The Most Influential People in Ancient History (Pt. 3)

This post is so long, it’s totally gotten into cray-cray land! 😂

I’m serious! I’ve been thinking about it for months, ever since I got the idea of writing about “The Most Influential People in Ancient History.” I didn’t know about to handle it. This past week, I decided I’d just go for it, since I was out of credits to do more video.

So I started… and it grew and grew and grew! It took pretty much all week and when I got done yesterday it was over 17,000 words! 

Yikes!

That’s a whole new level of TL:DR! 😆

But the more I wrote and the more I thought, the more I realized how important this event was. It took place in the 5th century BC, which was a pivotal century in all history, maybe the pivotal century. I don’t know if it’s popular anymore, but people (when I was young) would talk about the “Axial Age.” That was period which covered most of the middle of the 1st millennium BC, something like the 8th to the 3rd centuries. During this time, pretty much all our major religious and philosophical systems were either established or the predecessors that brought them into being were.

This includes the major Greek philosophers; Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism (all in India);  Zoroastrianism; Daoism and Confucianism (China), and the Hebrew Prophets. They all asked the same type of questions and they tended to reach broadly similar conclusions, despite having (it’s been thought) little apparent contact with each other, outside their own civilization or region, that is; the Hebrews knew about the Greeks, of course, even if they were pretty different societies.

Honestly, I suspect the amount of contact could’ve been substantial; it was in the Bronze Age. I think a case could be made that after the Bronze Age Collapse, it took several centuries (till the around the 8th century BC) for all these societies to start to reestablish contact (with China more in the mix) and over the next 500 years or so, that accelerated. But, I’m bird-walking now and I’m not up on current thinking on this topic, so moving on…

The 5th century BC seems (at least to me) to be the height of the Axial Age. There’s a pretty good summary of it here: https://grokipedia.com/page/5th_century_BC.

But the big question (I think) is:
What of all the things that happened had the most direct effect on the world as we know it today?

And (again, I think this is pretty inarguable?), the most evident thing about the world today is the dominance of this thing we call “Western culture” or “civilization” or “thought” in pretty much every area: military (total), political (near total?), economic (pretty much total), social (a lot?), and even cultural (how people dress, what they watch and listen to, the fact there’s McDonalds and Starbucks all over the place, the internet [duh] and so on…)

How did that happen?

Okay, how it happened is a super-big huge topic (the details and everything). The question here is more, how it almost didn’t happen.

I’d expect to get a ton of pushback on this from scholars (if any read this), but the more I thought and wrote and wrote and thought, more it began feel to like a series of events from 508 to 404 BC are responsible for it all—Western civilization being what it became, I mean.

And those events, which happened in Greece, depended on the actions of one person—one person—who made it all possible, and another one person—again, one person—who was the only person who could’ve stopped it and/or changed it into something very different… and tried to.

And didn’t succeed.

So yeah, a lot of critical stuff that happened would’ve or could’ve happened. A lot of critical stuff probably wouldn’t have happened, at least not then and maybe not at all. And it all would’ve happened in a different context and been really different as a result.

Okay, that sounds totally nuts. And a whole bunch of stuff that’s really important happened over the next 2500 years that if they’d gone a different way would’ve done this and that and something else. And obviously changed stuff.

But I think of it like this (kinda silly, maybe?): drop a snowball on a glacier with a nice long slope. Start it rolling. Watch it get bigger, gather momentum. It encounters bumps on the way down, gets nudged this was and that, takes this path or that one.

But it keeps rolling, keeps getting bigger, keeps gaining momentum. Each bump affects it less and less. The deviations from its path get smaller and smaller. It’s not linear. It’s more like exponential. Then there’s that moment where it hits the “knee in the curve” and turns into an avalanche.

There’s no stopping an avalanche.

For good or ill (and it’s always a lot of both, with avalanches).

The glacier—the snowfield, the slope—those were all there. They were the “preconditions” or the setup or whatever you want to call it, that built up over time. It was a varied terrain, all different.

There was a guy. He came by, stood on a particular place on the snowfield, had an idea. He made a snowball.

The people there, his people, didn’t amount to much then. They were pretty piddling, actually. And they didn’t think much of his snowball at first.

But he made it anyway. He was the Snowball Genius. No one else could make a snowball like him. He got the snowball he wanted. He had an idea what it could do.

He dropped it. At a special place where it would start to roll.

There was a woman. She understood about the snowball he dropped.  No one else did.

She said, “Catch that snowball! Here’s how…”

She wasn’t listened to. The snowball got away. It rolled and bounced and rolled and…

Avalanche.

That’s my kinda-goofy intro. The rest is the story of what happened. If you’re curious and don’t have anything better to do, go ahead and read it.

If you want to read what I read (for the most part), which is a zillion times better than this and written by the historian who a leading (if not the leading) expert on this, go get his book. (Your library probably has it; mine does.)

Okay, here’s goes nothing…

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Like the two people in my previous article on the most influential people in ancient history, these two people in this one are, in important ways, a pair of opposites: one was a man, one was a woman; one was also a ruler who served the world’s greatest monarch of the era while the other was an outsider who served the world’s first democracy, and they fought on opposite sides of the most important battle in history.

But they were both Greek, both admirals and were both the only two people on either side who really understood the strategic implications of the fight they were about to engage in (if not, of course, all the future implications of the outcome).

And one managed to convince doubters through a mixture of argument, luck or “fate” and brilliant trickery while the other was ignored. Finally, one was called a traitor and died in exile as the honored guest of a former enemy while the other died in unknown circumstances—certainly not the way later legend says.

They are Themistocles of Athens, and Artemisia, queen of Halicarnassus.

The battle they whose outcome they decided was the Battle of Salamis.

Salamis has been called the battle that saved Western Civilization (the subtitle of Barry Strauss’ super-excellent book on it is: the naval encounter that saved Greece—and Western Civilization; full disclosure: he’s my favorite historian) and the publisher probably insisted on it.

But it’s true, though maybe not in a simplistic way, as Straus explains, although that way might also be true. It’s a controversial topic and at least one other historian I admire thinks the Battle of Plataea (which followed Salamis by about a year) was the crucial battle.

But Salamis gets my vote and Plataea (to me) ranks as the cherry on top.

Ok, now I gotta say there’s no way I can do the Battle of Salamis any kind of justice. I’d have to write a book and Barry Strauss already did that (not to mention half a zillion other people) and he did an infinitely better job than I could ever do.

So the best I can do (using his book) is try to hit some high points. And even that’s gonna be hard. For the TL:DR crowd, it goes like this:

Themistocles planned, fought and won the Battle of Salamis; he also made Athens a navel power that could do all of those things and set the course for its future.

If Xerxes, the Great King, had listened to Artemisia instead of his (male) advisors, the Battle of Salamis would not have been fought, the Greeks would’ve lost whatever battle[s] were fought, Greece would’ve fallen to Persia, there likely wouldn’t have been a flourishing Athenian democracy and certainly no Athenian imperial democracy (important distinction), and we would not have what we know as “Western Civilization” at all.

Our history is full of decisive battles (the Battle of Tours and the Siege of Vienna get mentioned, so does Stalingrad in WWII; there’s a bunch of others), and naval battles like Actium, Lepanto, Trafalgar and Midway. All were important (especially Actium) but at the time they were fought, the course of—or the fact of—Western Civilization had been set. It wasn’t going away.

Sure, the course could’ve been changed to a degree but it would’ve been a deviation (in the case of Trafalgar, which was fought between quintessentially Western powers, not even that), not an end.

At the time Salamis was fought, “Western Civilization” (if we can even call it that) was (at best) embryonic and pretty much confined to one tiny place: Athens. Wipe out Athen and Athenian culture and the idea of “Western Civilization” goes away with it. Given the concepts born in Athens didn’t arise and take root anywhere else and took millennia to spread and become the dominant force in the world today (whatever we think of that), I think it’s a mistake to assume that the creation of “Western Civilization,” leading to its eventual dominance, was somehow inevitable.

Because that’s all it would be: an assumption. There’s no evidence to back it up.

So that’s what was at stake on September 25th, in the year 480 BC. If that’s good enough, you can stop reading now. Or you can keep reading while I blunder on.

First, let me try to provide some context, like who fought the battle, why and what the scale of the battle was.

Take the last, first, Salamis wasn’t just the most important battle in history, it was one of the largest naval battles of all time (maybe one the largest, period—it’s hard to say). How to rank a naval battle as the “largest” is something fans like to debate: should we go by numbers of ships, the total tonnage, the number of people involved, the amount of firepower? Some combination and if so, how do we weight all the factors? How do we adjust for the periods when they fought?

It’s a lot of fun, if that’s your idea of fun.

But no matter what we pick, Salamis was huge. The Greek fleet was 333 ships; the Persian fleet was between about 650 and 700 ships. There were 150,000 men in the Persian fleet—and one woman. The Greek fleet had 67,000 men; 40,000 from Athens alone; Athens provided 200 of the total number of ships in the Greek fleet.

So over a thousand ships and 200,000 people fought at Salamis, including 20,000 onshore. Counting civilian refugees, about 300,000 were present. The total population of the world in 500 BC is estimated at 100 million. In terms of today’s population, it’s equivalent to just over 20 million people involved in one battle.

Maybe that’s a bit overstated, but if we compare it only the population of Athens, the numbers are still huge. Athens now has a population of about 700,000 within the city limits (looking over the last 10 years) and between 3 and 4 million in its metropolitan area (3.75 million on 2016 and 3.1 million now).

In 500 BC, the total population is estimated at 150,000. If we go with that total and 40,000 who manned the fleet (a solid number), just over a quarter of the Athenian population (27%) fought in the battle. Since that drew from the entire population available (not just city dwellers), that means 800,000 Athenians in today’s terms (round numbers).

However, we slice it, it’s a huge, huge number.

What about the Persians?

In 500 BC, the Persian empire was the largest the world had ever seen, anyway you look at it. It covered an immense area, from the Indus river (in the east) to the Danube (in the west), and from the Aral, Caspian and Black Seas in the north to Egypt and Libya in the south.

The total area was about the size of the continental US and had a total population estimated at 20 million—20% of the world’s population. That makes it bigger than either India or China today (which have 18% and 17% for the world’s population, respectively). There were 4,000 miles of road running from one end of the empire to the other. They created the world’s first coinage that was in widespread use and, for all that they could be despotic, brought peace and prosperity to millions. They were great builders; our word paradise comes from the word of the huge parks they built. Other superlatives can be piled on.

The Persian Empire wasn’t just the largest empire in the world, it was heir to the world’s oldest civilization. By 3400 BC, the Sumerian city of Uruk (in modern Iraq) was (we think) the first of the world’s permanently established cities. Around 2650 BC, it was ruled by Gilgamesh, a historical king and the protagonist of the oldest epic we know of.

At that time, Uruk had a wall around it that was 6 miles long and enclosed an area of just over 2 square miles. It was well laid out. About a third was occupied by temples (Ishtar, goddess of love, sex and war, and Anu, the sky god, were the most important deities worshiped there), public buildings and the elites’ houses, a third by the dwellings of the rest of the inhabitants and the rest by open spaces: gardens, orchards, parks and cemeteries.

