The Battle of Salamis
Thursday, December 12, 2019
Today's topic is the naval Battle of Salamis that took place in the Saronic Gulf (also called the Gulf of Aegina). The gulf is a branch of the Aegean Sea, and lies between the Attica and Argolis peninsulas along the isthmus of Corinth, to the west of Athens.
(Three other ancient battles were fought near another Salamis, on the east coast of the island of Cyprus.)
But in "our" battle, a coalition of city-states, including Athens, Sparta, and Corinth among several less well-known, fought under the general Themistocles, a non-aristocrat and populist who was often at odds with the Athenian nobility. He had fought in the Battle of Marathon ten years earlier (490 BCE) and may have been one of the generals there.
Facing Themistocles and his roughly 375 Greek ships was a Persian naval force of perhaps as many as 1200 ships under King Xerxes (though modern estimates place the size of his fleet closer to that of the Greeks). This was the second time the Persians had invaded Greece.
The fleets first engaged very shortly after the heroic Greek stand at the narrow pass of Thermopylae, where perhaps 1,000 Greeks (not 300, as is often advertised) delayed the Persian army's advance. At the same time as the fighting was going on in the mountains, the allied navy encountered the Persians at Artemisium. Greece suffered great losses on land and sea, and the Persians took numerous Greek cities.
Within the month, however, the tables turned. Against common sense, Themistocles sought out the Persian fleet again, luring them into the Straits of Salamis. Xerxes's huge fleet could not maneuver properly in the narrow straits, however, and became disorganized. The Greeks seized the opportunity and won a decisive victory.
Xerxes retreated to Asia, leaving behind part of his force; the army was defeated at the Battle of Plataea in August 479, and the navy at the Battle of Mycale that same month. The second Persian invasion of Greece was over, though there was more to come: the Greco-Persian Wars did not end definitively until 449 BCE.