Salamis 480 BC: The Battle for Greece

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[Music] In the fifth century BC, the great King of Persia ruled the largest empire the world had ever seen. It stretched from modern Pakistan to Macedonia and contained one-fifth of the world’s population. The Persian Empire was sophisticated, wealthy, and all-conquering. In 480 BC, King Xerxes led its mighty forces against Greece, a collection of small city-states on the western fringes of his vast realm. He sought to punish the Greeks for meddling in his affairs, but in his quest for vengeance, conquest, and glory, he would encounter disaster and death in the Straits of Salamis.

The history of Herodotus of Halicarnassus is presented here so that the great and marvelous deeds of Greeks and barbarians should not go unsung. The events that follow are chiefly known from the writings of Herodotus, who began his inquiries into the origins and course of the Persian invasion about 30 years after it occurred. Like many in the ancient world, he believed in omens, oracles, and divine intervention, but he also thought that humans could shape their own fate. He traveled across Greece and the Persian Empire, reading records and inscriptions, speaking to local people, and weighing evidence according to his own reasoning. The Roman writer Cicero would later dub Herodotus the father of history.

The root of the conflict between Greece and Persia dates back to the 6th century BC when King Cyrus the Great brought the Greek colonies of Western Anatolia under Persian rule. In 499 BC, these colonies rebelled and appealed to their fellow Greeks for aid. Only Athens and Eretria responded. Together, the Greeks burned the provincial capital Sardis and its temple to the Earth goddess. It seemed like a major victory, but the Persians responded with impressive speed, and the Greeks soon retreated to the coast. It took the Persians four years to finally stamp out the revolt in Western Anatolia. Then, the great king Darius turned his attention to the Greeks across the sea who had aided the rebels. He sent ambassadors to the many city-states of Greece, demanding earth and water as tokens of submission. Many submitted, but two did not: Athens, a young democracy fiercely protective of its liberty, and Sparta, a conservative militarized state that took orders from no one. Both cities responded to the great king by throwing his envoys down a well, telling them they might find all the earth and water they required there.

In 490 BC, Darius dispatched a mighty expedition to bring the Greeks to heel. Naos was the largest of several islands to submit, but Eretria was sacked and burned. Then the Persians landed at Marathon to mete out the same punishment to Athens. Athenian troops, alongside those from their small neighbor Plataea, met them on the beach. Though outnumbered two to one, the Greek soldiers attacked. Their hoplite infantry fought with large, heavy shields and spears in a tight phalanx formation. The more lightly equipped Persians could not withstand their onslaught, and Persian troops were slaughtered on the beach. The survivors scrambled back to their ships, and Athens had been saved.

Four years later, Darius died and was succeeded by his son Xerxes, who took up the task of punishing the Greeks and avenging his father’s humiliation. The new king summoned troops and ships from across his empire and ordered a bridge of boats to be built across the Hellespont. In the spring of 480 BC, his gigantic invasion force crossed from Asia into Europe. Herodotus estimated its size at 2.3 million men, an impossible number that could not have been fed or watered. Modern historians think 200,000 is more likely, still a vast number for the age. It was accompanied by an enormous fleet of a thousand warships or more, supplied by Persia’s vassal states across the Eastern Mediterranean.

Greece appeared an easy target; its many independent city-states were notorious for constant infighting. However, in the face of the Persian threat, 31 states put aside their differences and convened a council of war at the Isthmus of Corinth to plan the defense of Greece. These states were later commemorated on a giant serpent column at Delphi, the Greeks’ most sacred site. At the top of the list were the Lacedemonians (another name for the Spartans), followed by the Achaeans and Corinthians. Knowing the Persians would invade from the north, the Greeks sent 10,000 men to hold a mountain pass at Tempe near Mount Olympus. However, when the troops arrived, they found the position could be easily outflanked and were not confident about the loyalty of the locals to their rear, so they withdrew.