In comparison, Themistocles’ Athens was a bit less than half the size (a square mile) and it wasn’t until Rome under Hadrian that a western city was larger than Uruk. Of course, size isn’t everything, but the comparison gives some idea of the legacy the Persians inherited from a civilization that was well over 2000 years old when they took power as the Achaemenid dynasty, founded by Cyrus the Great.

It also points to the Persian empire’s incredible wealth. To invade Greece, they sent a vast army and a fleet of over 1300 ships. Herodotus reports (which is not the same thing as say he believed) the Persian army contained 1.7 million men. That’s unreasonable and modern estimates are about 250,000.

But 1300 ships is reasonable and consistent with numbers cited in other naval encounters. If Athens alone could create a navy of 200 ships (which we know they did) the Persians, drawing on the resources of the maritime kingdoms of Ionia and Caria in western Anatolia (Turkey), the Phoenicians and Egyptians, along with others, would be able to produce a fleet of 1300 ships.

Now that they’ve been brought up, I should say a bit about the ships. They were almost all triremes, the state-of-the-art warship of the age. Triremes were sleek, fast, nimble ships that could be propelled by oars or a sail. In battle they were always rowed. Fragile and cramped, they usually sailed only during the day and were beached at night so the crews could rest onshore.

There were three banks of oars, which gives them their name. Typically, a trireme had 170 rowers, plus a dozen or so marines on Greek triremes, a captain, officers and top-side crew for a total of about 200. The marines wore helmets and breastplates and were armed with spears and swords. There were also a few archers.

Triremes were all built on the same basic plan, being about 130 feet long with a beam of 18 feet, but of course there were differences, depending on who built them. Athenian triremes were heavier than Persian triremes, which would be important. Persian triremes tended to have larger crews with up to 40 marines—four times what the Greek ships embarked—so they had bulwarks to keep the men from falling off the crowded deck and protect them from arrows. This would also be important.

There are good reasons for the Persians embarking so many marines. First, none of the crew were Persians on any Persian ship; only admirals were. The Persians were a horse people and the ultimate landlubbers. So their crews were all subject people and a whole lot of them were Greek. In fact, more Greeks fought against the Greeks in the Persian War than fought for Greece, a fact that should be remembered. So the Persians wanted a lot of marines onboard to keep control of their potentially unreliable crews.

There was also a tactical reason. Triremes weren’t handled like the modern warships we’re used to. They fought by ramming the enemy ship. Ideally, the trireme would accelerate to battle speed, close, and at the last possible moment, pivot and smash the enemy ship’s stern quarter, then quickly back water and escape, leaving its opponent sinking.

Or a trireme could sprint alongside the other ship, sailing close-aboard and shearing off her oars, crippling her and killing or injuring a lot of her rowers. This involved split-second timing as the attacking ship had to catch her victim at the right moment and lift her own oars at the last second to avoid damage and an unwanted collision.

These tactics required ship handling of the highest order, achieved by years of practice and drill. The key people were the pilot (or helmsman) who guided the ship from the stern using dual rudders, and the lookout in the bow, who called observations back to him.

I might stretch a point by suggesting the pilot and the lookout had more resemblance to a modern fighter pilot and his RIO (radar intercept officer) than to a modern warship. The ship’s captain controlled the overall engagement (unless he was a figurehead, which could be the case) but it was the pilot and lookout who fought the ship, making the quick critical decisions and adjustments needed to kill the enemy while staying alive.

The Greeks, and especially the Athenians, were masters at this. On the Persian side, the Phoenicians, Ionians—who were Greeks—and Carians were the best. Others were middling (the Egyptians were OK) and many were relatively inexperienced. Inexperienced crews couldn’t be expected to carry out such complicated maneuvers, so their tactic was to close and board. That required more marines and more archers to overwhelm the enemy crew as they closed. All these things were crucial in how the Battle of Salamis was fought.

So why was the battle fought, and why were Persian Wars fought at all? Those are two different questions and I’ll try to answer to the second one first.

In short, not for material reasons. Ancient wars (and modern ones too) were fought for emotional reasons as much as, even more than, material reasons. This distinguishes wars for raiding, which is just theft on a grand scale and has been an Indo-European habit since there’s been Indo-Europeans (even before, considering what we believe about proto-Indo-Europeans).

Vikings (actually what Scandinavians called the practice of raiding; going a-viking) are a familiar example and historians like to call the Mycenaeans the “Vikings of the late Bronze Age. Stealing horses and cattle is celebrated in our folklore from the very earliest times to the Old West. (According to my grandparents, we’re descended on one side from Irish horse thieves who beat-feet-it out of Ulster and settled in Missouri in the 1830s.) For centuries, the people of the Caucasus engaged in cattle raiding and a kind of “sporting theft” that, to a large extent, took the place of trade. They seemed to think it was fun too.

But wars are different, especially when they escalate to wars of annihilation, which the Persian Wars did or nearly did.

As Barry Strauss put it, the most common cause of war in the ancient world was “He dissed me!” And when the guy who felt dissed was the Great Persian King of Kings and the people doing the dissing were some puny upstarts from a meager country, it was that much worse.

Two things highlight this. First, when hundreds of Persian ships moored on the coast of the Greek island of Euboea were wrecked in a storm, valuables including whole treasure chests washed ashore for months, making one local resident (according to Strauss) a “millionaire.”

Second, at some point in the land war, Greek soldiers entered a deserted Persian camp and were amazed at the riches the Persians had abandoned in their haste to get away. None of the Greeks had ever seen anything like. Standing there, bemused by the incredible fortune they were in the midst of, one of them reportedly said, “What can they possibly want from us?”

What the Persians wanted—meaning what their king wanted—was partly submission, but more, to avenge a series of deadly insults.

The trouble stated in 508 BC when Athenian ambassadors promised King Darius of Persia they’d become an ally. But Athens, which had just become a democracy, rejected the deal. Then they threw two Persians ambassadors into a pit, which was undiplomatic to say the least!

Next, Athens made things a lot worse by giving military support to the Ionian Rebellion from 499 to 494 BC. As I mentioned, the Ionians were Greeks living in western Anatolia (Homer was Ionian) and the Carians (who appear in The Iliad) had joined the Ionians in revolt.

The rebels managed to capture the Persian provincial capital, Sardis (beloved by Sappho), and torched it (the fire got out of control and burned the temple of Cybele. Oops). They were also pretty swiftly booted out of whatever was left.

I have to wonder if the Athenians, so well aware of The Iliad, were also well aware that they were recapitulating their history. For 200 years in the late Bronze Age, from about 1430 to 1230 BC, the Greeks had supported rebellions and fought in western Anatolia.

What’s more, the ringleader of the revolt was Miletus. Miletus, known in the Hittite records as Millawanda, had been a Greek settlement since around 1450 to 1500 BC, when the Greeks took it over from the Minoans who founded it. Until the Hittites finally ejected the Greeks just as things were starting to fall apart (the Bronze Age Collapse), the Greeks used Miletus as a base of operations against the Hittites.

Here, 730 years later, they were doing the same thing to the Persians! And interestingly enough, one of the reasons the Persians gave for the attacking Greece was to avenge the sack of Troy, which they now claimed as theirs! I guess maybe they all did remember? 😄

Anyway, the Persians put down the revolt in 494 BC. The key engagement was the Battle of Lade, which was fought off the coast near Miletus. I’m bringing it for two reasons: 1) how the Persians won and 2) what they did do the people of Miletus afterwards, both of which influenced Salamis, fourteen years later.

Now that he’d dealt with his “revolting” subjects, Darius—who otherwise comes across rather well as a brilliant administrator, religious visionary and architectural genius; in fact, he’s considered to be one of the greatest rulers in the history of the Near East—decided he could turn his full attention to the troublesome Greeks.

It took him four years, but it 490 BC, he sent a large amphibious force across the sea to deliver a serious ass-kicking to the Athenians. Darius was a “mighty conqueror” as they say and has every expectation of success, but instead his army got its ass seriously kicked at the Battle of Marathon.

Yup, that’s where we get the name of our footrace and my binge-editing sessions. The story goes a messenger ran the 24 miles from the battlefield to Athens, yelled “Victory!” and fell down dead. Why our race is 26 miles, not 24, I don’t know, and I’ve always suspected the guy didn’t fall down dead, but that was added later to make the story more dramatic. The ancient Greeks loved their drama! 🤣

As an aside, the Athenians made a vow to Artemis (Yay! 😄) to sacrifice as many goats to her as Persians they killed (Boo! Poor goats! 😞). They killed 6,000 Persians at Marathon and no one had near that many goats, so they resorted to sacrificing 500 goats/year, on the 6th day of their month the corresponds roughly to September. I dunno if that’s better or not?

The Battle of Marathon was (and is) one of the most important moments in Greek—and especially Athenian—history. In terms of a fame and stature, it eclipsed Salamis, particularly in Ancient Greece. The men who fought at Marathon—that included Themistocles and Aeschylus, first of the great Greek playwrights—anticipated the “band of brothers” from Shakespeare’s St. Crispin’s Day speech. (Love the speech! 🤣)

To be veteran of Marathon was the pinnacle of a man’s life, and Aeschylus, who also fought at Salamis, chose to have only Marathon mentioned on his tombstone—not a word about his plays and accolades they won.

But Marathon didn’t end the Persian threat. It escalated it. Darius died before he could launch another invasion, so it fell to his son Xerxes, and Xerxes decided he was going to level Greece with the biggest, baddest invasion ever.

Rather than launch an amphibious invasion like his dad, he would come by land and by sea, with massive, overwhelming force.

It was 480 BC. Ten years after Marathon, 19 years after the Ionian revolt, 28 years after the diplomatic imbroglio that started it all.

After a generation of insults to the greatest realm the world had ever seen by those stupid backwater bandits, Greece would finally pay.

Athens especially would pay.

♦ ♦ ♦

OK, I’m making it sound all cut and dried but really I just can’t resist being over the top! 🤣

The fact is the whole question of invading Greece was a divisive one at the Persian court, with some being hawkish and others saying it was a bad idea. The hawks were led by Xerxes’ cousin, Maradonius, one of his father’s generals. His uncle Artabanus (Darius’ brother) was the leading pessimist.

Maradonius had been under something of a cloud, having been fired by Darius after an invasion he led in 492 failed because his fleet got caught in a storm. Maradonius really wanted another chance at revenge on the Athenians.

Artabanus has been a general in an invasion of Scythia Darius attempted, against advice. It was good advice—the invasion was a disaster. Artabanus reminded Xerxes of that. He reminded Xerxes that his grandfather, Cyrus the Great had messed with Tomyris, Warrior Queen—an Amazon by any other name—of the Massagetae (in Kazakhstan) and got killed as a result (very lurid story about that). He mentioned other ill-advised adventures and, of course, he harped on Marathon.

Maybe he even hinted that Xerxes was fairly young and inexperienced and shouldn’t be trying things his very illustrious and capable dad had failed at.

