Chapter XX: The Battles of Artemisium and Salamis (2)

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.

THE RETREAT OF XERXES

Great and capital as the victory was, there yet remained after it a sufficient portion of the Persian fleet to maintain even maritime war vigorously, not to mention the powerful land-force, as yet unshaken. And the Greeks themselves, immediately after they had collected in their island, as well as could be done, the fragments of shipping and the dead bodies, made themselves ready for a second engagement. But they were relieved from this necessity by the pusillanimity of the invading monarch, in whom the defeat had occasioned a sudden revulsion from contemptuous confidence, not only to rage and disappointment, but to the extreme of alarm for his own personal safety. He was possessed with a feeling of mingled wrath and mistrust against his naval force, which consisted entirely of subject nations--Phœnicians, Egyptians, Cilicians, Cyprians, Pamphylians, Ionic Greeks, etc., with a few Persians and Medes serving on board, in a capacity probably not well suited to them. None of these subjects had any interest in the success of the invasion, or any other motive for service except fear, while the sympathies of the Ionic Greeks were even decidedly against it. Xerxes now came to suspect the fidelity, or undervalue the courage, of all these naval subjects; he fancied that they could make no resistance to the Greek fleet, and dreaded lest the latter should sail forthwith to the Hellespont, so as to break down the bridge and intercept his personal retreat; for, upon the maintenance of that bridge he conceived his own safety to turn, not less than that of his father Darius, when retreating from Scythia, upon the preservation of the bridge over the Danube. Against the Phœnicians, from whom he had expected most, his rage broke out in such fierce threats, that they stole away from the fleet in the night, and departed homeward. Such a capital desertion made future naval struggle still more hopeless, and Xerxes, though at first breathing revenge, and talking about a vast mole or bridge to be thrown across the strait to Salamis, speedily ended by giving orders to the whole fleet to leave Phalerum in the night, not without disembarking, however, the best soldiers who served on board. They were to make straight for the Hellespont, and there to guard the bridge against his arrival.

This resolution was prompted by Mardonius, who saw the real terror which beset his master, and read therein sufficient evidence of danger to himself. When Xerxes despatched to Susa intelligence of his disastrous overthrow, the feeling at home was not simply that of violent grief for the calamity, and fear for the personal safety of the monarch--it was farther embittered by anger against Mardonius, as the instigator of this ruinous enterprise. That general knew full well that there was no safety for him in returning to Persia with the shame of failure on his head: it was better for him to take upon himself the chance of subduing Greece, which he had good hopes of being yet able to do, and to advise the return of Xerxes himself to a safe and easy residence in Asia. Such counsel was eminently palatable to the present alarm of the monarch, while it opened to Mardonius himself a fresh chance not only of safety, but of increased power and glory. Accordingly, he began to reassure his master, by representing that the recent blow was after all not serious--that it had only fallen upon the inferior part of his force, and upon worthless foreign slaves, like Phœnicians, Egyptians, etc., while the native Persian troops yet remained unconquered and unconquerable, fully adequate to execute the monarch’s revenge upon Hellas; that Xerxes might now very well retire with the bulk of his army if he were disposed; and that he, Mardonius, would pledge himself to complete the conquest, at the head of three hundred thousand chosen troops.

This proposition afforded at the same time consolation for the monarch’s wounded vanity, and safety for his person: his confidential Persians, and Artemisia herself, on being consulted, approved of the step. The latter had acquired his confidence by the dissuasive advice which she had given before the recent deplorable engagement, and she had every motive now to encourage a proposition indicating solicitude for his person, as well as relieving herself from the obligation of further service. “If Mardonius desires to remain (she remarked, contemptuously), by all means let him have the troops: should he succeed, thou wilt be the gainer: should he even perish, the loss of some of thy slaves is trifling, so long as thou remainest safe, and thy house in power. Thou hast already accomplished the purpose of thy expedition, in burning Athens.” Xerxes, while adopting this counsel, and directing the return of his fleet, showed his satisfaction with the Halicarnassian queen, by entrusting her with some of his children, directing her to transport them to Ephesus.