Instead, the Greeks would make their stand at Thermopylae with 7,000 men led by the Spartan King Leonidas. The Greek fleet arrived at Artemisium to guard the sea flank. Like the alliance itself, the Greek fleet was an uneasy coalition, with ships from city-states like Athens and Aegina that had recently been at war. The Athenian contingent was by far the largest, existing thanks to the discovery of rich silver mines at Laurium three years earlier. It took the foresight of Themistocles, an Athenian statesman and general, to persuade the people of Athens not to spend this windfall on cash handouts for themselves, but instead to invest in a fleet of 200 triremes for their future security. This decision may ultimately have saved Greece.

Athens, however, was so distrusted by other Greeks that they refused to serve under an Athenian admiral, so Themistocles tactfully accepted the appointment of a Spartan, Eurybiades, to lead the fleet, even though Spartans had no expertise in naval warfare. The fleets swept together, plowing through the swell.

Both the Greek and Persian fleets relied on a single type of warship that dominated naval warfare in the Mediterranean: the trireme. Sleek, agile, and delicate, the trireme carried masts and sails for cruising, but in combat, these were lowered, and the ship relied on three banks of rowers, which gave the trireme its name. The ship carried 170 oarsmen in total, who could produce a top speed of around 10 knots to smash their primary weapon, a bronze-sheathed ram, into the hull of an enemy ship, leaving it crippled. Boarding the enemy was another tactic; a Greek ship usually carried 14 marines, 10 hoplites armed with spear and shield, and four rowers. The ship’s commander, the trierarch, sat at the stern alongside the helmsman, the kybernetes, who guided the ship’s course with twin rudders. A bosun and bow officer relayed orders to the oarsmen while a piper helped them keep time. A carpenter and 10 sailors brought the ship’s total complement to 200 men. Every ship had a name and a painted eye on the bow to avert ill fortune. Herodotus describes the Greek ships as more heavily built than the Persian ships, although in what way is not clear. He also tells us that Persian ships carried many more marines, 44 in total.

While Leonidas and the Greeks held the pass at Thermopylae, the Persian fleet sailed south along the rugged coastline of Magnesia. One night, while at anchor, they were hit by a violent storm; hundreds of ships were wrecked and damaged, and thousands of sailors drowned. According to Herodotus, the Persians further weakened their force by sending 200 triremes around the island of Euboea to cut off the Greek retreat, but the entire squadron was destroyed by another storm. Herodotus offers little supporting evidence for this operation, which would have been extremely reckless, and some historians doubt it ever happened.

Despite Persian losses, the Greeks still faced odds of nearly three to one at Artemisium, and they weren’t just outnumbered; the Persian fleet was more experienced in naval warfare, particularly the elite squadron from Phoenicia (in modern Lebanon). Nevertheless, over three days of naval combat, the Greek fleet held its nerve and kept the Persians at bay. However, at the end of the third day, disastrous news arrived: Leonidas and the Greeks at Thermopylae had been encircled. The Spartan king and half his men had been killed, and the pass had fallen. It seemed the efforts of the Greek fleet had been in vain. Central Greece and Athens itself now lay open to the Persian onslaught.

As the Greek fleet withdrew, the Persians marched south, burning cities, farms, and sanctuaries, though sparing Thebes, one of several Greek city-states to side with Persia. To Athenian dismay, the Greek army, dominated by troops from the Peloponnese, gathered at the Isthmus of Corinth and began building a great wall to protect their homes from the invader. Athens was to be abandoned, and the Greek fleet began to evacuate civilians to Trinacria and Salamis.

In the months before the Persian invasion, the Athenians had sent a delegation to the Greeks’ holiest shrine, the Oracle of Delphi, seeking guidance for the upcoming war. They received a terrifying warning: “Why are you sitting there, you fools? Flee! Flee to the ends of the Earth!” But a second oracle offered the Athenians a sliver of hope: Athens could trust in its wooden wall. A few Athenians thought the oracle referred to a thorn hedge that had once enclosed the city’s Acropolis, its citadel, so they fortified themselves there. However, when the Persians arrived, they were surrounded and slaughtered. Xerxes then burned Athens and its temples to avenge the destruction of Sardis 18 years before.

