Meanwhile, Sicinnus, the slave whose message had led to all of these preparations, had returned to Themistocles. His courage had been astonishing. He would surely have expected to be kept for further interrogation; indeed, it is hard to imagine why he was released, unless it was to carry a message from the Persian spy chiefs back to his master.14 Nor is it hard to guess what the contents of this communication might have been: the Great King’s final terms; the offer of an amnesty, perhaps, a chance for the Athenians to pick up their families before they sailed off into exile; or the assurance of a privileged future in Attica as favored servants of the King of Kings. Whatever the precise details, Themistocles must surely have breathed a sigh of relief when he read them, for he would have known that he had preserved his daughters from the slave market, his sons from the gelding knife, his fellow citizens from obliteration. Even were the Greek fleet to be wiped out in the morning, the Athenians, at least, would have a claim to the Great King’s mercy.
But there was a second prospect, infinitely more glittering and glorious, that had also been opened up by Sicinnus’ return. The Greek admirals, even as the imperial battle squadrons were embarking upon their secret maneuvers, remained in urgent session, “still quarrelling furiously,” it is said.15 At some point toward midnight, Themistocles—who had evidently been having a busy time of it, slipping in and out of the meeting—rose to his feet and made his excuses yet again. Stepping outside, he found waiting for him, cloaked in the shadows, an old enemy. Aristeides, the “Just,” summoned back from exile along with Xanthippus and all the other victims of ostracism, had smoothly resumed his place at the very heart of the democracy’s affairs. Returning that same evening from a mission to Aegina, he had seen, as he slipped back toward Salamis, the ominous silhouettes of the Persian fleet fanning out across the gulf to plug the exits from the straits. Themistocles, to whom this news naturally came as little surprise, confessed himself delighted, and told Aristeides that it was all his doing—“for our allies had to be forced into making a stand that they would otherwise have shrunk from, had it been left to themselves.” Then, embracing his old adversary, he urged Aristeides to take the news in to the other admirals, “for if I report it, they will think that I am making it up.”16
All of which, of course, was to cast the Peloponnesians as hapless stooges. No wonder that the Athenians, in the years to come, would enjoy harping on the story. Even so, there is something strange about it. Aristeides, although he did indeed inform the Greek commanders that their fleet was surrounded, neglected to mention, it appears, that this was courtesy of a trick pulled by one of their own colleagues. Understandably, it might be thought. Yet it is curious that the Spartans and the other Peloponnesians, even once the full details of Themistocles’ stratagem had become public knowledge, betrayed not the slightest hint of resentment toward the man who was supposed to have outsmarted them so comprehensively, but, on the contrary, only lauded him for his cleverness and foresight. Nor, despite being ambushed, as we are told, by Aristeides’ revelation, does it seem that the Greek admirals were thrown into a panic by it. Just the opposite—their dispositions for the morning appeared to reflect the minutest forward planning. Almost as though the news of the Persian blockade had come as no great surprise to them, either. Almost as though they had been complicit in Themistocles’ scheme from the start.
And perhaps they had been. Details of the Salamis campaign only ever come into focus as though through a swirling fog, and then they are either lost, or are so confused that they can be interpreted in any number of ways. Frustrating, of course—and yet there is, in this very murk, a tantalizing glimpse of the contours of an otherwise hidden war, a shadowy counterpoint to all the din and crash and shove of battle. The Persians could legitimately claim to be the masters of the dirty trick, so it should be no surprise that their spy chiefs, arriving in Attica, brought with them the easy presumption of superiority that came naturally to members of the world’s ruling class. Yet, just as the Great King’s admirals should have been warned against any complacency by the performance of the Greeks at Artemisium, so his intelligence agents should similarly have been on their guard. The allies had already demonstrated their proficiency at feints and disinformation. At Salamis, there can be no question that Themistocles, displaying his customary pitiless grasp of psychology, had fed the Persian agents not merely what their master wanted but what he desperately needed to believe was true. Even at his most eager, however, the Great King would surely have discounted the possibility of Athenian treachery, had it not been for the Peloponnesian admirals’ very public flaunting of their own demoralization. Whether they were indeed a squabbling, incompetent rabble with no appetite for fighting in the straits, despite all the lessons they had learned at Artemisium, or rather coconspirators in a devastating sting, we can never know for sure. What is certain, however, is that the Peloponnesian admirals, if they truly had been desperate to make their escape that night, adjusted to the news that they were blockaded inside the straits with remarkable equanimity. Dawn rose on a day as fateful as any in human history—and found every squadron in the Greek fleet primed and nerved for battle.
And over the straits, men imagined, there glimmered a sudden sense of something uncanny, an almost palpable heightening of intensity upon the early morning light. To the Athenian marines, before they took their places on deck, Themistocles delivered an address that would long be remembered, urging them to consider “all that was best in human nature and affairs, and all that was worst—and to choose the former.”17 Yet not even these words, it may be, raised as many hairs upon the back of men’s necks as did the assurance—one that seems suddenly to have swept the entire fleet—that the sons of gods who in ancient times had been the guardians of the rocks and groves and temples of Greece were present among them: so that men would later speak of seeing phantoms and even ghostly serpents gliding on the surface of the water, and of hearing unearthly battle cries echoing around the straits. That long-dead heroes would rise up from their graves to repel the barbarian invader was a conviction that had been sedulously promoted by the Greek high command. Indeed, it is probable that Aristeides, when he ran the gauntlet of the Persian blockade, had been sailing back with the relics of some Aeginetan heroes, sprung from Zeus himself. There could certainly have been no doubting the urgency of such a mission—and a measure of its success, perhaps, is the fact that the Peloponnesians, near mutinous the evening before, prepared for battle with as much conviction as anyone.