Salamis, September 480 BC

The battle, stage by stage

1. Late September 480 BC

   Two fleets, one strait

   After the fall of Thermopylae and the drawn fighting off Artemisium, the Greek allied fleet has fallen back to the island of Salamis, where Athens has evacuated much of its population; Herodotus says the Athenians took their families to Troezen, Aegina and Salamis. Xerxes' army occupies Attica and burns the Acropolis, and his fleet anchors in the bay of Phaleron. The Greek commanders, under the Spartan Eurybiades, argue for days: the Peloponnesians want to fall back to the Isthmus of Corinth, Themistocles wants to fight in the narrows, and he wins by threatening to take the Athenian ships, and their families, to Italy. Numbers are uncertain. Herodotus gives 1,207 triremes at the start of the campaign and says losses had been made good; Aeschylus, who is said to have fought here, gives 1,000 (and 207 fast ships, perhaps on top of that). For the Greeks Herodotus counts 378 ships (380 with two deserters) and Aeschylus 310. Modern estimates for the Persians mostly run lower, often 600 to 800. Positions here are schematic.

2. The night before the battle

   Sicinnus' message

   Themistocles sends Sicinnus, his children's tutor, by boat to the Persians with word that the Greeks are about to slip away, that Themistocles is secretly on the King's side, and that the Greeks will soon be fighting one another (Herodotus 8.75). That night the Persians land troops on the islet of Psyttaleia, between Salamis and the mainland, to save friends and kill enemies washed ashore; their western wing moves 'in a circle toward Salamis', and the ships off Keos and Kynosoura put out and hold the whole strait as far as Munychia (8.76). Aeschylus has the fleet in three lines, rowing to and fro all night. Diodorus says the Egyptian squadron was sent round to block the western channel between Salamis and the Megarid. Where exactly each squadron lay is not recorded; this map shows one reconstruction.

3. Dawn

   The lines form

   At first light the Greeks put out from their beaches with a war-song that echoed back from the island's rocks, Aeschylus says, and a trumpet sounded the attack. In the reconstruction shown here, broadly the 'in-strait' view associated with Hammond and followed with variations by Lazenby and Strauss, the Persian fleet has entered the channel and lies along the Attic shore, the Phoenicians on the right toward Eleusis and the Ionians on the left toward Piraeus (Herodotus 8.85). Facing them, the Athenians hold the Greek left and the Spartans the right. Other scholars place the lines differently: Wallinga has the Greeks facing north from Kynosoura, and others keep the Persians at the mouth around Psyttaleia at dawn. Herodotus says Xerxes sat at the foot of Mount Aigaleo, opposite Salamis, with scribes to record who fought well; tradition places his throne on a hill above Perama.

4. Early morning

   The Corinthians sail away?

   As the Persians come on, the Greeks back water toward the shore until, by the Athenian account, Ameinias of Pallene drives out and rams an enemy ship and the rest join in; the Aeginetans claim their ship began it (Herodotus 8.84). Herodotus repeats an Athenian story that the Corinthian admiral Adeimantus panicked at the start, hoisted sail and fled with his squadron, until a mysterious boat met them near the shrine of Athena Skiras and told them the Greeks were winning; they returned when the battle was over. Herodotus adds that the Corinthians deny it and that the rest of Greece backs them (8.94). Some modern historians read the move as a planned detachment, perhaps to watch the northern exit against the Egyptians. The route shown is conjectural.

5. Morning

   Rams in the narrows

   In the narrow water the Persian front loses order: ships in the front rank cannot turn back and those behind press forward, and Plutarch says the regular sea breeze swung the high Persian ships broadside to the low Greek triremes. The Athenians and Aeginetans ram. The admiral Ariabignes, Xerxes' brother and a son of Darius, is killed with many other leading Persians (Herodotus 8.89; Plutarch names him Ariamenes and says Athenians speared him as he tried to board; his ship is placed opposite the Athenians following Plutarch).Chased by an Athenian ship, Artemisia, queen of Halicarnassus, rams and sinks a friendly ship from Calynda with its king Damasithymus aboard; her pursuer turns away, and Xerxes, watching, is said to have remarked that his men had become women and his women men (8.87-88). Many Persian crewmen drown; the Greeks, who could swim, lose fewer.

6. Afternoon

   Rout and Psyttaleia

   The Persian ships turn for Phaleron. The Aeginetans, waiting at the exit of the strait, catch those trying to get out while the Athenians destroy those still fighting inside (Herodotus 8.91). Diodorus says the Athenians drove the Phoenicians and Cypriots onto the shore. In the confusion Aristides takes the Athenian hoplites posted along the Salamis shore, lands them on Psyttaleia and kills every Persian there (Herodotus 8.95; Aeschylus also tells it). Some Phoenician captains who reach Xerxes blame the Ionians for their losses; Xerxes has them beheaded instead (8.90).

7. The days after

   Xerxes withdraws

   The Greeks set up a trophy on Kynosoura and wait for another battle. Instead, Xerxes sends his fleet away by night toward the Hellespont and soon marches north with most of his army, leaving Mardonius in Greece with picked troops (Herodotus 8.97-115). Losses are uncertain. Herodotus gives no totals; Diodorus says the Greeks lost 40 ships and the Persians more than 200, not counting those captured, and some modern accounts give about 300 Persian ships lost. The polyandrion, the tumulus of the Greek dead, is traditionally placed on the north side of Kynosoura. Mardonius is defeated at Plataea the next summer.