Themistocles argued that Athens’ wooden wall was her new fleet. As Greek naval commanders met at Salamis in mid-September, the situation looked grim: King Leonidas was dead, Athens was burning, and the Greek alliance was on the brink of collapse. Themistocles was desperate to stop the Peloponnesian ships from retreating to the Isthmus. He warned them that the enemy’s greater numbers and faster ships meant the Greeks would be defeated if they fought on the open sea. But in the narrow straits of Salamis, with less room to maneuver, the Persians wouldn’t be able to exploit their greater numbers, and the heavier Greek ships would have the advantage.

Themistocles even warned the other Greeks that if they retreated now, the Athenian ships would quit the alliance and sail to Italy. So the fleet commander, Eurybiades, accepted Themistocles’ plan. However, Themistocles worried that the Peloponnesians would change their minds. Secretly, he ordered a trusted servant to go to the Persian camp to tell Xerxes that the Greeks were in a state of terror and would flee at first light.

Just eight miles away at Phaleron, the great king sought the counsel of his generals and admirals. All advised him to attack the Greeks immediately to win the final victory that would end the war, all except Queen Artemisia of Halicarnassus, commanding five ships from Caria. “Why risk battle?” she argued, “when the great king has only to threaten southern Greece by land or sea, and the Peloponnesians will rush home to defend their land, and the Greek alliance will split? Then victory is certain.” But Xerxes sought the glory of battle and was confident of an easy victory. Then the messenger arrived, telling the king exactly what he wanted to hear: the Greeks were terrified and preparing to flee. He must strike immediately.

Xerxes ordered the Persian fleet to set sail that night so they would be in position to annihilate the Greeks as they tried to escape at dawn. Meanwhile, at the Greek camp, an Athenian named Aristides arrived with sacred relics from Aegina to inspire the fleet. He also brought news that the enemy had put to sea and blocked the straits. Themistocles’ ruse had worked; retreat was no longer an option. The Greeks would have to fight at Salamis.

Oh, divine Salamis, you will be the death of many sons. The earliest surviving accounts of the battle that followed, by Herodotus and the Athenian playwright Aeschylus, are sometimes vague and allow for different interpretations, but they are detailed enough to reconstruct the most likely course of events. The Persian fleet put to sea at night, around 600 triremes, outnumbering the Greeks three to two. Expecting hard fighting at the entrance to the strait, they landed 400 soldiers on the tiny island of Psyttaleia. Their role was to finish off any shipwrecked Greeks who made it to shore. Then, keeping close to the mainland, the Persian fleet silently advanced into the narrow strait, the elite Phoenicians leading the way.

According to a later Greek historian, Diodorus Siculus, the Persians also sent an Egyptian squadron around Salamis to cut off any Greek escape into the Gulf of Megara, but this event is not mentioned in earlier sources and may be an invention. At dawn, Xerxes arrived at an observation post overlooking the strait. The great king was confident that his presence would inspire his captains to fight with more determination than they had shown at Artemisium a few weeks before. He was accompanied by scribes ready to note down the names of captains who fought well and those who did not.

The Persian fleet lined the northern side of the strait, ready to hunt down Greek ships as they fled. What they saw instead was 368 Greek triremes emerging from the bays of Salamis, ready to fight. They formed a line of battle with the best squadrons on each flank: on the left, the Athenians; on the right, the Aegians. As they rowed, they sang paeans, Greek hymns of battle. At first, they held formation, perhaps waiting for the morning breeze to blow at their backs or for more Persians to crowd into the strait. Then a Greek ship saw an opening and attacked. Soon both fleets were fully engaged, and the battle became a chaotic mass of ships wheeling and weaving, looking for a chance to ram an enemy and avoid the same fate themselves.