The Greeks at Salamis learned with surprise and joy the departure of the hostile fleet from the Bay of Phalerum, and immediately put themselves in pursuit; following as far as the island of Andros without success. Themistocles and the Athenians are even said to have been anxious to push on forthwith to the Hellespont, and there break down the bridge of boats, in order to prevent the escape of Xerxes, had they not been restrained by the caution of Eurybiades and the Peloponnesians, who represented that it was dangerous to detain the Persian monarch in the heart of Greece. Themistocles readily suffered himself to be persuaded, and contributed much to divert his countrymen from the idea; while he at the same time sent the faithful Sicinnus a second time to Xerxes, with the intimation that he, Themistocles, had restrained the impatience of the Greeks to proceed without delay and burn the Hellespontine bridge, and that he had thus, from personal friendship to the monarch, secured for him a safe retreat. Though this is the story related by Herodotus, we can hardly believe that, with the great Persian land-force in the heart of Attica, there could have been any serious idea of so distant an operation as that of attacking the bridge at the Hellespont. It seems more probable that Themistocles fabricated the intention, with a view of frightening Xerxes away, as well as of establishing a personal claim upon his gratitude in reserve for future contingencies.

Such crafty manœuvres and long-sighted calculations of possibility, seem extraordinary: but the facts are sufficiently attested--since Themistocles lived to claim as well as to receive fulfilment of the obligation thus conferred--and though extraordinary, they will not appear inexplicable, if we reflect, first, that the Persian game, even now, after the defeat of Salamis, was not only not desperate, but might perfectly well have succeeded, if it had been played with reasonable prudence: next, that there existed in the mind of this eminent man an almost unparalleled combination of splendid patriotism, long-sighted cunning, and selfish rapacity. Themistocles knew better than any one else that the cause of Greece had appeared utterly desperate, only a few hours before the late battle; moreover, a clever man, tainted with such constant guilt, might naturally calculate on being one day detected and punished, even if the Greeks proved successful.

He now employed the fleet among the islands of the Cyclades, for the purpose of levying fines upon them as a punishment for adherence to the Persian. He first laid siege to Andros, telling the inhabitants that he came to demand their money, bringing with him two great gods--Persuasion and Necessity. To which the Andrians replied, that “Athens was a great city, and blest with excellent gods: but that they were miserably poor, and that there were two unkind gods who always stayed with them and would never quit the island--Poverty and Helplessness. In these gods the Andrians put their trust, refusing to deliver the money required; for the power of Athens could never overcome their inability.” While the fleet was engaged in contending against the Andrians with their sad protecting deities, Themistocles sent round to various other cities, demanding from them private sums of money on condition of securing them from attack. From Carystus, Paros, and other places, he thus extorted bribes for himself apart from the other generals, but it appears that Andros was found unproductive, and after no very long absence the fleet was brought back to Salamis.

The intimation sent by Themistocles perhaps had the effect of hastening the departure of Xerxes, who remained in Attica only a few days after the battle of Salamis, and then withdrew his army through Bœotia into Thessaly, where Mardonius made choice of the troops to be retained for his future operations. He retained all the Persians, Medes, Sacæ, Bactrians, and Indians, horse as well as foot, together with select detachments of the remaining contingents: making in all, according to Herodotus, three hundred thousand men. But as it was now the beginning of September, and as sixty thousand out of his forces, under Artabazus, were destined to escort Xerxes himself to the Hellespont, Mardonius proposed to winter in Thessaly, and to postpone further military operations until the ensuing spring.