In the end, it seems like there wasn’t much chance Xerxes was going to let the insults to his father go, nor could he, as a new king, appear to be afraid of the Greeks. Great kings lead armies and show the world who’s boss. He would invade, and do so overwhelmingly.

♦ ♦ ♦

That’s a super-long preamble to the Battle of Salamis.

Now what happened?

Xerxes began moving his massive army across the Hellespont in May of 480 BC. In June, he began his march from Hellespont to Athens, his fleet following. His first objective was the burn Athens and kill or enslave the inhabitants, but he’d expanded that conquering the Peloponnese; basically conquer all of Greece and turn it into another subject province. Cousin Maradonius, accompanying him as his senior general, had been tapped to be governor.

The Greeks knew he was coming well in advance. They met and decided on a defense in depth. They’d oppose Xerxes’ huge army in stages, hoping to delay and wear him down. A force so big would be hard to maintain for a long time and if they delayed him enough, they figured he’d have to give up and go home.

It was a good plan; about as good as could be under the circumstances.

Now, I gotta clear up who we mean by “the Greeks.”

I already said that more Greeks sided with the Persians than fought against them. There were tens of thousands Greek sailors in Xerxes’ fleet alone. But that doesn’t really capture it.

The Greek world was wide and diverse. If we wanted to be accurate, maybe we’d wouldn’t call this the Persian’s war against the Greeks but their war against Athens and few allies. At the time, Greek settlements stretched all the way from the eastern shore of the Black Sea to Spain. There was around 1500 Greek city-states, the vast majority of which were between Sicily and the west coast of Anatolia.

Of these 1500, only 31 joined Athens in what was named the Hellenic League. And of those 31, only a handful contributed to the navy, which would prove crucial. So the Hellenic League represented only a tiny fraction of what could be called “Greek” but since it contained Athens and Sparta, Greece’s preeminent land and sea powers, it was an important tiny fraction. Not natural allies (as subsequent history would show), Athens and Sparta would nonetheless fight together.

The League’s first move was to try hold up Xerxes at mountain pass called the Vale of Tempe, far to the north. It runs between Macedonia and Thesally. Themistocles led an army of 10,000 there in June or July. It turned out to be a mistake.

What Themistocles learned when he arrived was that there were two other passes near Tempe and there was no way to hold all of them. The army had to retreat and find a place to defend farther south.

At this point, we pretty much all know what happened. The next defensible spot was the pass of Thermopylae.

Thermopylae is even more famous and celebrated than Marathon. King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans made what was the first and greatest last stand in our history. Betrayed by a local who led the Persians over an unknown path, Leonidas and his escort, supported by another thousand soldiers (he sent the rest of the army away when the betrayal was discovered) held up the Persians for three days, inflicted thousand of casualties, and died to the last man.

Xerxes was there and saw it all. The date was August 27th to 29th.

Overshadowed by Thermopylae was the naval battle of Artemisium, forty miles away, off Euboea, a crucial and storied island separated from the Greek mainland’s eastern coast by a narrow strait (only 120 feet wide at one point).

Artemisium was as important as Thermopylae, in its own way. It was fought over the same three days. Themistocles was in command there, and he pulled off a strategic triumph.

Right…at nearly 5000 words into this, I still haven’t really introduced the guy it’s supposed to be about! So here goes… 😂

Themistocles is kind of a puzzle. Barry Strauss describes hie as “brilliant, farsighted, creative, tireless, magnanimous, courageous and eloquent.” Then he says he also “lied, cheated, blustered, threatened…” as well as stealing credit, taking bribes, extorting “protection money,” and pursuing vendettas. I feel Strauss is trying balance things here out because at the time (as he says), the concept of “bribes” and “protection money” didn’t exist. These ancient societies were based on gift giving: in The Iliad, Agamemnon offers Achilles an enormous fortune to return to the fighting, including a lot of gorgeous women and the wealth of 7 cities; it’s not a “bribe”—those are gifts.

Themistocles certainly accepted gifts for his services and so did every other person who provided a service; Greek hetaera (courtesans) weren’t “paid”; they received gifts. So Stauss has a good point that Themistocles was “no angel” (as he says) but we shouldn’t go overboard.

The main thing about Themistocles was that he didn’t belong to inner circle of Athenian aristocracy. The “old guard” (Strauss again) didn’t like him at all. He was too shrewd, too slippery, too blunt, all at once. He famously said (Strauss’ quote):

“I may not be able to tune the lyre to handle a harp but I know how to take a small and unknown city and make it famous and great.” (Robert Bolt is his monumental screenplay to Lawrence of Arabia has Lawrence misquote this as “I cannot fiddle, but I can make a great state of little city.” Not accurate but does sound better.)

Themistocles had done exactly that. The Athenian navy was his creation. In three years, he’d made Athens the foremost naval power in Greece and himself the first man in Athens. He was the strategist responsible for their defense against the Persian invasion which he had long foreseen.

Artemisium is a fascinating and important battle but I’ve gone on super-long already, so if you want to know more, please read Strauss’ book. There’s two take-aways from it.

One, it was the first time the Greek and Persian fleets met in battle and showed Themistocles’ tactical brilliance as well as strategic acumen.

Two, it showed how bringing along such a huge fleet wasn’t a great idea. The problem with having 1300 ships was that there weren’t enough harbors to accommodate them. So when a violent storm came up, almost 400 or so Persian ships were wrecked.

Xerxes’ admirals (all members of his court and related to him) then compounded the disaster be sending another 200 ships on a trip around Euboea (I think in the dark), with the idea that they would appear behind the Greek fleet and attack them in a pincer movement.

This is the kind of strategy a landlubber admiral from a cavalry culture would think was a neat idea. Any local could’ve told them how dumb it was. The eastern coast of Euboea is famously dangerous, but the Persians didn’t know that or even (it seems) try to find out. The whole 200-ship contingent was wiped out in stormy seas.

So from just over 1300 ships, after Artemisium, Xerxes was down by half, counting battle losses. The Greeks and Persians had fought three engagements, the Greeks winning two and the third was a tactical draw.

The reason the Greek fleet was at Artemisium in the first place was to keep the Persians from landing a force behind Leonidas. But the king was dead and now the country was open all the way to Athens. The only major city-state in between was Thebes, in Boeotia, and Thebes had joined the Persians. The Peloponnesians had promised to make a stand in Boeotia but reneged.

It was time to bug out. The date was September 1st.

But before Themistocles took off, he had messages left for the Greek sailors in the Persian fleet that were painted on rocks and placed on placards, telling the Ionians they were “doing wrong by making war upon your fathers and enslaving Greece” (Strauss). They urged them to defect or if they couldn’t, to remain neutral and ask the Carians to do likewise or, if they couldn’t do either, to intentionally fight badly “mindful that you are descended from our ancestors and we inherited our hatred of the barbarian from you.” (Barbarians meant the Persians and was applied all non-Greek speakers. Unlike today, it implied nothing about their level of civilization.)

How effective the messages might be on the Ionian or Carians was only half the issue. Themistocles knew the Persians would read them too and the Ionians and Carians had fought a bitter 5-year long rebellion against their overlord that ended just 14 years ago. twiastThe Ionian and Carians were among the best forces in the Persian navy. But how trustworthy were they really?

That was probably the main purpose of Themistocles messages. If there were fissures in the Persian forces, he was going to find and exploit them.

♦ ♦ ♦

The question of how to deal with a Persian invasion had been going on since the year before. The Athenians had consulted the oracle at Delphi to ask what to do and gotten two answers, but the second one—the definitive one—was to trust in their “wooden walls.” Some felt that meant a wooden palisade around the Acropolis. Themistocles and his supporters of course believed it referred to the Athenian navy.

In fact, the question had pretty much already been decided. The Athenians had voted on and ratified a plan to evacuate the whole population if necessary. It’s called the Themistocles Degree, because his name is all over it. The story of the evacuation has some twist and turns and Strauss (rightly) calls it Athens’ finest hour. I’m going to gloss over it except to say it seems to have happened in stages and the final evacuation was carried out from September 1 to 6th.

There’s a kinda cute story about a snake and a honey cake. In the temple of Athena, there was said to live a snake representing their patron goddess. Only the priestess had ever seen it. “Proof” of the snake’s existence was a honey cake that was left out. When the cake disappeared, that meant the snake ate it. (No word if the snake got a glass of milk too. 😄)

It was also said that if Athens was about the fall, the goddess (in her snaky form) would leave first. That’s how the people of Athens would know to get out of town.

So the priestess put out the cake like normal and for the first time, it was untouched!

Ah ha! The goddess had departed! The priestess duly informed the populace Athens was about the destroyed by the Persians and it was time to leave! At the time, there were whispers it was a crock; that Themistocles has cut deal with priestess to support his plan.

It was the kind of sneaky thing Themistocles would do. Who knows? Maybe? I dunno. I just like the idea of a snake getting a honey cake for a treat. (Look, this overall grim. Gotta take the lighter parts when they come! 😂)

Anyway, the priestess told the people and most of the people left. The Persian advance guard arrived in September 5th, their fleet arrived on the 7th. The rest of the army took about 2 weeks to cover the distance to Athens and probably arrived around the 20th. They ransacked the city and laid siege to the Acropolis, where the last holdouts were, on the 21st and took it on the 23rd. That didn’t end well (for the holdouts).

But what to do now? In early September, the Peloponnesian army had started building a wall across the Isthmus of Corinth which connects the Peloponnese to the rest of Greece, separating the Gulf of Corinth to the west from the Saronic Gulf to east (Athens’ side). The Isthmus is about 5 miles wide and rough country, so it wasn’t a continuous wall but separate hastily constructed fortifications designed to funnel the enemy in narrow spots where they could be stopped. If Leonidas and 300 Spartans could hold the Persian army off for 3 days (with a bit of help), just think what 8,000 Spartans could do!

But obviously, that meant sacrificing Athens. And what about Athens’ population, now on mostly Salamis? Were they to be sacrificed, too?

On the 23rd, the Greek war council convened. Themistocles argued for fighting the Persians in the Straits of Salamis. There were very good reasons to do that. Because the Greek triremes were heavier, they had the advantage in narrow waters, as proved at Artemisium. They were less affected by wind and waves, while the Persians triremes, with their bulwarks, were even more vulnerable to wind. The Greeks knew the winds in the Straits, the Persians didn’t and this also worked to their advantage. He even mentioned the oracle that “promised” victory at Salamis

Fighting at the Isthmus meant moving the fleet there to prevent a Persian landing behind the wall being built. That meant fighting in open water where the lighter, faster Persian triremes would have the advantage. Losing the naval battle meant losing the land battle, wall or no wall. If the fleet was lost, the Peloponnesian army might be caught between two superior Persian forces and it could be Thermopylae all over again, on a much larger scale.

All good arguments but Themistocles, although it was in many ways his show, was not in overall command. A Spartan named Eurybiades was in overall command. Eurybiades wasn’t a Spartan noble, but a commoner. Only Spartan kings could command troops, but Sparta wasn’t a naval power at all, so a commoner would do as an admiral.