In the narrow strait, the Persian squadrons became increasingly disordered. Any ship trying to fall back ran into other ships trying to press forward, their captains eager to impress the great king. What’s more, the Persian oarsmen had been rowing all night and soon began to tire. The Greeks were fresh and fighting for their freedom. The Phoenician squadron suffered heavy losses at the hands of the heavy Greek triremes. Some Phoenician captains who had abandoned their ships and made it to shore were brought before Xerxes. They blamed the unfolding disaster on the cowardice of their allies, the Carians and Ionians. Just at that moment, Xerxes saw an Ionian ship ram an Athenian trireme before it was rammed in turn by an Aegian ship. Undaunted, the Ionian marines counterattacked, boarding and taking the Aegian ship. After observing this evidence of Ionian bravery, Xerxes ordered that the Phoenician captains be taken away and executed.

Wrecked ships, floundering men, and corpses clogged the strait. As the battle turned decisively against the Persians, Aeschylus, the playwright who almost certainly fought in the battle, compared the Greeks killing Persians to fishermen spearing tuna. As Persian ships tried to escape, they were hit in the flank by the Aegians, who distinguished themselves above all other Greeks that day. Queen Artemisia was among those trying to escape the slaughter, with an Athenian trireme in hot pursuit. Seeing her path blocked by a friendly ship, she gave the order to ram it. When the Athenian captain saw this, he thought he must be pursuing an allied ship and went looking for other prey.

The remnants of the Persian fleet streamed back to Phaleron. In a final ruthless act of the battle, Aristides landed with a force of hoplites on Psyttaleia and massacred the 400 Persians who had been abandoned there. In total, the Persians lost around 200 ships and 12,000 men, including the fleet commander, Arabignes, a half-brother of the great king himself. The Greeks lost just 40 ships. It proved to be one of the greatest naval victories in history. The land bewails the men she bore, slaughtered for Xerxes, who has fed hell’s hungry jaws with Persian dead. The Greeks had inflicted a humiliating defeat on Xerxes and ended all hopes of an easy conquest.

Now the king heeded Queen Artemisia’s advice and ordered his general Mardonius to continue the campaign in spring while he returned to Asia with the bulk of his army. If Mardonius was victorious, Artemisia had told him, the glory would belong to Xerxes; if Mardonius was defeated, the blame would belong to Mardonius. But there was no victory for Mardonius. The next summer, he faced the combined Greek army at Plataea in a crushing Persian defeat. Mardonius was killed along with much of his army. On the very same day, according to Herodotus, the Greek fleet inflicted another heavy defeat on the Persians at Mykale. The threat of Persian invasion was over.

In the years that followed, the Greek counterattack would begin, led by a new Greek alliance, the Delian League. Salamis has been credited with more significance than almost any other battle in history—the victory that saved Greece from slavery and paved the way for its classical age. This was the period in which the arts, democracy, science, and philosophy flourished in the Greek world. Thus, Salamis has been hailed as the battle that saved the cradle of Western civilization.

It’s a dramatic argument that can be overstated. Greek defeat would not necessarily have led to the extinction of Greek culture, and though fifth-century Athens was a revolutionary pioneering experiment in democracy, it’s not the sole blueprint on which modern democracy is based. Nevertheless, Salamis remains a decisive battle and a turning point in history. Thanks to Herodotus, it survives as one of history’s oldest examples of a heroic struggle against the odds and a struggle for freedom.

We have many people to thank for their help in making this video. Nadim Jan Injai provided our Total War gameplay footage; you can watch his reconstructions of other historical battles on his YouTube channel. We highly recommend his epic depiction of the Battle of Crécy. The brilliant Divida at Emperor Total War mod team provided crucial modding support; you can find out about their work transforming Total War: Rome 2 on their website, dividaimperormod.com. A big thanks to Bill Manopoulos for producing much of the music in this video. Check the video description to find out more about all the contributors who helped make this video. Last but