Having left most of these troops under the orders of Mardonius in Thessaly, Xerxes marched away with the rest to the Hellespont, by the same road as he had taken in his advance a few months before. Respecting his retreat, a plentiful stock of stories were circulated, inconsistent with each other, fanciful, and even incredible: Grecian imagination, in the contemporary poet Æschylus, as well as in the Latin moralisers Seneca or Juvenal, delighted in handling this invasion with the maximum of light and shadow, magnifying the destructive misery and humiliation of the retreat so as to form an impressive contrast with the superhuman pride of the advance, and illustrating the antithesis with unbounded license of detail. The sufferings from want of provision were doubtless severe, and are described as frightful and death-dealing: the magazines stored up for the advancing march had been exhausted, so that the retiring army were now forced to seize upon the corn of the country through which they passed--an insufficient maintenance, eked out by leaves, grass, the bark of trees, and other wretched substitutes for food. Plague and dysentery aggravated their misery, and occasioned many to be left behind among the cities through whose territory the retreat was carried; strict orders being left by Xerxes that these cities should maintain and tend them. After forty-five days’ march from Attica, he at length found himself at the Hellespont, whither his fleet, retreating from Salamis, had arrived long before him. But the short-lived bridge had already been knocked to pieces by a storm, so that the army was transported on shipboard across to Asia, where it first obtained comfort and abundance, and where the change from privation to excess engendered new maladies. In the time of Herodotus, the citizens of Abdera still showed the gilt scimitar and tiara, which Xerxes had presented to them when he halted there in his retreat, in token of hospitality and satisfaction: and they even went the length of affirming that never, since his departure from Attica, had he loosened his girdle until he reached their city. So fertile was Grecian fancy in magnifying the terror of the repulsed invader--who re-entered Sardis, with a broken army and humbled spirit, only eight months after he had left it as the presumed conqueror of the western world.

THE SPOILS OF VICTORY

Meanwhile the Athenians and Peloponnesians, liberated from the immediate presence of the enemy either on land or sea, and passing from the extreme of terror to sudden ease and security, indulged in the full delight and self-congratulation of unexpected victory. On the day before the battle, Greece had seemed irretrievably lost: she was now saved even against all reasonable hope, and the terrific cloud impending over her was dispersed. In the division of the booty, the Æginetans were adjudged to have distinguished themselves most in the action, and to be entitled to the choice lot; while various tributes of gratitude were also set apart for the gods. Among them were three Phœnician triremes, which were offered in dedication to Ajax at Salamis, to Athene at Sunium, and to Poseidon at the Isthmus of Corinth; further presents were sent to Apollo at Delphi, who, on being asked whether he was satisfied, replied, that all had done their duty to him except the Æginetans: from them he required additional munificence on account of the prize awarded to them, and they were constrained to dedicate in the temple four golden stars upon a staff of brass, which Herodotus himself saw there. Next to the Æginetans, the second place of honour was awarded to the Athenians; the Æginetan Polycritus, and the Athenians Eumenes and Aminias, being ranked first among the individual combatants.

Besides the first and second prizes of valour, the chiefs at the isthmus tried to adjudicate among themselves the first and second prizes of skill and wisdom. Each of them deposited two names on the altar of Poseidon: and when these votes came to be looked at, it was found that each man had voted for himself as deserving the first prize, but that Themistocles had a large majority of votes for the second. The result of such voting allowed no man to claim the first prize, nor could the chiefs give a second prize without it; so that Themistocles was disappointed of his reward, though exalted so much the higher, perhaps, through that very disappointment, in general renown. He went shortly afterwards to Sparta, where he received from the Lacedæmonians honours such as were never paid before or afterwards to any foreigner. A crown of olive was indeed given to Eurybiades as the first prize, but a like crown was at the same time conferred on Themistocles as a special reward for unparalleled sagacity; together with a chariot, the finest which the city afforded. Moreover, on his departure, the three hundred select youths called _hippeis_, who formed the active guard and police of the country, all accompanied him in a body as escort of honour to the frontiers of Tegea. Such demonstrations were so astonishing, from the haughty and immovable Spartans, that they were ascribed by some authors to their fear lest Themistocles should be offended by being deprived of the general prize.[b]

