Battle of Salamis

Background

In 480 BC the Persian king Xerxes invaded Greece with a huge army and fleet, ten years after his father's army had been beaten at the Battle of Marathon. In August the Greeks tried to stop him at the pass of Thermopylae and at sea off Artemisium. After the Battle of Thermopylae was lost, the Greek fleet fell back to the island of Salamis, just off the coast of Attica. Persia's army marched into Athens and burned the temples on the Acropolis. The Athenians had already evacuated their families to Salamis, Aegina and Troezen and put almost every man of fighting age on their ships. The allied fleet was commanded by the Spartan Eurybiades, but the Athenian Themistocles, whose city supplied nearly half the ships, shaped the strategy. Many allies wanted to retreat to the Isthmus of Corinth. Themistocles argued that in the open sea the larger Persian fleet would surround them, while in the narrow strait its numbers would count for little. According to Herodotus, he sent a servant, Sicinnus, to tell Xerxes that the Greeks were about to flee.

The Battle

Xerxes believed the message. During the night his ships rowed to block both ends of the strait, and troops were landed on the small island of Psyttaleia. The Athenian Aristides, returning from exile, slipped through and told the Greeks they were surrounded, so they now had no choice but to fight. At dawn the Greek triremes rowed out to meet the Persian ships as they came up the strait. The Athenians held the left, facing the Phoenician squadrons, and the Spartans the right, facing the Ionian Greeks who served Persia. Xerxes watched from a throne on the slopes of Mount Aegaleos on the mainland. The Persian fleet, in long lines, became jammed in the narrow water. Ships that were rammed blocked those behind them, and the Greeks, keeping better order, struck again and again. The Persian admiral Ariabignes, a brother of Xerxes, was killed. Ships fleeing toward the exit were caught by the Aeginetans waiting there. Aristides then landed hoplites on Psyttaleia and killed the Persian troops stationed there. The fighting lasted most of the day.

Weapons

This was a battle of the Greek Trireme, whose bronze ram did most of the damage. Each Greek ship carried a handful of marines armed with the Hoplite Dory, the Greek Aspis, bronze helmets such as the Corinthian Helmet and the Greek Xiphos, plus a few archers. The Persian ships carried more marines, around thirty according to Herodotus, many of them Persians, Medes and Saka armed with bows and the Persian Akinakes, and they relied more on boarding.

Aftermath

Numbers are uncertain. Herodotus gives the Greeks about 378 ships, and later writers give them about 40 losses. He gives the Persians over 1,200 at the start of the campaign, but storms and earlier fighting had reduced them, and modern historians usually estimate 600 to 800 or fewer at Salamis, of which perhaps 200 were lost. Xerxes returned to Asia with much of his army, leaving his general Mardonius in Greece. In 479 BC the Greeks defeated Mardonius at Plataea and burned the remaining Persian fleet at Mycale. The playwright Aeschylus, who probably fought at Salamis, made it the subject of his play The Persians in 472 BC. The victory confirmed Athens as a naval power, and its fleet became the basis of the Athenian empire that followed the Greco-Persian Wars.