the Persian fleet, which his own vessel, in coming from Ægina, had only eluded under favour of night. He caused Themistocles to be invited out from the assembled synod of chiefs, and after a generous exordium, wherein he expressed his hope that their rivalry would for the future be only a competition in doing good to their common country, apprised him that the new movement of the Persians excluded all hope of now reaching the isthmus and rendered farther debate useless. Themistocles expressed his joy at the intelligence, and communicated his own secret message whereby he had himself brought the movement about, in order that the Peloponnesian chiefs might be forced to fight at Salamis, even against their own consent. He moreover desired Aristides to go himself into the synod, and communicate the news: for if it came from the lips of Themistocles, the Peloponnesians would treat it as a fabrication. So obstinate indeed was their incredulity, that they refused to accept it as truth even on the assertion of Aristides: nor was it until the arrival of a Tenian vessel, deserting from the Persian fleet, that they at last brought themselves to credit the actual posture of affairs and the entire impossibility of retreat. Once satisfied of this fact, they prepared themselves at dawn for the impending battle.
THE BATTLE OF SALAMIS
Having caused his land-force to be drawn up along the shore opposite to Salamis, Xerxes had erected for himself a lofty seat, or throne, upon one of the projecting declivities of Mount Ægaleos, near the Heracleum, and immediately overhanging the sea, from whence he could plainly review all the phases of the combat and the conduct of his subject troops. He was persuaded himself that they had not done their best at Artemisium, in consequence of his absence, and that his presence would inspire them with fresh valour: moreover, his royal scribes stood ready by his side to take the names both of the brave and of the backward combatants. On the right wing of his fleet—which approached Salamis on the side of Eleusis, and was opposed to the Athenians on the Grecian left—were placed the Phœnicians and Egyptians; on his left wing the Ionians, approaching from the side of Piræus, and opposed to the Lacedæmonians, Æginetans, and Megarians. The seamen of the Persian fleet, however, had been on shipboard all night, in making that movement which had brought them into their actual position: while the Greek seamen now began without previous fatigue, fresh from the animated harangues of Themistocles and the other leaders: moreover, just as they were getting on board, they were joined by the triremes which had been sent to Ægina to bring to their aid Æacus, with the other Æacid heroes. Honoured with this precious heroic aid, which tended so much to raise the spirits of the Greeks, the Æginetan trireme now arrived just in time to take her post in the line, having eluded pursuit from the intervening enemy.
The Greeks rowed forward from the shore to attack with the usual pæan, or war-shout, which was confidently returned by the Persians; and the latter were the most forward of the two to begin the fight: for the Greek seamen, on gradually nearing the enemy, became at first disposed to hesitate, and even backed water for a space, so that some of them touched ground on their own shore: until the retrograde movement was arrested by a supernatural feminine figure hovering over them, who exclaimed, with a voice that rang through the whole fleet, “Ye worthies, how much farther are ye going to back water?” The very circulation of this fable attests the dubious courage of the Greeks at the commencement of the battle. The brave Athenian captains Aminias and Lycomedes (the former, brother of the poet Æschylus) were the first to obey either the feminine voice or the inspirations of their own ardour: though according to the version current at Ægina, it was the Æginetan ship, the carrier of the Æacid heroes, which first set this honourable example. The Naxian Democritus was celebrated by Simonides as the third ship in action. Aminias, darting forth from the line, charged with the beak of his ship full against a Phœnician, and the two became entangled so that he could not again get clear; other ships came in aid on both sides, and the action thus became general. Herodotus, with his usual candour, tells us that he could procure few details about the action, except as to what concerned Artemisia, the queen of his own city: so that we know hardly anything beyond the general facts. But it appears that, with the exception of the Ionic Greeks, many of whom—apparently a greater number than Herodotus likes to acknowledge—were lukewarm, and some even averse, the subjects of Xerxes conducted themselves generally with great bravery: Phœnicians, Cyprians, Cilicians, Egyptians, vied with the Persians and Medes, serving as soldiers on shipboard, in trying to satisfy the exigent monarch who sat on shore watching their behaviour.
