Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy & the Birth of Democracy (14 page)

Throughout the morning the thin Greek line held, resilient and unbroken. Like soldiers in the shield wall of a hoplite phalanx, the Greeks kept level with the ships on either side, whether stemming an enemy attack or shoving forward. The skill of the steersmen was critical, but when a trireme was at a standstill, the steering oars became useless. Then only the rowers, responding quickly to orders, could direct the ship to one side or another. Making a sharp turn in tight quarters called for the oarsmen on one side to row harder than their counterparts on the other, or even to row alone. Here the Greek crews with their long powerful strokes had the advantage.

Toward midday, when the sun climbed high enough to blaze down into the densely packed hulls, watchers on shore perceived a change in the configuration of the fleets. It began on the Greek left wing, where Themistocles commanded the Athenians. Since early morning there had been a steady seepage of damaged Persian ships toward the eastern exit as they sought shelter at Phaleron. With each departure, the pressure that the Phoenicians had been maintaining against the Athenians slackened. The time came when the westernmost Athenian triremes were able to push away from the shore and swing out into the open channel. With this move they outflanked the Phoenicians and began to force them into what remained of the Persian center. It was the turning point.

Now at long last the Greek line broke up. One Athenian trireme after another gave chase to fleeing Persians, and the allies followed suit. Eagerly they threaded their way through the roiling mass of ships, hunters seeking prey. The Persians moved sluggishly, their crews exhausted from lack of sleep and hours of hard rowing. Many evaded the Athenians only to encounter the Aeginetans who hovered near the mouth of the channel. As the battle disintegrated into a rout, even undamaged Persian ships crowded toward the exits on either side of Psyttaleia, like herd animals running from a pride of lions. The Greeks did all they could, but inevitably most of Xerxes’ ships slipped by them and escaped.

As sea room opened up in the strait, the battle entered a new phase. It became a series of duels, like the Homeric contests between Greek and Trojan heroes on the plains of Troy. This was the time of greatest danger for the Greeks. Once free of the line, every trireme had to look to its own defense. In open water even a successful ramming attack made the aggressor vulnerable in turn to the rams of passing enemies. In the course of these ship-to-ship actions, Xerxes’ scribes were kept busy. Now it was easier for a courageous and skillful commander to score a success. Two Ionian trierarchs from the island of Samos distinguished themselves for bravery in capturing Greek ships. Queen Artemisia of Halicarnassus was also entered in the list after the king’s attendants saw her ram and sink a ship. Once they had assured Xerxes that the attack had really been made by Artemisia, whom they recognized by her insignia, the Great King exclaimed, “My men have turned into women, my women into men!”

The true story of Artemisia’s exploit would not have earned her a place on the king’s honor roll. Finding her trireme the target of an Athenian ship, Artemisia tried to escape through the crowded battlefield. She could not shake off her pursuer. The Athenian trierarch was the same determined Ameinias who had destroyed the first Phoenician ship that morning. Had he known that the ship ahead of him was Artemisia’s, he would have redoubled his efforts, for the Athenians had put a price on the queen’s head. As Ameinias closed in for the kill, Artemisia found herself blocked by a ship that lay broadside across her only path of escape. This obstacle was the flagship of the King of Calynda, an Asiatic ruler who served Xerxes and who was a local rival of Artemisia. Without hesitating, she ordered the steersman to maintain his course straight ahead, and the rowers to give her full speed. Artemisia’s ship rammed the hapless Calyndian so hard that it destroyed the ship and the entire crew drowned, leaving no one to tell Xerxes what had really happened. The queen was doubly lucky: Ameinias assumed from her attack on a Persian ship that she must be an ally, and let her go.

By late afternoon the collapse of the Persian battle line brought the Athenians and Aeginetans into contact, although they had started the morning on opposite wings. One spectacular action involved triremes from both Athens and Aegina. Looking east down the channel, Xerxes saw one of his ships, a Greek trireme from the island of Samothrace, ram an Athenian. As often happened, the bronze ram of the Samothracian ship was caught and stuck in the timbers of its victim. A passing Aeginetan then rammed the immobilized ship from Samothrace, so that all three were locked together. Trapped between the heavily armored marines from Athens and Aegina, the islanders appeared doomed. To Xerxes’ joy, however, the Samothracians fired a hail of light missiles at the Aeginetan foredeck to clear it of defenders. They then jumped across from the railing of their own sinking ship. In the fight that followed, they wielded their javelins so ferociously that the Aeginetan crew abandoned ship. Claiming the enemy trireme as a prize, the victorious islanders cruised off in search of further adventures.