Since Athens provided almost 2/3rds of the combined fleet (those 200 ships) with Corinth next (40 ships), the members of the Hellenic League didn’t want Athens have all the power. Sparta being the other most powerful member but having no fleet to speak of, from a political perspective, it made sense to give to the command to them.

Eurybiades leaned toward joining his countrymen at the Isthmus. As for being trapped, the counterargument was that if things went badly, the fleet could beach itself on a friendly shore. The sailors could join the army and everyone retreat before the Persians could cut them off.

Those arguments won out and the council resolved to retreat to the Isthmus. Themistocles must have been livid. After the meeting, he met an old compatriot, with the rather unfortunate name of Mnesiphilus. Mnesiphilus was older than Themistocles and an esteemed politician. Hearing the council’s decision, he sought his younger colleague out and laid it out straight.

Themistocles had to go back and convince Eurybiades to reconvene the council and force them to change their decision. He agreed with all Themistocles’ reasons and added another.

Retreating to the Isthmus wasn’t just bad strategy, it was defeatist. The whole “friendly shore” argument assumed they were going to lose. If the fleet left Salamis, Mnesiphilus said, it would never hold together. With that attitude, each commander would look out for himself and head for home. Athens—and all of Greece—would be doomed.

Themistocles knew Mnesiphilus was right. I’d guess he thought that himself. But as Strauss observes, hearing it from an older and respected colleague made all the difference. Themistocles immediately marched to Eurybiades flagship and demanded to talk to him. It was late at night.

Themistocles didn’t reveal that he’d talked to Mnesiphilus but he made his arguments forcefully. Retreat was tantamount to defeat. Leonidas and his soldiers had died to the last man without taking a step backwards. But here was Eurybiades running away from the Persians; the fleet would scatter and then what was Eurybiades gonna do?

Walk all the way back to Sparta and try to explain how he’d been “prudent” in his retreat?

Simonides of Ceos, the famous lyric poet who lived 556 to 469 BC, composed an epitaph for the dead at Thermopylae that’s still heard today:

Go tell the Spartans, passerby
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

What would people say about Eurybiades if he left and came home in defeat?

No Spartan could stand up to an argument like that. Beside, if Themistocles was right (and he always had been so), Eurybiades stood to get the credit. He changed his mind.

The war council was reconvened, but it didn’t go smoothly. There was still an argument from the commander of the Corinthians and in the heated debate that followed, Themistocles threw down the gauntlet.

Stay here and fight or he would take his 200 ships and as many of their families as they could embark and sail off to Italy. That did it and council, whose forces didn’t stand a chance without Athens’ ships, gave in or were overruled. (It reminds me of Admiral Yamamoto Iseruko who twice threated to resign if the military leadership didn’t go along with his plans. It worked for him, in the short run. Later, not so much.)

You’d think that settled it but here the tale gets even more convoluted and shows more of Themistocles’ character—cunning and I don’t know what. He clearly didn’t entirely trust the commanders and their fleets. Two things happened, one planned and one a stroke of “fate.”

At dawn in the 24th, right after the meeting, there was a earthquake. Earthquakes were seen as portents then (and even fairly recently; a deadly earthquake in China in the late 1970s was taken to herald the end of Mao’s regime; indeed, he died shortly after the Deng Xiaoping became Supreme Leader). It spooked the Greek sailors who wanted some spiritual help.

As they were on Salamis and Salamis was purported to the birthplace of Ajax (the Greater Ajax or Telamonian Ajax), the best Greek hero in The Iliad after Achilles, their commanders voted that they needed Ajax’s heroic ancestor and his other sons to fight with them. But that ancestor, Aeacus, and his sons, were represented by statues on the island of Aegina, which was about 15 miles away.

A trireme could be sent to get them but someone was needed who could be entrusted with such a special mission; someone who was widely respected and looked up to. There was in fact just such a person available. Aristides, a senior Athenian statesman and also a veteran of the Battle of Marathon, who may have served as a strategos (general) on the board that directed Athenian War efforts.

But in the past, he and Themistocles had not gotten along, to say the least. Plutarch writes that their rivalry was bitter and of a long standing. He says that while Themistocles was “quick, reckless and unscrupulous,” Aristides had a “firm character” which was “intent on justice and not inclined towards any falsehood, buffoonery or even trick.”

Herodotus, writing within living memory, called Aristides the “best and most just man in Athens.” In fact, Aristides’ reputation for fairness and giving good counsel was so marked that he earned the nickname Aristides the Just.

But having such a reputation in ancient Athens did not guarantee popularity, given the fickle nature of their new democracy, and there is a story about Aristides that is so much fun I would have to tell it anyway, although it does happen to be relevant.

The Athenians engaged in the practice of ostracism, which is exactly what it sounds like. Periodically, an election would be held to see what person, or persons, were to be ostracized; that is, banished for a number of years. Anyone could be targeted. The word ostracism comes from the broken shards of pottery that were used as ballots, which were called an ostracon (the plural seems to be ostraca not ostracons).

Voters would write the name of the person they wanted ostracized on their ostracon, or if they were illiterate, they could find someone at the election to write the name for them.

Three years before the Battle of Salamis, Aristides was at one such election. A farmer from outside the city came up to Aristides and asked if he would write a name on his ostracon for him.

Aristides agreed to do so, and accepting the farmer’s pottery shard, asked which name the man would like written on it.

The man said, “Aristides the Just.”

Aristides was somewhat taken aback. The farmer had nothing to do with Athenian politics and clearly didn’t have any idea who he was speaking to, so had no apparent reason for wishing Aristides banished.

Aristides therefore asked the man if this “Aristides” had done him some harm.

“No,” the man replied, “he hadn’t.” In fact, he didn’t know Aristides. He’d never even seen him! He was just tired of hearing him called “Aristides the Just!” 🤣

Aristides obligingly wrote his own name on the ostracon and handed it back.

The story may seem to fall into the “too good to be true” category but we actually have no reason to disbelieve it, especially in view of the fact that Aristides was indeed ostracized in 483.

When Xerxes invaded, Aristides and other exiles were recalled. This gave Themistocles and Aristides an opportunity to bury their enmity and according to one source, a Greek writer in the Roman era, they did so literally.

Meeting outside the “city walls” (possibly on Salamis) they performed a ritual of clasping their right hands over small pit and swore to cooperate until the Persians were defeated. They then piled earth in the ritual pit and spent the rest of the war in agreement.

Whether this ritual actually happened or is a legend that was made up later we have no way to know. All we know is that they did cooperate and that was important to their victory.

Again, as Strauss comments, Aristides wasn’t vital to the other battle preparations at this point but he just the guy to send retrieve the holy statues. Duly, he sailed off, expecting to return that night.

Now we get to the strangest part of the story. It’s the planned part—it must’ve been planned in advance—and it was also secret. It was carried out by a slave in Themistocles’ household named Sicinnus. Sicinnus had a privileged role in the household: he looked after Themistocles’s sons. Themistocles must’ve trusted him completely.

And Sicinnus must’ve trusted Themistocles with more than his life, or he wouldn’t have done what he did.

What he did is so nuts, it just couldn’t be made up. As it happens, we have multiple sources for it, including Aeschylus, who was there. They don’t agree on every detail but that’s no big deal.

Sicinnus’s mission was to go secretly to Xerxes—possibly the Great King himself—in the middle of the night, and tell him Themistocles was willing to defect.

Wow…

Reportedly, Sicinnus didn’t spin an elaborate tale. He just told the truth: the war council was divided (true); the commanders had agreed to fight at Salamis (true) but were nervous and the men were unhappy with the decision, were spooked and ready bolt (mostly true). If Xerxes moved immediately, he would catch the fleet in disarray and destroy it; they would not be able to resist. But if he waited they would escape.

The only lie Sicinnus told is that Themistocles had decided to take the Great King’s side.

Or was it a lie? Is it possible the Themistocles, knowing how dicey things were and how spooked the men were and how unwilling the commanders had acted, was hedging his bets?

It’s really hard to say, especially with a guy like Themistocles.

Sources differ on whether Sicinnus was able to speak directly to Xerxes. Aeschylus and Plutarch say he did; Herodotus says he spoke to Xerxes’ generals which makes more sense. But maybe he spoke to the generals while Xerxes listened?

It doesn’t really matter, because it worked. Xerxes believed Sicinnus and he made it safely back to the Greek camp. It might seem surprising that Xerxes let him go so easily, but he was needed to tell Themistocles his deal had been accepted so he could act on it.

The real question is: Why did Xerxes believe Sicinnus?

Given the way things turned, we might wonder why he didn’t smell a rat or someone close him didn’t raise questions. Question had been raised, serious questions, just that afternoon, as I get to shortly (promise!). 😆

The best guess is that Sicinnus told Xerxes exactly what he wanted to hear. So far, the Persians had triumphed through treachery. Thermopylae has been won by treachery. Thebes’ treachery in joining the Persians, plus Peloponnesian duplicity, had cleared the way to Athens.

And remember the Battle of Lade that ended the Ionian Revolt? More treachery. The had Persians cut a deal with the Greek force to defect: at the arranged signal—hoisting their sails (triremes didn’t hoist their sails in battle)—the whole contingent took off, leaving the Ionians to be slaughtered.

Add to this Xerxes had watched his army get mauled for three days by a handful of Spartans. At Artemisium, the Athenians had attacked a fleet almost three times their size and beaten it twice. Storms had reduced his fleet by hundreds of ships.

He still had a 2-to-1 advantage but he’d been battered at every turn. And how reliable was his fleet, really? He’s been warned about that. There were those messages Themistocles had left on the shore at Artemisium. How effective had they been?

Here was a chance to catch the whole Greek fleet on the verge of running and wipe it out. With no fleet, Xerxes could go anywhere he wanted in Greece; attack any city he chose. He already occupied Athens. He could finish the job later. Its population was right there across the water. The men could be killed; the women and children enslaved and sent back to Persia.

And it would cost him next to nothing.

If he moved right now.

Themistocles was either the most cunning and seductive strategic thinker the world has ever seen, or one of the most underhanded.

Or maybe both.

But now he had the Great King right where wanted him.

♦ ♦ ♦

Yikes! I just hit 8,000 words and not one of them is about the other super-important person in this saga! OMG…

Anyway, here she is. I can’t do her justice. I don’t think anyone can. She’s remarkable and exceptional and extraordinary, and almost unique. She’s arguably the most important woman in history—for what she almost did.

If that sounds over-the-top, well… maybe a bit? But I’m gonna stick with it. Besides, even Barry Strauss gets all purple-prosy talking about her. He says she combined the cunning of Athena with the seductiveness of Aphrodite and the ambition of Hera.

Two outta three ain’t bad, Barry, but you should’ve left out Hera and said the “hunting instincts of Artemis” for whom she’s named!

Artemisia of Halicarnassus. Queen. Admiral. Warrior. Who could’ve been the lone, deciding voice in the most important battle ever fought.

How do you top that?

Nah… you don’t. In the ancient Near East, ruling queens weren’t all that rare. A thousand years before, Hatshepsut ruled Egypt as pharaoh and hundreds of years later, Cleopatra would be a very powerful and popular Egyptian queen. There were even warrior queens like Tomyris.

