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History -- Military
history -- List of battles
The Battle of Salamis was a naval battle between the Greek city-states and Persia, fought in September,
480 BC off Salamis, a small
island in the Saronic Gulf near Athens, Greece.
Background
The Athenians had fled to Salamis after the Battle of
Thermopylae in August, 480 BC, while the Persians occupied and burned their
city. The Greek fleet joined them there in August after the indecisive Battle of Artemisium. The Spartans wanted to return to the
Peloponnese, seal off the Isthmus of Corinth with a wall, and prevent the Persians from defeating them on land, but the Athenian
commander Themistocles persuaded them to remain at Salamis, arguing that a
wall across the Isthmus was pointless as long as the Persian army could be transported and supplied by the Persian navy. His
argument depended on a particular interpretation of the oracle at Delphi, which, presumably thinking the Persians would be victorious, prophesized that Salamis
would "bring death to women's sons," but also that the Greeks would be saved by a wooden wall. Themistocles interpreted the
wooden wall as the fleet of ships, and argued that Salamis would bring death to the Persians, not the Greeks.
Preparations
The Greeks had 371 triremes and penteconters (smaller fifty-oared ships),
under the overall command of Themistocles, but much of the actual fighting was handled by the Spartan Eurybiades. There were 180 ships from Athens, 40 from Corinth, 30 from Aegina, 20 from Chalcis, 20 from Megara, 16 from Sparta, 15 from Sicyon, 10 from Epidaurus, 7 from Eretria, 7 from Ambracia, 5 from Troezen, 4 from Naxos, 3 from Leucas, 3 from
Hermione, 2 from Styra, 2 from Cythnus, 2
from Ceos, 2 from Melos, one from Siphnus, one from Seriphus, and one from Croton.
The much larger Persian fleet consisted of 1207 ships, although their original invasion force consisted of many more ships
that had since been lost due to storms in the Aegean Sea and at Artemisium. The
Persians, led by Xerxes I, decided to meet the Athenian fleet off the coast of
Salamis Island, and were so confident of their victory that Xerxes set up a throne on the shore to watch the battle and record
the names of commanders who performed particularly well.
Eurybiades and the Spartans continued to argue with Themistocles about the necessity of fighting at Salamis. They still wanted
to fight the battle closer to Corinth, so that they could retreat to the mainland in case of a defeat, or withdraw completely and
let the Persians attack them by land. Themistocles convinced him to fight at Salamis, as the Persian fleet would be able to
continually supply their army no matter how many defensive walls Eurybiades built. During the debate, Themistocles sent an
informer, a slave named Sicinnus, to Xerxes to make the Persian king believe that the Greeks had in fact not been able to agree
on a location for battle, and would be retreating during the night. Xerxes believed Sicinnus and had his fleet blockade the exits
of the gulf, which also served to block any of the Spartans if they were still planning to escape. Artemisia, the queen of Halicarnassus in Asia Minor and an ally of Xerxes, supposedly tried to convince him to wait for the
Greeks to surrender, as a battle in the straits of Salamis would be deadly to the large Persian ships, but Xerxes and his chief
advisor Mardonius pressed for an attack. Throughout the night the Persian ships
searched the gulf for the Greek retreat, while in fact the Greeks remained on their ships, asleep. During the night Aristides, formerly an opponent of Themistocles, arrived to report that Themistocles' plan had worked, and he allied with the Athenian commander
to strengthen the Greek force.
The battle
The next morning (possibly September 28, but the exact date is unknown),
the Persians were exhausted from searching for the Greeks all night, but they sailed in to the straits anyway to attack the Greek
fleet. The Corinthian ships under Adeimantus immediately retreated, drawing the Persians further into the straits after them;
although the Athenians later felt this was due to cowardice, the Corinthians had most likely been instructed to feign a retreat
by Themistocles. Nevertheless none of the other Greek ships dared to attack, until one Greek trireme quickly rammed the lead
Persian ship. At this, the rest of the Greeks joined the attack.
As at Artemisium, the much larger Persian fleet could not manoeuvre in the gulf, and a smaller contingent of Athenian and
Aeginan triremes flanked the Persian navy. The Persians tried to turn back, but a strong wind sprang up and trapped them; those
that were able to turn around were also trapped by the rest of the Persian fleet that had jammed the strait. The Greek and
Persian ships rammed each other and something similar to a land battle ensued. Both sides had marines on their ships (the Greeks
with fully armed hoplites), and arrows and javelins also flew across the narrow
strait. The chief Persian admiral Ariamenes rammed Themistocles' ship, but in the hand-to-hand combat that followed Ariamenes was
killed by a Greek foot soldier.
Only about 100 of the heavier Persian triremes could fit into the gulf at a time, and each successive wave was disabled or
destroyed by the lighter Greek triremes. At least 200 Persian ships were sunk, including one by Artemisia, who apparently
switched sides in the middle of the battle to avoid being captured and ransomed by the Athenians. Aristides also took another
small contingent of ships and recaptured Psyttaleia, a nearby island that the Persians had occupied a few days earlier. According
to Herodotus, the Persians suffered many more casualties than the Greeks because
the Persians did not know how to swim; one of the Persian casualties was a brother of Xerxes. Those Persians who survived and
ended up on shore were killed by the Greeks who found them.
Aftermath
The victory of the Greeks marked the turning point in the Persian Wars.
Xerxes and most of his army retreated to the Hellespont, where Xerxes wanted to march his army back over the bridge of ships he
had created before the Greeks arrived to destroy it (although they had in fact decided not to do this). Xerxes returned to
Persia, leaving Mardonius and a small force to attempt to control the conquered areas of Greece. Mardonius recaptured Athens, but
the Greek city-states joined together once more to fight him at the simultaneous battles of Plataea and Mycale in 479 BC.
The Athenian playwright Aeschylus, who participated in the battle, wrote a
play about it in 472 BC (The
Persians).
Sources
- Herodotus, The Histories
- Aeschylus, The Persians
- Peter Green, The Greco-Persian Wars, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970 (revised 1996).
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