Aeschylus tells a similar story, though he names neither Themistocles nor Sicinnus, and some of the details differ, such as the time of day the messenger was sent. The message, according to Aeschylus, was that the Greeks were frightened and were going to try to escape that night.
Herodotus adds that the slave told the king that the Greeks were arguing with each other. In response, King Xerxes deployed his ships to block the southeastern end of the channel. According to Diodorus, he also sent ships round to block the exit on the other side of Salamis. Every treatment of the battle takes a position on this tale of intrigue. Representative are Hignett , which doubts the veracity of the story; Lazenby , which defends it; and Wallinga , which argues that the story makes sense as a response to the Persian deployment in the afternoon, which the Greeks correctly interpreted as a dress rehearsal for an assault.
The messenger did not trick the Persians into attacking, which they already planned to do. A learned treatment, often skeptical of Herodotus, the source on whom Hignett relies most.
Lazenby, who tries to understand the perspective of both sides, finds Herodotus the most credible source. A provocative study based on the premise that the Persian high command was competent. Historians trying to reconstruct the battle itself have reached highly divergent conclusions. The Greeks withdrew into the bay, the Persians followed them up the Salamis channel, and the Greeks attacked as the Persians began to enter the bay, bottling them up in the strait. See Kromayer and Veith for a plan according to this interpretation.
Hammond , in accordance with his identification of Psyttaleia with the island of Agios Georgios, puts the battle far inside the channel, in front of Agios Georgios. See Kromayer and Veith for a plan illustrating this interpretation, which the authors favor.
Skeptics find it hard to imagine the Persians moving into the channel without being detected and equally hard to think that inside the channel they could have heard the Greeks before they saw them, as Aeschylus says they did. Wallinga under Numbers suggests that the Persians sent their fast ships at dawn racing up the channel to surprise and cover the Greek fleet, with the rest of the Persian ships crowding in behind. Burn and Lewis and Green maintain that the Greeks must have faked a withdrawal in order to lure the Persians into the channel.
As the Corinthians and Athenians withdrew early in the morning toward Eleusis, the Persian fleet went after them; the Aeginetans and Megarians then charged out from Ambelaki Bay against the exposed Persian left wing. Goodwin argued that the Persians did not enter the channel at all. Xerxes put men on the island of Psyttaleia expecting it to be in the path of the fighting, and the Persian fleet guarded the exit routes on both sides of Psyttaleia throughout the night. In the morning, the Persians advanced north of Psyttaleia, but before they passed the Kynosoura peninsula, the Greeks came out.
The Persians heard them singing before they saw them, as Aeschylus says, and then the Greek right wing came into view as it rowed round Cape Kynosoura. This interpretation deserves more positive attention than it has received since Grundy A revised version of the original publication, with a sound and sensible treatment of the battle, including a plan.
History of the Art of War. Translated by Walter J. Renfroe Jr. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, Goodwin, William W. Green tells a good story, giving credence to later sources. Grundy, G. London: John Murray, Kromayer, Johannes, and Georg Veith. The Atlas of Ancient Battlefields. Translated by Tristan Skupniewicz. A welcome translation of the Schlachten-Atlas zur antiken Kriegsgeschichte , a standard reference work since the original publication in — Rados, Constantin N.
La bataille de Salamine. Paris: Fontemoing et Cie, A venerable study by a naval historian who knew the topography. Still worth consulting. Numerous plans. During the night before the battle, Xerxes stationed some troops— of them, according to Pausanias 1. Both Aeschylus and Herodotus say that Xerxes expected shipwrecked men to wash up on the island and deployed these soldiers to rescue their own men and kill their enemies.
Instead, the Greeks killed them all after the battle. Scholars have treated this story with some skepticism. Marines normally included hoplites and archers. Proietti argues that while the Greek fighters were marines, Psyttaleia was important, as evidenced by the trophy erected on the island and possibly by a fragmentary on an inscription. In her view, the importance of the victory was reduced by the time of Herodotus, when it was remembered as no more than a pendant to the main battle.