But as an admiral who personally commanded a naval squadron in combat while fighting her own ship, Artemisia might be unique. Strauss says she’s “one of the very few female naval commanders in all history” but he doesn’t name any other names. (I know some famous lady pirates but no admirals. A quick search turned up no women who commanded a fleet in battle.)

We don’t know a lot about her life. Halicarnassus was a Carian kingdom; it consisted of Halicarnassus itself and some nearby islands. Her father, Lygdamas, was Carian and her mother was from Crete, meaning she was probably Greek. Artemisia is a common Greek name. Her brother was a noted poet. She assumed the throne when her husband died—no one bothered to record his name. (Why bother?) At Salamis, she was probably in her late 30s.

The people of Halicarnassus had a long-standing reputation as good soldiers and sailors. They’d sent ships to Crete and served as mercenaries in Egypt. The Carians in general were one of the three best contingents in the Persian navy; the Ionians and Phoenicians were the other two.

Together, the Carian kingdoms initially supplied 70 ships to Xerxes fleet. By the time of Salamis, when his fleet was half its original size, we don’t know how many Carian ships were left. Certainly they must’ve sustained some losses in all the storms and the Battle of Artemisium.

At Salamis, her squadron consisted of five ships, out of an unknown number she began with. It’s safe to guess she never commanded more the 10; probably less, maybe about 10% of the original Carian contribution, which would put her ships on a par with the other Carian kingdoms (and many of the Greek city-states for that matter.)

Artemisia fought with distinction at Artemisium. Her performance and her unique position had raised her profile high and Xerxes valued her highly. So says Herodotus, a native son of Halicarnassus, who also remarks he (Xerxes) should’ve listened to her.

On September 24th, the same day the Greeks were dealing with aftermath of the earthquake by sending Aristides to get the statues of Aeacus and his sons, Xerxes did a rare thing.

He went to Phaleron Bay where his fleet was moored at to meet with his naval commanders. Great kings rarely met with lesser kings in person, much less individual unit commanders. But Xerxes had a good reason.

It was wasn’t to get advice for the upcoming battle. As far as he was concerned, that was settled. After Thermopylae, there had been a strategic discussion. In Xerxes’ camp was a deposed and exiled Spartan king, Demaratus. Demaratus had ruled Sparta for over 20 years, but he had a spotty record, had been deposed and forced out. He took refuge in Persian court.

After the beating his army at just taken, Xerxes called on Demaratus and asked for advice on how to beat the Spartans, something Demaratus could be expected on to know.

But Demaratus, while pragmatically minded, made two mistakes. First, he made the 10-ft tall Spartan warriors 20 feet tall, than he recommended a strategy that might make sense for a land army but not for a naval force.

What Demaratus suggested was the Xerxes send 300 triremes to land an army on the coast south of Sparta, forcing the Spartans to split their force to defend their city. That would allow Xerxes to beat the remaining force at the Isthmus and attack Sparta from two directions.

It was dumb idea: by dividing his fleet, Xerxes risked two naval battles with the Greek fleet at even odds; not one battle at 2-to-1 advantage. If he lost either battle, or more likely both, the whole plan would end in disaster.

To his credit, Xerxes’ overall fleet commander and brother, Achaemenes, saw this flaw immediately and vetoed the plan. He went so far as to accuse Demaratus of treachery and said he was just jealous. That was a bit much and Xerxes defended Demaratus’s motives, but he agreed with his brother’s assessment. The Persian fleet would stay together.

That was the situation when Xerxes paid his visit to Phaleron.

The reason for the Great King’s visit was that he knew his fleet hadn’t fought well at Artemisium, at least for the most part. And he knew why.

He’d been at Thermopylae. His forces fought best when he was personally observing them. If he’d been at Artemisium, they would have fought better. They’d also been surprised. Xerxes wasn’t going to let either of those happen again. His fleet was now fully prepared the meet the Greeks and he was going to be sure they all knew he was watching closely this time.

So the meeting was a basically a “pep talk” and warning: the Boss had arrived and was watching you.

His commanders all got up and said—through Maradonius (they didn’t address Xerxes directly)—all they were expected to say: Xerxes plan was brilliant; they were ready, they’d fall on the Greek fleet and smash it.

All except one.

When it became her turn to speak, Artemisia said flatly: “Don’t do this.”

“Spare the ships. Do not make war at sea,” are the words recorded (from Strauss).

Artemisia followed up with reasons and they were solid reasons. First, she pointed out that if forced to fight, the Greek ships had the advantage at Salamis. Then she said as it was, the Greeks were divided and ready to scatter to their separate cities (echoing Mnesiphilus). She had heard food was short on Salamis, too.

Xerxes should attack by land, she advised. Putting pressure on the Peloponnesian army at the isthmus would encourage the Greek fleet to scatter.

Further, she said units in the Persian navy were unreliable and named names: the Egyptians, Cypriots and a couple of others were all worthless.

She also emphasized that Xerxes had already accomplished his main goal: he’d conquered Athens. Now was not the time to risk an ill-advised sea battle. Here she, to an extent, echoed Xerxes’ uncle who had advised caution. While not sounding as dovish his uncle, Artemisia was warning the Great King not to get carried away and overextend himself. Losing the sea battle, she pointed out, meant losing the land battle too.

It was a brilliant tour de force and a stunning to hear. Some of the other fleet commanders reportedly reacted with concealed glee—they didn’t like her or her elevated position and figured Xerxes would not appreciate being talked back to in such blunt terms by a woman and she was “finished” in the Great King’s eyes (Strauss paraphrasing Herodotus).

But Artemisia knew what she was doing. She was very politically astute, she knew the man she was talking to, and she was fearless and tough. She’d fought bravely and she was known not to back down, either from a battle at sea or a political fight (she’d engaged in one those with another Carian king who dissed her when the fleet was assembling at the Hellespont).

Xerxes was impressed and he esteemed the queen more than ever for being willing to speak up so boldly and her “excellent words” (Herodotus).

But he didn’t listen.

Strauss, in assessing Artemisia’s advice, considers it “good but incomplete.”

Well… maybe? What Strauss say she left out was the option of a combined-forces attack on the Isthmus—exactly the thing Themistocles seems to have been worried about if the Greek fleet fought an action in those tactically unfavorable waters.

Then he presents some good reasons she might not have mentioned it.

Who am I to debate with one of the foremost military historians of the ancient world and the chair the Cornel history department?!

Ok, no one… but I’m gonna throw my not-even-two-cents out anyway (it’s not like he’s ever gonna read this):

I’m pretty sure Artemisia appreciated that a combined attack on the Isthmus would be a good idea. But she may not have mentioned it because she didn’t need to, since others could see that as well. What mattered in her recommendation was that the Greek fleet was coming apart.

If Xerxes made a concerted effort against the Greek forces at the Isthmus and the Greek fleet had scattered, the Peloponnesian army there would know that the intact Persian fleet could arrive at any moment, cut them off and destroy them completely. Without an intact fleet, the defense of Isthmus was untenable.

The Greeks there might decide to retreat, letting Xerxes’ huge army into the Peloponnese. The heroic last stand at Thermopylae was possible because it was a forward defense. Wiping out 300 Spartans didn’t actually risk anything.

Losing the whole Spartan army at the Isthmus doomed Sparta itself and all of Greece with it. Further, it the Peloponnesian army retreated from the Isthmus, then Demaratus’ advice to send a fleet to land south of Sparta and attack from both direction would make sense, but not with half the fleet—with the whole fleet.

In other words, if the Greek fleet fell apart—as Themistocles and Mnesiphilus believed it was about to—Xerxes was free to do whatever he liked and the Greeks were in real trouble.

As long as he didn’t back the Greeks into a corner and force a fight at sea and especially not in the Straits of Salamis where they had the tactical advantage.

OMG… Strategically, Themistocles had met his match.

I gotta say… It’s a teeny bit hard to know what to think about Artemisia sometimes. From our perspective (and certainly from the Greek’s, who weren’t about to forget what she did), she fought for the “bad guys.” She was no democrat. The king she served could be cruel, committed atrocities and acted like a megalomanic at times (flogging the Hellespont when it misbehaved? What’s up with that?).

But from history—and Herodotus, who actually wasn’t on her side exactly (more on that later)—it wasn’t that she was loyal to Xerxes or the Persians. She was loyal to her kingdom. Halicarnassus was a dicey place: Greek but also Anatolian, midway between the emerging “West” and the ancient Near East, and had the greatest empire in the world as its overlord.

Survival meant negotiating treacherous waters or walking a tightrope—take your pick. By “speaking truth to power” Artemisia displayed political as well as strategic genius:

If Xerxes listened to her and followed her advice… and won, she alone could claim the credit giving him the keys to victory, over everyone else.

If he ignored her and failed, she alone would have told him the truth about the situation and warned him not to do it. By seeming to stick her neck out, Artemisia actually set herself up for a win-win—for herself and for her kingdom.

She probably didn’t expect Xerxes to accept her advice—she was too good a judge of character for that. But she’d fight as bravely and brilliantly as she could in the battle she (no doubt) expected to be fought the next day. If she survived—and things tuned out as she foretold—her star would be fixed in Xerxes’ heaven thereafter.

If she died a hero’s death, her kingdom would be honored and she’d be a legend forever more.

As it turned out, she’s both.

There’s never been a woman like her. Yep, she might’ve stopped the development of Western Civilization cold or turned it into something unrecognizable or who knows. But it didn’t turn out the way, she had her people in mind as well as herself, and I can’t find it in myself to hold her actions against her.

She was absolutely incredible and extraordinary, and I’m gonna leave at that.

♦ ♦ ♦

After Xerxes’ “pep talk” that turned into something very different, orders went out to his fleet to take position at the entrance to the strait and dare the Greeks to come out and give battle. The army was also sent on their way to the Isthmus, marching close to the shore so they could be seen by the anxious Greeks. It was meant be an intimidating show of force and the Greeks failed to respond. The holy statues they were waiting for had not yet arrived.

As the day waned and it became clear nothing was going to happen, the Persian fleet returned to Phaleron for the night.

Then two things happened: Sicinnus left on his secret mission and after he returned, in the early morning hours, Aristides arrived. He didn’t have the statues with him but he said they were on the way. He did however have news that was just as important, maybe more so?

Aristides went straight to Themistocles and told him: the Persian fleet has deployed and had “encircled” them, but which he meant: closed off both ends of the strait. Aristides had snuck by them in the dark. Leaving Salamis was no longer an option.

Themistocles was elated. Xerxes had taken his bait. He told Aristides as much. But he asked Aristides to announce his news to the other commanders who were still in the hall debating when to depart. As far as they knew, the Persian fleet was back at Phaleron and they could still get out.

Themistocles asked Aristides to tell them because he felt he wouldn’t be believed and he was almost certainly right. Aristides agreed entered the hall and told them they were now shut in by Persian ships; he had seem them himself. They must get ready to defend themselves. Having dropped his bomb, he left.

The Greek commanders reacted with shock and many with disbelief, despite Aristides’ reputation for always telling the truth. Most of them were determined to leave anyway (vindicating Mnesiphilus, Themistocles and Artemisia).

