The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost—From Ancient Greece to Iraq by Victor Davis Hanson Read Free Book Online Page A

over to Siris in Italy, a place which has been ours from ancient times, and at which the oracles inform us that we should plant a colony. And the rest of you without allies such as ourselves, will have reason to remember my words.” 25
    The final bad choice from among the far worse alternatives was for the remaining allies to fight a sea battle at Salamis. They would cede no more Greek territory. Instead, the admirals would preserve Greek unity and hope to cripple the Persian fleet—and with it any chance of escape of the massive army of Xerxes. Because there were finite supplies at Salamis, and thousands of refugees to feed, there was no time left for talk. The battle had to be joined almost immediately, even if most of the assembled admirals would have to give in to Themistocles’ threats and override the original wishes of their own political authorities back home to retreat to a Panhellenic defense at the Isthmus. 26
Holy Salamis (
September 480 B.C.
)
    The historian Herodotus and the contemporary playwright Aeschylus, along with much later accounts in Plutarch, Diodorus, and Nepos, believed that the reconstituted Greek fleet was outnumbered by at least two or three to one. In fact, it may have been only one-fourth the size of the Persian fleet. There is no information how many reinforcement ships joined the respective naval forces after the mutual losses from Artemisium, or how many trireme hulls were repaired. But ancient accounts suggest that between Persian replacements and the growing number of “Medizing” Greeks, the enemy was still at least as large as when it had left Persia months earlier.
    If some Greeks quietly slipped away from Salamis and headed southward, most stayed. Even after wear and tear on the fleet, and losses at Artemisium, if the Greek fleet did not number 366 triremes exactly, there still may have been well over three hundred Greek vessels at Salamis. They were waiting to take on a Persian armada of at least six hundred warships—although both Herodotus and Aeschylus record that the enemy fleet had been reinforced to more than twelve hundred ships. That huge figure cannot be entirely discounted, although it implies a quarter million Persian seamen to man such an armada. In any case, there may well have been well over two hundred thousand sailors assembled at Salamis, making it one of the largest sea battles in history. 27
    The Greek fleet, still under the nominal overall command of the Spartan Eurybiades, was less experienced than the imperial Persian flotilla. Greek triremes were heavier and less maneuverable, their crews greener. The king’s armada was composed of various veteran contingents from Phoenicia, Egypt, Asia Minor, Cyprus, and Greece itself. Most of these navies had patrolled the Aegean and Mediterranean for years enforcing the edicts of the Persian Empire. Perhaps more Greek-speaking crews from Ionia and the Aegean would fight on the Persian than on the Hellenic side.
    The alliance’s best hope was to draw the Persians into the narrows between Salamis and the Attic mainland. Once there, the more numerous but lighter enemy triremes might prove vulnerable to the heavier, sturdier, and presumably slower Greek ships. Themistocles reasoned that the invaders also might not have enough room to maneuver and utilize all their triremes. Without more open seas, the Persians would lose the advantages of both their numbers and their superior nautical skill.
    Surprise—and greater knowledge of currents and contrary winds inside the straits—would also aid the defenders. The unity of the Greeks versus the motley nature of the subject Persian armada, the psychological advantages defenders enjoy over aggressors, the hope that free peoples fight for their own destiny more stoutly than subjects do amid their subservience—all these, at least in Themistocles’ mind, could become force multipliers and so might still trump Persian numbers. 28
    Various sources also refer to an improbable ruse on