At about this time a group of unhappy Phoenician commanders climbed up Xerxes’ hill for an audience with the king. All these men had lost their ships, and they blamed their misfortunes on the perfidious Ionians and other eastern Greeks, saying that they had betrayed the Persian cause. The Phoenician commanders had the bad luck to make their accusations just as the Greeks from Samothrace were simultaneously sinking one enemy ship and capturing another. Furious with the Phoenicians for criticizing such heroes, Xerxes made them scapegoats for the entire disaster and had them beheaded.

Themistocles was close to an Aeginetan trireme when it captured one of the Phoenician ships from Sidon. On board the Phoenician ship the Aeginetans discovered a fellow countryman. He was the soldier whom the Phoenicians had kept as a trophy ever since their engagement with the Greek scout ships at the island of Skiathos. For the men of Aegina, the liberation of this lonely prisoner was the greatest moment of the entire battle. Seeing Themistocles nearby, the commander shouted across the water to ask if he still claimed that the Aeginetans were friends of the Persians.

As Greek marines boarded enemy ships brandishing swords and spears, or simply pitched the Persians into the water, the Salamis strait became a killing ground. Among the victims was the king’s brother Ariaramnes, one of the four admirals. Most of the Persians who died simply drowned, spilling into the sea as their ships sank or swamped. Casualties were light among the Greeks. They all knew how to swim and simply stroked their way to the Salamis shore. Any Persians who clung to floating wreckage died also; as the crush of ships cleared the narrows, the Greeks rowed about the battlefield like fishermen circling a school of tuna, spearing survivors with weapons or even broken oar shafts. Wrecked and capsized triremes littered the sea; corpses covered the rocks and reefs.

Once the last Persian ships had been chased from the channel, the Greeks turned their attention to the troops on the islet of Psyttaleia. The hard-pressed Persian ships had been unwilling to risk their own survival to pick up these men. Four hundred of Xerxes’ best troops were now stranded, and the Greek navy prepared to avenge the massacre at Thermopylae. Led by Aristides, a Greek force made a landing on Psyttaleia. They rounded up the Persians with a barrage of arrows from the archers and a shower of stones from enthusiastic rowers who had jumped ashore to join the fight. When the lightly armored Persians were penned close together on the island’s central ridge, Aristides and the hoplites charged into the mass and butchered them all. The golden rays of the setting sun gilded the struggle, visible afar in the clear evening light. The tragedy at Salamis had now reached its final scene and, for the Persian king, its bitter climax. Xerxes tore his robe in grief, stepped into his chariot, and departed.

Themistocles’ strategy had succeeded. Fast and maneuverable Greek ships and the narrow waters of the Salamis channel had been the keys to victory. At battle’s end a west wind was carrying the wreckage past Psyttaleia, but the Greeks dared not follow it into the open sea. The main body of the Persian fleet still held Phaleron, and they still outnumbered the Greeks. Except for the minor losses on Psyttaleia, Xerxes’ army remained untouched. That evening the Greeks towed the salvageable wrecks back to their station at Salamis. On shore they built funeral pyres and burned the bodies of comrades who had died that day. Amid the mourning and uncertainty, however, rose the irrepressible joy of victory. After dedicating an offering of thanks to Zeus, the Greeks danced to celebrate their triumph with shouts and stamping feet.

For the next two or three days the fleet at Salamis remained in suspense as to the enemy’s next move. The Persians had not given up the struggle after their first loss at Artemisium, and there was no reason to think that they would be any less relentless here at Salamis. Unknown to the Greeks, however, on the day after the battle in the strait the Phoenicians—the backbone of the armada—had in fact slipped away to their home cities. The rest of the fleet left Phaleron shortly afterward under cover of darkness, bound for the Hellespont or for ports in Asia Minor and distant isles. Xerxes sent some of his illegitimate sons back to Asia under the protection of Artemisia. He himself retreated overland with part of his army. A large number of troops were left behind under the command of Mardonius, with orders to complete the conquest of Greece the following spring.