Their signal defeat was not owing to any want of courage, but, first, to the narrow space which rendered their superior number a hindrance rather than a benefit: next, to their want of orderly line and discipline as compared with the Greeks: thirdly, to the fact that, when once fortune seemed to turn against them, they had no fidelity or reciprocal attachment, and each ally was willing to sacrifice or even to run down others, in order to effect his own escape. Their numbers and absence of concert threw them into confusion, and caused them to run foul of each other: those in the front could not recede, nor could those in the rear advance: the oar blades were broken by collision, the steersmen lost control of their ships, and could no longer adjust the ship’s course so as to strike that direct blow with the beak which was essential in ancient warfare. After some time of combat, the whole Persian fleet was driven back and became thoroughly unmanageable, so that the issue was no longer doubtful, and nothing remained except the efforts of individual bravery to protract the struggle.
While the Athenian squadron on the left, which had the greatest resistance to surmount, broke up and drove before them the Persian right, the Æginetans on the right intercepted the flight of the fugitives to Phalerum: Democritus, the Naxian captain, was said to have captured five ships of the Persians with his own single trireme. The chief admiral, Ariabignes, brother of Xerxes, attacked at once by two Athenian triremes, fell, gallantly trying to board one of them, and the number of distinguished Persians and Medes who shared his fate was great: the more so, as few of them knew how to swim, while among the Greek seamen who were cast into the sea, the greater number were swimmers, and had the friendly shore of Salamis near at hand. It appears that the Phœnician seamen of the fleet threw the blame of defeat upon the Ionic Greeks; and some of them, driven ashore during the heat of the battle under the immediate throne of Xerxes, excused themselves by denouncing the others as traitors. The heads of the Ionic leaders might have been endangered if the monarch had not seen with his own eyes an act of surprising gallantry by one of their number. An Ionic trireme from Samothrace charged and disabled an Attic trireme, but was herself almost immediately run down by an Æginetan. The Samothracian crew, as their vessel lay disabled on the water, made such excellent use of their missile weapons, that they cleared the decks of the Æginetan, sprung on board, and became masters of her. This exploit, passing under the eyes of Xerxes himself, induced him to treat the Phœnicians as dastardly calumniators, and to direct their heads to be cut off: his wrath and vexation, Herodotus tells us, were boundless, and he scarcely knew on whom to vent it.
In this disastrous battle itself, as in the debate before the battle, the conduct of Artemisia of Halicarnassus was such as to give him full satisfaction. It appears that this queen maintained her full part in the battle until the disorder had become irretrievable; she then sought to escape, pursued by the Athenian trierarch, Aminias, but found her progress obstructed by the number of fugitive or embarrassed comrades before her. In this dilemma, she preserved herself from pursuit by attacking one of her own comrades; she charged the trireme of the Carian prince, Damasithymus of Calynda, ran it down and sunk it, so that the prince with all his crew perished. Had Aminias been aware that the vessel which he was following was that of Artemisia, nothing would have induced him to relax in the pursuit, for the Athenian captains were all indignant at the idea of a female invader assailing their city; but knowing her ship only as one among the enemy, and seeing her thus charge and destroy another enemy’s ship, he concluded her to be a deserter, turned his pursuit elsewhere, and suffered her to escape. At the same time, it so happened that the destruction of the ship of Damasithymus happened under the eyes of Xerxes and of the persons around him on shore, who recognised the ship of Artemisia, but supposed the ship destroyed to be a Greek. Accordingly they remarked to him, “Master, seest thou not how well Artemisia fights, and how she has just sunk an enemy’s ship?” Assured that it was really her deed, Xerxes is said to have replied, “My men have become women; my women, men.” Thus was Artemisia not only preserved, but exalted to a higher place in the esteem of Xerxes by the destruction of one of his own ships, among the crew of which not a man survived to tell the true story.
Of the total loss of either fleet, Herodotus gives us no estimate; but Diodorus states the number of ships destroyed on the Grecian side as forty, on the Persian side as two hundred; independent of those which were made prisoners with all their crews. To the Persian loss is to be added the destruction of all those troops whom they had landed before the battle in the island of Psyttalea: as soon as the Persian fleet was put to flight, Aristides carried over some Grecian hoplites to that island, overpowered the enemy, and put them to death to a man. This loss appears to have been much deplored, as they were choice troops; in great proportion the native Persian guards.