SYRACUSAN VICTORY OVER CARTHAGE

On the very same day on which the Persians were defeated at Salamis, another portion of the Hellenic race, the Sicilian Greeks, also obtained a victory over an immense barbarian force. There is reason to believe that the invasion of Sicily by the Carthaginians was concerted with Xerxes, and that the simultaneous attack on two distinct Grecian peoples, by two immense armaments, was not merely the result of chance. It was, however, in the internal affairs of Sicily that the Carthaginians sought the pretext and the opportunity for their invasion. About the year 481 B.C., Theron, despot of Agrigentum, a relative of Gelo, the powerful ruler of Syracuse, expelled Terillus from Himera, and took possession of that town. Terillus, backed by some Sicilian cities which formed a kind of Carthaginian party, applied to the Carthaginians to restore him. The Carthaginians complied with the invitation; and in the year 480 B.C., Hamilcar landed at Panormus with a force composed of various nations, which is said to have amounted to the enormous sum of three hundred thousand men. Having drawn up his vessels on the beach, and protected them with a rampart, Hamilcar proceeded to besiege the Himeræans, who on their part prepared for an obstinate defence. At the instance of Theron, Gelo marched to the relief of the town with fifty thousand foot and five thousand horse. An obstinate and bloody engagement ensued, which, by a stratagem of Gelo’s, was at length determined in his favour. The ships of the Carthaginians were fired, and Hamilcar himself slain. According to the statement of Diodorus, one hundred and fifty thousand Carthaginians fell in the engagement, while the greater part of the remainder surrendered at discretion, twenty ships alone escaping with a few fugitives. This account may justly be regarded as an exaggeration; yet it cannot be doubted that the victory was a decisive one, and the number very great of the prisoners and slain.

In Sicily, Greek taste made the sinews of the prisoners subserve the purposes of art; and many of the public structures which adorned and distinguished Agrigentum rose by the labour of the captive Carthaginians. Thus were the arms of Greece victorious on all sides, and the outposts of Europe maintained against the incursions of the semi-barbarous hordes of Asia and Africa.[f]

FOOTNOTES

[31] In the years 1821 and 1822, during the struggle which preceded the liberation of Greece, the Athenians were forced to leave their country and seek refuge in Salamis three several times. These incidents are sketched in a manner alike interesting and instructive by Dr. Waddington, in his _Visit to Greece_ (London, 1825), Letters vi, vii, x. He states, p. 92, “Three times have the Athenians emigrated in a body, and sought refuge from the sabre among the houseless rocks of Salamis. Upon these occasions, I am assured, that many have dwelt in caverns, and many in miserable huts, constructed on the mountain-side by their own feeble hands. Many have perished too, from exposure to an intemperate climate; many, from diseases contracted through the loathsomeness of their habitations; many, from hunger and misery. On the retreat of the Turks, the survivors returned to their country. But to what a country did they return? To a land of desolation and famine; and in fact, on the first reoccupation of Athens, after the departure of Omer Brioni, several persons are known to have subsisted for some time on grass, till a supply of corn reached the Piræus from Syra and Hydra.” In the war between the Turks and Venetians in 1688, the population of Attica was forced to emigrate to Salamis, Ægina, and Corinth.

[32] Compare the account given in Pausanias (X, 23) of the subsequent repulse of Brennus and the Gauls from Delphi: in his account, the repulse is not so exclusively the work of the gods as in that of Herodotus: there is a larger force of human combatants in defence of the temple, though greatly assisted by divine intervention: there is also loss on both sides. A similar descent of crags from the summit is mentioned. Many great blocks of stone and cliff are still to be seen near the spot, which have rolled down from the top, and which remind the traveller of these passages. The attack here described to have been made by order of Xerxes upon the Delphian temple seems not easy to reconcile with the words of Mardonius: still less can it be reconciled with the statement of Plutarch, who says that the Delphian temple was burnt by the Medes.