When word reached Salamis that the Great King’s ships had left for home, the Greeks immediately set out in pursuit. Out of the strait that had held them for so long, past the deserted beach at Phaleron Bay, and down the Attic coast they rowed, till Cape Sunium loomed up ahead of them. The ruined temple of Poseidon stood starkly atop the cliffs, burned by the vengeful Persians like the temples on the Acropolis. Still they caught no sight of the enemy. Nightfall overtook them near the island of Andros.

Themistocles urged that they row on to the Hellespont and break the bridges. He was overruled by Eurybiades, who expressed the majority view of the Peloponnesians: the sooner Xerxes was out of Europe, the better. Nothing should be done to impede his departure. Eurybiades’ decision was later confirmed by a dramatic omen at the Isthmus. At the moment when the Spartan commander Cleombrotus, brother of the fallen Leonidas, was offering a sacrifice for victory, an eclipse hid the sun. The omen was interpreted as a warning against taking the proposed action, so Cleombrotus and the rest of the Spartans abandoned their plan to pursue Xerxes.

It was high time for the Greeks to commemorate the glorious naval victory. Among the trophies were three intact Phoenician triremes. One of these they dragged up to the shrine of Poseidon on Cape Sunium. Another was sent to the Isthmus and dedicated in the sanctuary of Poseidon there. The third captured trireme stayed on Salamis, an offering to the hero Ajax. Other spoils from the sea battles at Salamis and Artemisium were divided among the cities, once they had first set aside a tenth of the bronze from the enemy rams and weapons. From this metal they cast a statue of Apollo eighteen feet tall and erected it in the sanctuary of the oracle at Delphi. Without the prophecy of the Wooden Wall, Themistocles might never have persuaded the Athenians to face the Persians at sea.

Before the Greeks left the Isthmus, the allied naval commanders cast votes to decide who had displayed the greatest merit in the war with the Persians. There were ballots for first and second choices. The matter was considered so important that they laid their votes on the altar of Poseidon. Every man felt honor bound to vote first for himself, so there was no winner. But when they counted the votes for second place, it was found that most had voted for Themistocles. With this last rite, united in their disunity, the Greeks launched their ships and rowed away to their homes.

Themistocles went south with Eurybiades to Sparta. There he received a crop of honors for his value as a loyal ally and architect of victory. The Spartans placed a crown of wild olive on his head as a prize for wisdom and cunning. They also assigned to Themistocles an honor guard of three hundred Spartan soldiers, thus treating him like another Leonidas. And as a more tangible token of respect, they gave this Athenian lover of horses the best chariot in the country.

While Themistocles was being lionized in Sparta, the rest of the Athenians returned thankfully to their own land. Someone climbed the hill where Xerxes had sat to watch the battle of Salamis and found the gilded footstool on which the Great King had stepped to mount his chariot. In their haste to pack up and return to the royal pavilion, the king’s attendants must have overlooked it. This most cherished relic—something touched by Xerxes himself!—was carried up to the scorched and desolate Acropolis and presented to Athena as an offering. The Athenians also held a victory celebration of their own with song and dance. The boy chosen to lead the dance was a handsome and talented youngster named Sophocles, at that time about sixteen years old. The great poet Simonides wrote memorable verses as epitaphs for the fallen and eventually composed odes on the naval battles at Artemisium and Salamis. These may have been performed at the dedication of a new temple to Boreas the North Wind, a hitherto neglected god who had earned the gratitude of the Athenians for his repeated attacks on the fleets of the Great King.

It was now autumn, season of chilly showers and mild blustery winds. At peace after so many trials, the Athenians returned to their beloved countryside. The time for planting crops was well advanced. From overhead in the clouds came the clacking of migrating cranes, southward bound for the lakes of Africa. Soon those misty sisters, the seven Pleiades, would vanish from the constellations of the evening sky, and winter would put an end to sowing. All over Attica farmers were camping out in their homesteads, yoking their oxen, and beginning the seasonal round once more. Callused hands that had pulled oars at Artemisium and Salamis now gripped the handles of plows.