Eh? Well, Themistocles had ordered that all domestic animals be left in Attica to starve. He set the example, leaving a beautiful hunting dog to die. The dog supposedly followed him down to the water’s edge and then, after some howling, swam after the great man’s ship. Themistocles hardened his heart — not hard for him, I suspect — and rowed on, but the dog followed, swimming all the way across the bay to the long point of Salamis that seems to aim like an accusing hand at the harbour of Piraeus. Themistocles landed his ship and the dog swam up, utterly faithful, got itself up on the point: and then died. I heard the story a dozen times that week, as an example of bad omens and how untrustworthy Themistocles was. In fact, most families brought their dogs, and even a few cats. The Themistocles I knew would have told all the Athenians to leave their pets and then bribed someone else to carry his. I’m not sure I believe the story, even now, but that point is still called the ‘Dog’s Grave’.
We could smell the burning over Attica. We could smell a carrion smell from slaughtered animals and a spicy smell, and over it all that sharp tang that we perceive after a fire.
We put six ships to sea. Aristides was there in his Athena Nike with Demetrios at the helm, and I had Lydia. Astern of us in a short column of twos were Bulis and Sparthius in their Lacedaemonian Ares, with Cimon in Ajax and Philip and Lykon in Corinthian ships. It was a deliberate attempt to involve the whole fleet and I know, without being told, that Themistocles and Cimon hoped to provoke a general action.
We were also the fastest ships available, at various points of sailing and rowing.
Or perhaps that’s an excuse. We were six ships whose men and trierarchs trusted each other. Good ships, aye, and good oarsmen, were thick on the beaches that autumn, but trust was as thinly spread as good Olbian caviar at a poor man’s party.
So as we weathered the long point, passing the island of Psyttaleia to our port side. The island cut off any view of Piraeus and kept the Persians around Athens from watching our movements. As soon as we entered the straits between Cynosura, the Dog’s Grave, and the island of Psyttaleia we felt the chop; it hit us for the first time, broadside on. It wasn’t so bad at first, because of the loom of the main island, but once we were in the open ocean, it was quite a swell. Good fortune and years of following Cimon and his father around the sea caused me to watch him as he passed the gap, and I saw that he put his helm over and turned south as soon as he weathered the point. I assumed he was being cautious about the placement of the Persians, but when it was my turn and I felt the first wave and we took water amidships because our sides were so low, I too turned sharply to the south, so that the morning waves came at my protected bow. On this side of the cape we could see, quite close to us, the ships of Aegina on their beaches. We waved and called in Greek to prevent an accident, and rowed south into the wind with every oarsman cursing. There’s another small island almost due west of Psyttaleia, and if it has a name I don’t know it, but we passed between it and Psyttaleia in water so shallow I had Seckla in the bow throwing a lead.
Dawn was just staining the skies. The south wind moderated as the sun rose and in an hour, as the rowers cursed and the hoplites began to cook their sausages back on the beaches, we passed the promontory of Piraeus and opened the Bay of Phaleron — you know what that phrase means, honey? When you are close in with the land, sailing or rowing, the land all looks about the same and a headland can completely hide a small harbour, a bay, or an inlet. As you pass along the land, you may pass a headland, and then, all of a sudden, a ‘hole’ opens in the coast and you can see into the bay, the same way that you cannot see into the garden until you pass the first pillar there and get a peak through the door — see?
So we opened the bay.
And in it, on the beaches there, were all the ships in the world, or so it seemed. I had Seckla to do the counting — he was always a good counter, and the man doing the counting needs to have no other work. It’s hard enough, when all the enemy ships are black, and all about the same size and far away.
We bore down on them. We’d been crawling west by south under oars, but now that morning was coming, a land breeze rose off Attica, a breeze full of ash. We rowed into it, but all six of us had our main sails laid along on our decks or half-decks.
No one seemed to be stirring on shore.
We rowed in. I found the promontory at Munychia, just south of Athens itself, and aimed at it, to come up the windward side of the enemy fleet, which filled every beach from the rocky tumble at the sea edge by Munychia all the way over to Phaleron herself, a good nine stades. They filled those beaches, west to east, as solidly as tuna fill the Bosporus in the spring.
By my estimate, if every ship beached at two oars’ lengths from the next, the minimum safe distance to get a fleet off the beach, then there could be about one hundred ships to every stade, or nine hundred enemy ships. They were not all triremes, either; they had more pentekonters and small fry than we did, but there were also some enormous ships among them, including a great trireme of Phoenician make, high-sided and as big as any two of our ships, which sat right in the centre of the great curving beach.
It was an awe-inspiring sight; a larger fleet than the enemy had at Artemisium. It was both more, and less, impressive than their fleet at sea. It was certainly better ordered than their anchorages and landing beaches had been in Thessaly.
We rowed nearer the land. We were merely cruising; a slow, steady pace with only two banks of oars rowing, so that we moved only twenty-five stades an hour or so.
After about as much time as it takes an orator to deliver a speech, we were coming up on the west end of their beach. We were close enough to hear men calling out. Seckla was in the bow and he waved and shouted in his African tongue and in Phoenician.
We turned east and followed Cimon along the edge of the beach, so close in we might have thrown fire into the ships. Cimon’s daring plan was that we would imitate a newly arrived squadron looking for a landing place while we crept along, bold as a Piraeus waterfront girl, and counted our enemies.
We made it a third of the way around the Bay of Phaleron before they smoked us. But when they did, forty ships came off the beach all together, from every compass point. It happened so quickly that we passed from stealth to terror in two beats of the heart. The water was suddenly so full of enemies that it seemed as if we were blood poured into an ocean full of sharks.
The ships nearest me were Egyptian — excellent ships with highly trained crews who nonetheless hated the Great King as much as I did and perhaps more. Egypt had only recently revolted and the revolt had been suppressed savagely. The Egyptians were among the first in the water, but they approached cautiously, giving my ship time to turn end for end. As soon as my bow was pointed at the open sea and I had the wind behind me, I motioned at Leukas and he put the mainsail onto the yard in record speed while the oarsmen pulled us hard to the south.
To my port side, over to the west, lay Athena Nike. Aristides made his turn and then, by ill-luck, fouled something, and it took him precious heartbeats to free his ram-bow. He had a crowd of Ionians coming up on his port side, and he had to turn towards me to escape being boarded even as his ship finally leapt into motion.
I found myself gnawing on one of my fingers. A dreadful habit, but the tension of watching that race — if it can be called a race when no one is yet moving at full speed — was more than I could bear. Athena Nike was slowly moving east and south, but the Ionians were pulling closer with every stroke.