But then a deserter from the Persian fleet sailed in. It was a ship from a small Aegean island, Tenos, that has sent a few ships to Xerxes after Artemisium. The captain confirmed everything Aristides had told them. He was not an Athenian and had no reason to lie on their behalf. Just his being there was additional proof.

There was no denying it now. They would have to fight or die where they stood. The statues of Aeacus and his sons finally showed up, like the cavalry in the nick of time.

The Greek fleet began mobilize. It was about three hours before dawn.

♦ ♦ ♦

That’s how the Battle of Salamis happened. I won’t try to describe the action itself at all. Strauss does that super-well and it’s not really important to my point anyway. Besides, I’m over 10,000 words on my way to a zillion! 🤣

The punch line is that the Persian fleet was destroyed in a day. They lost about 300 ships. The Greeks lost 40. There are several reasons: Themistocles and Artemisia were right about fighting in the confined waters of the Strait; the Greeks, not the Persians, had the element of surprise—they expected to fall on an enemy in disarray and ready to break; the wind hurt the Persian’s lighter ships with their bulwarks but didn’t affect the Greeks’ heavier ones; the Persian crews had rowed much of the day and been kept at their oars all night without any sleep.

Artemisia was also right about the units she said were worthless: the Cypriots and Egyptians and a couple of other contingents broke early and hightailed it out of the battle.

So did the Phoenicians; that was a surprise—they were supposed to be Xerxes’ best sailors. But evidently, when the going got tough, they didn’t feel like dying for the Great King.

The Ionians and Carians fought well until it was pointless to resist.

Artemisia fought brilliantly, if at one point, what we might call “deviously” or “resourcefully.” With a heavier Greek trireme bearing down on her and no where to go, she executed a quick turn and rammed the ship next to hers, which happened to be Persian.

Seeing this, the Greek captain, Aminias, assumed she was Greek (Halicarnasians wore Greek armor too), broke off his attack and let her go.

He missed out big time. Incensed by her presence in the Persian fleet, orders were given to find her and take her alive with a huge reward offered: 1000 drachmas. Whether Aminias ever learned how close he came to seizing the greatest prize in the battle I can’t say. But he had a field day at Salamis, taking more ships than anyone else. He ought to have been satisfied with that.

Xerxes watched it all from the shore.

Later, he doled out “rewards” to his commanders for their performance in the battle. To the “admiral of the fleet” he sent a distaff and spindle, used by women for spinning; a cutting insult. We don’t know who the “admiral of the fleet” was; Xerxes has several senior admirals and one, his half-brother, had been killed; the battle’s highest ranked casualty. Xerxes’ full-brother was in command of the Egyptian fleet which disgraced itself, so maybe it was him, unless humiliating his brother was too much and someone else was picked to take the fall.

He gave Artemisia the battle honors and a suit of Greek armor as a prize, driving home his point by saying: “My women have become men and my men have become women.”

Sexist much? Yeah, but this was like 2500 years ago so I won’t judge by today’s standards. I will mention that Strauss goes into a long discussion (several pages) on whether Xerxes knew about her fratricidal maneuver.

He assumes Xerxes didn’t or he wouldn’t have rewarded her so handsomely but would’ve had her punished for her “treacherous” act. Furious at some Phoenicians for their cowardly behavior, he had them beheaded. Their commander was the king of Sidon and Xerxes didn’t have him executed because killing other kings set a bad precedent, but he never regained the royal favor he’d had before the battle.

So Xerxes would’ve been unlikely to execute Artemisia, but how would he have reacted? Strauss goes into a lot of detail, but honestly I have my doubts about his thoughts. They hinge on the fact that (apparently) there were no survivors from the ship she rammed and he speculates on why, because into waters like these, close to shore, with friendly forces on one side, that’s a little unusual. Rammed triremes didn’t sink quickly, giving the crew time to abandon ship.

He wonders if she might have ordered the survivors killed in the water to cover up her act, and if her marines would do it, or if some Greeks nearby killed them (shooting survivors wasn’t unheard of, on either side). He points out that trying to swim in a chaotic, crowded battle was dangerous and the chance of being clubbed by an oar or run down by a ship was high.

In the end, he says the men in water didn’t stand a chance. So her “crime” stayed concealed.

But that analysis assumes the men in the ship she rammed were the only witnesses and no other ship nearby noticed she rammed a friendly ship. It assumes that if she ordered the massacre its crew, no nearby Persians noticed that.

Certainly, other crews brought back reports of what they saw; what pissed off Xerxes so much about the Phoenicians is that they blamed the Ionians and called them traitors. But Xerxes had been watching and had “spotters” telling him who was doing what and the Phoenicians were outed. The spotters reported on Artemisia too and drew Xerxes’ attention to how well she fought.

They could’ve been mistaken, but we also know the Persian commanders were jealous of Artemisia. If they saw a chance to lower her status in Xerxes eyes, surely they’d have taken it. In a crowded battle like Salamis, what were the odds she’d fool everybody?

So Strauss may be right, but I suspect that even if Xerxes knew, he might not have cared much, if at all. He might even have admired her cunning, quick thinking and sheer guts.

Artemisia was a queen. She was valuable. Xerxes respected her; how much we’ll see in a moment. A single ship in a battle where he lost 300 ships because he didn’t listen to her might have seemed like a small price to pay for her life or to keep her out of Greek hands and give them a propaganda victory (even if it would’ve presented some problems for them. Anyway…).

Xerxes was not immune to feminine charms either (we’ll see that too, shortly). So I’m gonna stick my neck out and say, maybe he did know and—like her willingness to speak up and tell him the hard truth—he admired her for it… quietly.

Straus also talks about the suit of armor she was given as a war prize; others were often given much greater prizes; material ones, that is.

But Xerxes gave Artemisia a prize he gave no one else. After the battle, he ordered everyone out of his royal pavilion. Except her. And when they were alone, he asked: what do we do now?

I find that amazing. And sensible. The Great King humbled himself, very privately, before the one person whose judgment had proved to be sound and that he could trust.

Artemisia answered forthrightly. She told him to leave Maradonius and most of the army here in Greece, pull what remained of his fleet out and go home.

Again, she understood the situation. Leaving Maradonius behind with an army would accomplish several things. It would save some face by not looking like an all-out retreat. Maradonius had already downplayed the defeat at Salamis, contending it didn’t mean much; Persia wasn’t beaten till it was beaten on land, not just by scraps of wood floating around.

That was a horseman’s arrogance talking, but it served Xerxes’ purpose and certainly made it easy to leave his general to keep fighting in Greece.

Next, if would keep the Greeks off balance for a while, preventing them from following up their victory aggressively and give Xerxes time to get home, regroup and rebuild his fleet.

But not for another invasion. Xerxes was beginning to understand (as Artemisia probably did) that Greece wasn’t prize worth fighting for—there were fewer riches in the whole country than Xerxes had in his capital—but it was an emerging threat.

Once before, Greece had supported a rebellion against Persia and if it was unsuccessful, the Greek, meaning mainly Athenian, navy wasn’t as powerful then as it was now, and it would become stronger still. Unless checked, Athens could grow strong enough to strip Persia of her western Anatolian kingdoms. And the only way to prevent that was to rebuild a fleet that could protect them; force the Athenians to fight in their waters, on their terms.

Just as Themistocles had forced them to do here at Salamis.

If Xerxes felt like it, he could soothe his ego with the fact he’d torched Athens. Call it good. Don’t take more risks. He wasn’t needed in Greece now. There were other issues he should attend to.

Good advice. And also what Xerxes wanted to hear. He took it. Maradonius would stay and fight on. The Great King would go home and see to the future. That’s what mattered.

There’s one more thing, which may be true—we’d can’t be sure. Plutarch reports it.

At the end of the battle (he says), Artemisia recognized the body of Xerxes’ half-brother drifting in the waves. She had it recovered and brought to him. I’m not up on Persian funerary practices but even the Greeks—seafarers to the bone—had a horror of not being properly buried.

For the people of horse culture from central Asia, I’d guess the prospect of being lost at sea could be even worse. This act of consideration could’ve touched Xerxes deeply.

Add it up. It seems to me that Artemisia proved herself to be the one person the Great King could not do without. In the calculus of empires, one trireme was a small price to pay for that.

Conclusion

So that’s the Battle of Salamis. The story of the immediate aftermath is complex, fascinating and far too long for me to summarize here (read the book!), but the highlights are kinda like this:

Obviously, the Greeks knew they’d won a major victory, but just as obviously they couldn’t tell what it meant yet and had to decide what to do next.

The Persians were still in Athens; the Persian army was still marching to the Isthmus. About half the Persian fleet was still around but in disarray.

So what to do? Follow up aggressively or consolidate? That’s question was often comes up after big battles, including in WWII where some people probably still argue about whether US Admiral Raymond Spruance did the right thing by not pursuing the remains of the Japanese fleet after his smashing victory at the Battle of Marianas; some felt at the time the more aggressive Admiral Halsey should’ve been in command. (Yep, Spruance absolutely did the right thing; he was one the greatest—and the most underrated—admirals who ever lived; top 5, at least. Halsey would have acted stupidly, as he did at Leyte Gulf and then when he sailed into a typhoon like a dimwit. Sorry… mini-rant over! 😆)

The Greeks faced the same issue. At first, Themistocles and the Athenians, realizing they were supreme at sea (their losses having been so small) wanted to follow up and destroy Xerxes’ bridges over Hellespont, cutting off his retreat.

Without a navy, the Persian army was vulnerable in Greece; they could wipe it out, trap Xerxes, end the threat forever. Otherwise, what would stop him from rebuilding and coming back in the spring?

Eurybiades and the other Greeks said that was bonkers. The Persian army was still huge, still threatening, but also short of food. Why keep them in Greece and force them to fight a desperate battle? Let Xerxes get the hell the out and deal with situation more prudently (cautiously or timidly, depending on your point of view).

Parochial interests were at play, of course (Strauss sums them up nicely, as always). The Athenians felt like flexing their naval muscles; the Spartans weren’t thrilled with highlighting Athenian power in finally ending the war and it was the their territory that the Persian army threatened, not Athens which was already occupied.

When Eurybiades and the other Greeks dug in their heels, Themistocles had to concede. As Strauss says, it seems like the right choice (whatever the reasons): the sailing season was coming to an end, attacking the Hellespont was major offensive a long way away; the navy could be better used to defend the Isthmus if needed. (He questions the longer-term reasoning, though—but that’s a different issue I’ll skip over.)

As I think we’ve come to expect when Themistocles is involved, there was a sneaky bit too and again, it’s almost unbelievable.

Having decided that letting Xerxes go was the right thing, he sent Sicinnus on another secret mission to the Great King with a message that the Greeks were following up his fleet and intended to destroy the bridges over the Hellespont. The Great King better haul ass while the going was good!

Really? This guy Sicinnus must’ve been an incredibly smooth talker! You’d think Xerxes would’ve been livid and itching to get his hands on him after what happened the first time he listened to Sicinnus, but (incredibly?), he listened and let Sicinnus go… again.