Wallinga dismisses the Greek version of Persian intentions; in his view, the Persians wanted to exterminate the Greek fleet, and Xerxes stationed men on Psyttaleia to put them in position to be ferried over to Salamis where they would hinder any attempt by the Greeks to flee with their families.
But the gist of the story, Aristeides leading hoplites over from Salamis, can be believed, particularly if van Wees and Wrightson are correct that archaic Greek armies did not exclude stone-throwers and archers, who fought among the hoplites. Kagan and Viggiano is probably the best entry point into the debate about hoplite warfare. Fornara, Charles W.
Kagan, Donald, and Gregory F. Viggiano, eds. A collection of papers from a conference at Yale designed to bring together scholars with opposing views about the nature of hoplite warfare and its social and political consequences. Proietti, Giorgia. Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities. Lardinois, Marc G. Wrightson, Graham. Wrightson argues that heavy and light infantry did not fight in separate units until the Peloponnesian War. Compared to Plataea, the great land victory won the following year, Salamis received only modest commemoration: a trophy on Salamis and another on Psyttaleia Wallace , three captured Phoenician triremes dedicated in sanctuaries at Isthmia, Sounion, and Salamis Lorenzo —the last two in Athenian territory—and local Athenian festivals that involved boat races Pritchett There was no Panhellenic festival such as the Eleutheria freedom festival celebrated with races and other competitions at Plataea every four years, nor were there great monuments at Panhellenic sanctuaries, such as the serpent column at Delphi that was inscribed with the names of all the cities that sent men to fight at Plataea.
While these historic battles have claimed their rightful place in history, the debate about how a different outcome at the little known Battle of Salamis might have changed the course of history remains. He succeeded in his objective of sacking Athens and bringing the Athenians low. Yet it cannot be denied that the subsequent defeat of the Persian navy at Salamis, even if it was not a matter of overarching concern for the Persian empire which continued to flourish for years, was a turning point in the Greek conception of 'self' and the beginning of the Greek ideology of freedom.
One of the few world experts on pre-Islamic Iran, Professor Llewellyn-Jones is particularly interested in ancient Persian history and culture, the interaction of east-west in antiquity and the ancient Near East. Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones. Skip to main content. Search the website Search Close. Menu Menu. Cardiff University logo. Honours and awards Honorary Fellows. Who knows how far a sense of Greek identity has coloured what we know about the Battle? Leading the Greeks was Themistocles who, it is believed, had to talk up the idea of fighting the Persians rather than retreating.
The lines between Greeks and Persians were so blurred that Xerxes was being advised by a Greek woman, Artemisia, who warned him against rushing into the strait and whom he calamitously ignored. Themistocles played on the sense of Greek nationality in a cunning fashion, and is thought to have erected huge billboards on the sides of cliffs telling Greeks in the Persian navy to turn coward and not fight against their fellow men.
This tug of loyalty — often completely irrational — may have bolstered the Greek campaign. This tug is something many of us can relate to. I find myself rooting for Greeks under any almost any circumstances and even when listening to the In Our Time podcast I was delighted to hear about a Greek victory. The tug is still there. What does objectivity mean, and what does identity mean? How are we swayed in different directions, and how are our interpretations coloured? In Our Time. Main content.
Against those enemy vessels that they had been able to board their marines made progress. Elsewhere the story was very different. As the Persian ships came to a halt, the swifter Greek triremes sailed around their sides and struck from all directions. Surrounded and hemmed in, what followed was a massacre. Persian sailors stood no chance, speared by their foe either on their ships or in the water. Further good news followed in the north.
Despite being greatly-outnumbered, the Corinthians had held off the Egyptian contingents opposing them, preventing encirclement. The Persians that could escape were now in full flight, but there would be little respite. The Aeginitans had broken through in the meantime on the right. Now, they turned to oppose any Persian ships trying to flee.
To complete the victory, the Greek ships surrounded the small island of Psyttaleia. Xerxes had placed a small Persian force on the island before the battle. Now these men watched on in horror as they saw their fleet destroyed and their enemy approaching in large numbers.
Annihilation ensued. The Battle of Salamis was a heroic success for the Greek fleet. Overall they lost 40 ships. The Persians meanwhile lost c. Following the battle, Xerxes retreated from central Greece.
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