Well known to a local like Themistocles but not to the Persians, a southerly wind, the sirocco, tended to blow in the morning and a swell would push up the channel from the open sea. This was usually followed in the afternoon by a brisk westerly.
With dawn on September 29 the Greek commanders gave pep talks to their marines. The oarsmen pulled the hulls down into the water from beaches on the Salamis coastline. Meanwhile Xerxes seated himself on a gilded stool that had been placed on a spur at the foot of Attica’s Mount Corydallus; a golden parasol warded off the sun. From here he had a splendid and uninterrupted view of events. He was escorted by guards and a bevy of secretaries who noted down instances of heroic or cowardly behavior.
He could see everything the Greeks were doing despite the fact that they were out of sight of the Persian fleet, which had not yet entered the funnel. And what the Great King saw confirmed everything he had heard about disunity and fear among the Greeks. He watched them launch their boats and confusedly make their way northwards towards Eleusis, as if they had no stomach for the fight. A faint-hearted flotilla broke off at top speed and sailed into the distance.
The Persians were certain they would have little trouble disposing of a disorganized and frightened enemy and their vast fleet formed up in close order and tried to squeeze into the funnel. It did so by moving sideways. The highly skilled mariners from Phoenicia held the right wing and advanced obliquely along the coast of Attica up to the point where Xerxes was sitting; they happened to pass an islet that partly isolated them from the body of the fleet. Ionian Greeks were on the Persian left wing; as they maneuvered past Cape Cynosura, they got caught in a traffic jam.
Meanwhile, the Greeks altered their dispositions. They were out of sight of the enemy, but in full view of the Great King, although it was too late for him now to issue new orders. The flotilla that had appeared to be fleeing was in fact holding itself ready in the bay of Eleusis to protect the main fleet from a possible assault by the Persian squadron that was blocking the western end of the channel that separated Salamis island from Megara and the mainland.
The remaining three hundred or so warships changed course and rowed southwards, probably in ten columns. They redeployed into line abreast and, as planned, adopted a crescent-shaped configuration, masking Saint George island. The Athenians on the left wing faced the Phoenicians next to the mainland coast, and triremes from Aegina were on the right across the mouth of a small bay just north of the Cynosura headland.
Then something extraordinary happened. A deafening war chant among the Greek ships warned Xerxes and his sailors that they had badly misjudged the mood of their opponents. Eight years later, the tragic poet Aeschylus wrote a play, The Persians, in which he has a messenger arrive at the Great King’s court at Susa and describe the course of the fighting. It is an eyewitness account, for like practically every other male Athenian citizen the author was there and pulling an oar.
Then from the Hellene ships
Rose like a song of joy the piercing battle-cry,
And from the island crags echoed an answering shout.
The Persians knew their error; fear gripped every man.
They were no fugitives who sang that terrifying
Paean, but Hellenes charging with courageous hearts
To battle. The loud trumpet flamed along their ranks,
At once their frothy oars moved with a single pulse,
Beating the salt waves to the bosun’s chant; and soon
Their whole fleet hove into view.
Before rowing into battle, the Greeks waited for the expected morning breeze. This created a choppy swell and blew the Persian vessels, which were higher and more top-heavy than their Hellenic counterparts, off their bearings and broadside on to their eager opponents. The allies fought in an orderly fashion, ramming enemy warships with their bronze beaks and slicing through banks of oars. The crack Phoenician squadron was pushed towards the Attica shore, broke and fled; Athenian triremes pushed through the resulting gap. Ships in the Persian front line turned back to run before the wind as it veered into a westerly. But there was no space for them and they crashed into those behind them which were pushing forward to join in the action under the Great King’s gaze. On the right the Aeginetans began to curl round into the long Persian flank, so that the Hellenic crescent became a closing circle.
The Persians, who had been at their oars on guard duty through the night (while their opponents had slept by their boats on the beaches of Salamis), were beginning to tire. The wind gradually pushed wreckage out to sea. The Great King’s admiral and half brother, Ariamenes, was downed by a spear and thrown into the water. His body was picked up by plucky Artemisia, who was having an exciting if not altogether constructive time. Her ship was on the point of capture, so she took down her colors and rammed and sank a friendly trireme. Her Athenian attacker turned away, assuming that she was either Greek or had defected. The Great King watched this feat and praised Artemisia’s courage, assuming that she had destroyed an enemy ship. He could see that the tide of battle was turning against the Persians and Herodotus tells us that he remarked of her: “My men have become women and my women, men!”
This was unfair, for the Persians fought bravely, but gradually a confused melee mutated into a confused rout. The funnel emptied. The sea was carpeted with wrecks and drowned men (few Persians could swim). Aeschylus’s Persian bearer of news again:
The Hellenes seized fragments of wrecks and broken oars
And hacked and stabbed at our men struggling in the sea
As fishermen kill tuna or some netted haul.
Aristides landed a detachment of hoplites on Psyttaleia where the Great King’s picked troops were waiting, marooned and helpless. They were all put to death. The rout became general and a ragged pursuit continued till twilight. The battle was over.
—
It was a famous victory—so famous that we easily forget that Xerxes still possessed a formidable navy. He had lost two hundred ships with an unspecified number captured and the Hellenes only forty, but he still had plenty left. The significance of what had happened was unclear to people at the time and the allied high command feared that the Persians were perfectly capable of refitting, regrouping, and fighting again. And this is what they did. The army marched on towards the Isthmus and work continued on building a mole and boat-bridge to the island of Salamis where the evacuated population of Attica were nervously awaiting their fate. It looked as if Xerxes was continuing his campaign.
But the spirit had been knocked out of the armada. The best of it, the Phoenician contingent, had been more or less wiped out, and a headstrong decision of the Great King to blame their surviving commanders for the whole debacle and behead them provoked understandable resentment. Some ships may even have deserted. On October 2 there was a partial solar eclipse, which added to the atmosphere of unease and gloom.
The logistical problems had not gone away and the campaigning season, at least at sea, would soon be over. The reasons that, not many days previously, had impelled Xerxes to attack now persuaded him to leave. On top of that, he was not altogether sure that he still commanded the seas, for he could not count on winning a renewed engagement. The Greeks might well take it into their heads to sail to the Hellespont and destroy the boat-bridges, in which case he and his army would be cut off from home. They would be stuck in hostile territory at the mercy of vengeful Hellenes and insurgent Thracians.