Who knows why? Maybe he didn’t blame Themistocles for what happened at Salamis? Maybe he thought Themistocles meant what he said, but was overruled? After all, there was the Persian deserter and the holy statues and Aristides who all played a role in convincing the Greeks to stay and fight.

Xerxes couldn’t (I’d guess) know those details but he did know how much turmoil there was and how these easily things can change. And he’d seriously blown it by ignoring Artemisia.

In fact, Themistocles, in prodding him through Sicinnus, was only doing what Artemisia had already done. (I swear, was there some sorta Vulcan mind-meld between those two? 🤣 Ok no… they just saw things in the same genius way. 😄) He’d already decided, but the bridges thing was a credible threat and he probably had to not dismiss it.

A few days later, at the end of September, the Persians began to leave Athens. On October 2nd, the Persian army withdrew from the Isthmus but would stay in Greece until summer of the next year. There was a partial solar eclipse on October 2nd that allows us to fix the date exactly and, along with the full moon on the August 19th, gives us a firm timeline for the battle (pretty rare in ancient history).

That’s the story of history’s most important battle. There’s some other incidents that gave hints of what was to come in the following decades and you can read about them in Strauss if you want.

The question is now:

What about the whole “saving Western Civilization” thing? What does that even mean? How exactly?

Strauss gives an answer that make great points and deserves serious consideration. He warns us not to underestimate Greek resilience. Greek culture, as it was then emerging, wasn’t so easily snuffed out. He proposes that if the Greeks had lost the battle or it hadn’t been fought, the Persians would’ve conquered Greece, but Themistocles could have escaped to Italy with the Athenian survivors and settled there, just as he threatened to do.

Athenian culture could have flourished in Italy. Perhaps they might have returned to Greece one day; perhaps they would’ve built something new and different. He suggests that the world would not have lost democracy and Athenian culture.

What it would have “lost” is Athenian imperial democracy.

In the aftermath of Salamis, Athens founded a new league, the Delian League, and then built itself into the largest and richest maritime empire the world had yet seen. They dominated the Mediterranean, especially the eastern Mediterranean where the wealth was.

And they “ran aground” on the realities (as they saw them) of controlling a widespread empire full of subjects who didn’t always want to be subjugated and resented it when Athens said “democracy for me but not for thee.”

Those subjects were unruly. They rebelled. And Athens put down those rebellions, often harshly. In many ways, Athens became a lot like the Persians they’d defeated and who—because Xerxes, having started with a good strategy, mismanaged it—they largely built their empire at the expense of.

Athens did grand and wonderful things in this period. One of the Athenian leaders during the Persian Wars was Xanthippus. His career had ups and downs; he was ostracized in 484, came back and was among the people evacuated in 480. After Salamis, he became a general in the last stages of the war, during which he won important the battle of Mycale, conducted a successful siege of Sestus, a city on the Hellespont, and died shortly after 478.

He left behind a teenaged son: Pericles. Pericles would become the great statesman of Athens’ history and bequeath us Periclean Athens, the city-state’s Golden Age. It was under him that the Delian League reached its height of power. He funded the greatest building or rebuilding project in Greek history, including the Parthenon, the most famous building in ancient Greece

But the stresses of empire became too much. Eventually, and maybe inevitably, they led to the Peloponnesian War, a horrific conflict that lasted from 431 to 404 BC and consumed the entire Greek world. It destroyed Athens and it changed everything massively.

There had been critics of Athens’ imperial democracy during the war, maybe even before it, but amid the wreckage, the Athenians tried almost desperately to grapple with how it all went so wrong. As Strauss points out, these critics included Herodotus, Thucydides, and playwrights like Euripides (who was born on Salamis), Sophocles and Aristophanes.

Most of all (as Strauss says), there was Socrates.

And then Plato and Aristotle. Athenian culture had the seeds of self-examination, self-criticism, critique, post-mortem learning from mistakes, and debate: over democracy, political philosophy in general; moral limits and the nature of power; but it was the Peloponnesian War that brought these fully into the open and made them a vital and enduring part of the culture.

As Strauss observes, that’s the true legacy of the victory at Salamis; what we think of as “Western Thought” as the foundation of Western Civilization.

I don’t disagree but I’m not sure it’s the whole picture either. It’s worth pointing out that the Persian Wars are largely responsible for solidifying (although it didn’t happen overnight), the idea of “East” and “West” in the first place. That trend had been going on since the Greek “dark age” that ended in the 8th century BC, but after the Persian Wars, it took on the character of “never the twain shall meet” which has also shaped our world ever since.

And I feel the more “dramatic” take on the Battle of Salamis can’t totally be discounted. Sure, Themistocles could’ve escaped and resettled in Italy, as Strauss says. But that’s not an easy thing to pull off. There’s so many unknowns:

Was the battle fought at all? If so, where? A battle off the Isthmus might have wiped out the Greek fleet. If Themistocles survived, how would he have escaped with any survivors. Even just leaving as he threatened would be tough.

The Persian fleet at Phaleron had 650 to 700 ships; he had 200. What if they pursued him, loaded down with refugees? The Persian ships were faster. To Italy isn’t a short voyage.

It seems very risky.

If Xerxes won and the Athenians could not escape, he wouldn’t have been lenient. Leniency had little place in war. The Persians showed that at Miletus, just like the Hittite king Muršili II did at Millawanda and Apasa (which became Eelusis) a thousand years before. Muršili sacked both and had the entire population of the latter deported, 60,000 to 66,000 people, according to his annals.

As mentioned before, we can be sure Xerxes would’ve killed the Athenian men and enslaved the women and children, who’d live out their lives in Persia, their culture fading and forgotten with a few generations. Greece would be a poor Persian dependency and Athenian thought, which was not embedded in Greek culture and had emerged as a social force only 30 years before, would be basically snuffed out.

If that happened, what reason do we have for believing it would reemerge at some later time, when there’s no evidence of it doing so elsewhere until exposed to it by the expansion of later Western culture?

So I appreciate Strauss’ take but at the same time I’m not sure Athenian resilience would have been enough to survive a catastrophe of the magnitude that might have happened if the Battle of Salamis have been lost in the wrong place and the wrong way.

But either way, the point stands. If Salamis had been lost or not fought and the war had been lost as a result, what we know as Western Civilization would either not have emerged or been something very different.

That makes it the most crucial battle of all time.

Themistocles made it happen, not by luck (though he had some) but step by cunning, far-sighted step, and (repeating myself) by creating the Athens that could make it happen in the first place.

Moreover, he did almost single-handedly, in the face of determined opposition. He was revolutionary in ways perhaps no one else in history has ever been.

Artemisia was not revolutionary. She was not an empire builder, though Halicarnassus hardly offered suitable material to build an empire from. But she was a strategic genius and political virtuoso.

She saw what Themistocles saw and no one else did. She’s the only person who could’ve stopped him. In the end, she couldn’t, so her influence is the exact opposite of Themistocles: history’s greatest “Might Have Been.”

There you have it: my votes for the two most influential people in ancient history.

Or all history.

Epilogue

Everyone’s probably tired of this by now, but I want to include an epilogue about what happened the some of the main players involved with Salamis because it’s so interesting, often ironic and sometimes unexpected. Here goes…

Themistocles

Themistocles life after Salamis was about as turbulent as it was before. His star in Athens fell, rose, and fell again. He was too uncomfortable a guy to be around and Athens’ democracy was too rowdy for them to be at ease with each other. Denied the acclaim he felt he deserved for Salamis (and did), he went to Sparta for a while and was treated like a hero in a fashion that seems kind of un-Spartan.

He and Eurybiades were honored at the heroes of Salamis and when he left, the Spartans gave him an escort of 300 soldiers representing the men who died with Leonidas, a compliment they never paid to anyone else.

Back in Athens, which was trying to recover from the Persian occupation, Themistocles was sidelined. When the war against Maradonius’ army started up again the spring, he played no role. Neither did Eurybiades. It was a land war and others took the lead, Aristides among them.

But after the war was finally finished with the smashing and mostly Spartan victory at Plataea, the Greeks started going after each other (surprise, surprise) and Themistocles was once again called on to help rebuild Athens, which meant opposing Sparta (his former friends).

He went about it his typical sneaky fashion, which enraged the Spartans and didn’t do him any good at home either, as things turned out. He went into exile, was accused of treason and ended up in Persia.

Yep, Xerxes’ greatest opponent sought refuge in his son and successor’s royal court.

It wasn’t all that unusual, really. Plenty of dispossessed and exiled Greeks (like Demaratus) took refuge there, then and later. Themistocles was only the most illustrious.

The new king, Artaxerxes, treated Themistocles very well. He made him governor of Magnesia, a wealthy city on the Meander River and added two more: Myos and Lampsacus. Artaxerxes said Magnesia was “for his bread,” Myos was “for his meat,” and Lampsacus was “for his wine” (Lampsacus was famous for wine).

Themistocles seems to have been quite at home there. His whole family was with him; the women in his family served as priestesses at the temple of Artemis in Magnesia.

It must’ve been nice.

He ended his days in Magnesia in 459 BC. The people of the city put up a statue honoring him in their marketplace. The only sign of longing for his homeland was that he asked for his bones to be buried in Athens. They were—in secret.

Typical. But necessary because the bones of “traitors” couldn’t be buried in Athenian soil. Officially, anyway.

Somehow I doubt that 21 years after Salamis, when Athens had won a great empire of its own because of what he’d made them, many Athenians would’ve objected to having the greatest hero in their history come home. Even if they wouldn’t say it out loud.

Typical Athenian. Typical Themistocles.

Xerxes

Xerxes did the right thing by going home. Greece was an emerging threat but also a distraction and drain on his resources, including him personally. There were other places in the empire that needed his attention and other rebellions brewing.

Especially the Ionians. They were his most important subjects in Anatolia, one of the mainstays of his navy, especially after Salamis, and they were Greek. So critical were they that Xerxes relocated to the provincial capital of Sardis for a year to give them his personal attention.

Good strategy, lousy execution. Strauss lists three mistakes Xerxes made; there was a fourth which was killer (literally).

First, he no longer had a navy to support the army he’d left in Greece. Without a navy, the army couldn’t win, but Xerxes still had hopes that he might conquer the Peloponnese and stymie Greece, especially the Greek navy, which couldn’t be supported with the country in Persian hands.

To make up of lack of a navy, Xerxes resorted what had often worked for the Persians: diplomacy and bribery. He still had allies in Greece; including Thebes and Macedonia. If he could cut a deal with some other Greeks, maybe even the Athenians, he could still win.

Xerxes actually thought he could buy off the Athenians and he tried to. He sent the king of Macedon, who’d been friendly with Athens despite now being a Persian vassal, with an offer. If it’d succeeded, he’d have gotten Athens’ naval power on his side, and solved all his problems.

The Athenians said no.

In response, Maradonius invaded Attica again. Big miscalculation.

Then (almost unbelievably) Maradonius sent an ambassador to repeat Xerxes offer.

Bigger miscalculation.

Imagine how we would’ve responded to Japanese overtures after Pearl Harbor to make nice and forget all about it. The Athenians had evacuated to Salamis a second time and that’s where Maradonius sent his ambassador. When an Athenian council member proposed hearing what the ambassador had to say, the enraged Athenians stoned him to death. Going way overboard, a mob of women stoned his family to death too.

What ended up happening afterwards is that Maradonius’ invasion of Attica united Athens and Sparta, exactly the opposite of what Xerxes wanted; in fact, his worst fear.

Strike one.

Xerxes second mistake was trusting Maradonius to lead his army in Greece. Lousy at diplomacy, Maradonius proved not to be any better at strategy and tactics. You’d think he would’ve learned from Thermopylae, but no.

His tactical advantage was in his cavalry, which meant fighting on open ground—that is, if he had to fight a pitched battle at all. But he decided to fight on the plains of Plataea against the massed Greek army, led by Sparta, where his horsemen were no use to him, got his army slaughtered and himself killed.

That ended the war in Greece.

It was probably inevitable. Historians like to say Salamis was like Gettysburg or Midway; a turning point, not the end of the war. True, and unless Xerxes could persuade Athens to switch sides—and we saw how that attempt turned out—there was no way he could win it. Maradonius’ ineptitude just made it happen faster.

Strike two.

Xerxes third mistake was not rebuilding his fleet. He could’ve done so, and rather than go into all the details, it basically seems he’d lost faith in them. His best squadrons, the Phoenicians, had proven cowardly (so he thought) and the next best, the Ionians and Carians, were of dubious loyalty. So in spite of his efforts at Sardis, which were in all likelihood serious, on the whole naval thing, he punted.

Strauss makes two really good points about all this: first, Xerxes, as the ruler of a land power, didn’t appreciate sea power enough when dealing with the Mediterranean world.

Second, he didn’t understand democracy. In his world (and everyone else’s at the time), people fought because the ruler told them too, out fear and/or hope of reward. As shown, when the boss was watching, they fought harder for those reasons. If he couldn’t see what they were doing, as often as not, they considered their own skins. The “fate of empire” didn’t concern them much, personally.

Democracy made war personal for everyone. An attack on Athens was an attack on every Athenian and they’d damned if they backed down. That’s how Athens got over a quarter of its entire population to fight at Salamis. And every other Athenian felt they contributed by not giving in, even when it meant watching the city they loved and all their sacred places burn.

They would resist. They would survive. And they would come back and kick some serious ass.

Which they did.

No Persian subject or soldier thought like that. It was as foreign to them as foreign could be.

After Salamis, Xerxes was worried what the Athenians might do if they came after him. But they didn’t, he got back to Sardis, settled in and by the next spring, he’s also settled back into his accustomed habits.

People can be bought. Traitors could be found.

Maybe he can’t be faulted? Democracy was so new, so radical. Maybe he and Maradonius thought the second invasion of Attica was a carrot-and-stick thing?

See what we can do? Take our offer and we’ll pay you. All it will cost is your freedom.

Struck out.

But Xerxes also made a fourth mistake: while in Sardis, he started an affair with his sister-in-law. It was consummated when they were both back in Susa and led Xerxes’ assassination.

Game over.

Eurybiades

Eurybiades played a key role right after Salamis in preventing the Athenian plan to sail to the Hellespont to destroy the bridges. He was later celebrated in Sparta with Themistocles. We can’t say how he felt about sharing the honors, what else could he expect? When the war started up again, he played no role. He was an admiral and couldn’t lead ground forces.

Nothing further is known about him.

Aristides

Aristides went on to have his “finest hour” (Strauss’ words) commanding the Greek troops at Plataea, anointing him as one of the saviors of Greece. He helped Themistocles in rebuilding Athens, especially the defensive wall around it which the Persians had destroyed and which was rebuilt in secret, pissing off the Spartans no end (they’d tricked the Spartans; telling flat-out, but understandable, lies).

When the Delian League formed and started to grow, Aristides made the first assessment of tribute (taxes) from the members. He must’ve done it fairly (at by the standards of the time) because he died a poor man around 468 BC.

He was buried at Phaleron, where the Persian fleet he helped defeat had been moored.

Sicinnus

Sicinnus seems to have lived a charmed life. Themistocles freed him and arranged for him to become a citizen of Thespiae, a city-state that in west of Thebes in foothills of Mt. Helicon. It’s fertile land and Mt. Helicon is said to the home of the Muses. Its favorite deity was Eros, to whom the citizens were devoted.

Boy! What a fun place to “retire” too! Themistocles had also made him rich, so he would’ve had plenty of opportunity to enjoy himself. Seems fitting for one of the most successful “secret agents” of ancient times—maybe any times. What a lucky guy.

Aeschylus

Aeschylus fought at Marathon and Salamis (in what capacity isn’t clear) and (as mentioned) only wanted to be remembered for the former. His brother was killed at Marathon and maybe that’s part of the reason.

We remember him as the first of the great Greek (and Athenian) tragedians (he’s often called the Father of Greek Tragedy). Throughout his life, he competed in Athens’ premier dramatic competition, the Great Dionysia, winning for the first time in 484 BC.

In 472 BC, his play, The Persians, about Salamis and one of our important sources for the battle, won first prize.

In 468 BC, he lost to a young Sophocles, but won the next year with his entry, the Oedipus Trilogy; we have only the third play, Seven Against Thebes.

His masterpiece is considered to be the Oresteia Trilogy, that won first prize in 458 BC. Afterwards, he traveled to Sicily and died at Gela in 456 or 455.

Both of his sons became noted tragedians, one of them winning first prize in 431 BC, beating out both Euripides and Sophocles. Chips off the old block (or something). 😊

Demaratus

Demaratus is a strange one. Despite the fact he hardly covered himself with glory with his not-so-good advice, Xerxes seems to have liked him for his straight talk (it’s fair to say he didn’t get a lot of that.) There’s a story—we don’t know if it’s true or not—that Xerxes offered him any reward he wanted for telling him the truth about the Spartans. Demaratus said he wanted to enter Sardis as a king; robes, crown, chariot and all. (Xerxes might not have been impressed.)

That story sounds dubious but we do know Demaratus and his family did really well in the Persian empire. Darius (Xerxes’ dad) made him governor of three cities near Troy—one of them, Teuthrania, was said to have been attacked by the Greeks on their way to Troy (the Teuthranian Expedition; it’s nonsense); another, Pergamum, was also famous city—and added some land.

Demaratus’ descendants continued to hold these cities for two centuries, until after the death of Alexander the Great. Clearly they were more successful there than he was in Sparta.

Artemisia

After Salamis, Xerxes had her escort his illegitimate sons to Ephesus, but then the record stops. We know she continued to rule Halicarnassus and her regime survived. We don’t know when she died. Her son (or nephew) succeeded her and weathered the turmoil of the decades that followed. His success shows that he learned a thing or two from his mom (or aunt).

There is this ridiculous bullshit story she jumped off a cliff because some dude dumped her. The story says she scratched his eyes out as he slept before she leapt.

We know it’s bullshit because it’s beyond idiotic to think she’d fall for some measly young worthless dweeb, and because the story says she jumped off the exact same cliff they say Sappho did because of a miserable loser weenie.

Riiiighttt…

Also, the story is reported in the 2nd century AD by a dude with a Greek name. So about 600 years after the fact.

Yeah, I can’t expect there not to be misogynist assholes in ancient times.

I can be annoyed with them for being so unoriginal.

Herodotus

Herodotus is our main source for Salamis (the others are Aeschylus and Plutarch). He’s also the Father of History. For a long time, some other historians took a dim view of him; a few even like to diss him as the “father of lies.” But the more we learn, the better his history looks.

It’s a cliché that “history is written by the winners.” That’s funny because the Father of History was not a winner. He was from Halicarnassus and his family opposed its rulers. As young man, he joined a rebellion against Artemisia’s successor. When it failed he had to flee.

He spent his life in exile. Having a brilliant intellect, boundless curiosity and a retentive memory, he went everywhere, talked to everyone, sought answers to all kinds of things and wrote it all down for the benefit of future generations.

And we’re still benefitting even now.

I can’t talk about Herodotus without mentioning his younger compatriot (and occasional critic), Thucydides, the Athenian general and Father of Scientific History.

Like Herodotus, Thucydides counts as a guy who lost. Unlike Herodotus, he lost three times.

First, he lost the only military engagement we know he commanded (probably not his fault). Second, he was exiled for his failure (also not his fault). Third, he was on the losing side of the Peloponnesian War (totally not his fault).

He turned those three losses into the first, and still one of the best, analytic works on war in history. It’s studied by militaries the world over to this day.

Thucydides died before he could finish it. Nope, not his fault. But definitely our loss.

So that’s another gift Salamis gave us, through the crucible of the Peloponnesian War: scientific, or analytic, history (probably with an assist from Herodotus).

Call it another cherry on top.

Persia

It may seem weird to include Persia but they did start it all. The Persian Empire survived Xerxes’ blunders and the rise of the Delian League, which lasted 75 years. The Persian Empire would last twice as long after Salamis; Alexander the Great destroyed it 150 years later, in 330 BC.

That’s not why I’m including them though. The Peloponnesian War pitted the greatest land power in Greece, Sparta, against the greatest naval power in the Mediterranean; Athens. In over 20 years of conflict (not counting a 6-year peace), with successes and defeats on both sides, and major blunders and despite a devastating plague in Athens that killed Pericles and Herodotus barely escaped from, neither side could get the upper hand. Sparta didn’t have the naval power to cut off and destroy Athens; Athens didn’t have an army that could beat the Spartans on land.

Finally, the Spartans figured it out, in a way Athens didn’t. Sort of like Rome vs Carthage centuries later, Sparta would become a sea power. Maybe not as proficient as Athens, but good enough to finally tip the war decisively in their favor. In 405 BC, the Spartan fleet destroyed the Athenian navy at Aegospotami, in the Hellespont (shades of Xerxes). That allowed Sparta to blockade Athens and starve it into surrender.

Athens, convinced their navy was unbeatable, never tried (seriously) to develop an army that could challenge Sparta. In this sense, Athens—if they didn’t learn the wrong lesson from Salamis and their success with the Delian League—didn’t appreciate the limits of it.

But who did Sparta turn to, to help them (largely through finance) build an adequate navy?

Persia.

Yep. It was Persia that posed a threat to emerging Western Civilization by making war on Greece—specifically Athens—in the first decades of the 5th century BC. In the last decade of the century, it handed Sparta the victory that resulted in Western Civilization becoming what it is today.

So Western Civilization was saved by Themistocles beating Persia at Salamis, then catalyzed by Persia helping Sparta defeat Athens.

That’s got to be the Greatest Irony in History.

And I’m done with the Longest Post Evah! 🤣

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If you got this far and actually read all this… Wow. You’re amazing. Totally amazing! You deserved a prize and a super-amazing enormous Thank You!!! Even if you think I’m bonkers! 🤣 I can’t give you Demaratus asked Xerxes for. But I’ll try to think of something… 😅

Thanks again with all my heart. I promise I’ll work on more video (as soon as I have my credits back). 😊