Thomas R. Martin, An Overview of Classical Greek History from Mycenae to Alexander

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The Naval Battle of Salamis

The Athenians soon after proved their mettle. Rather than surrender when Xerxes arrived in Attica¹ with his army, they abandoned their city for him to sack.² The Athenian commander Themistocles³ (c. 528-462 B.C.) then maneuvered the other Greeks into facing the larger Persian navy⁴ in a sea battle in the narrow channel between the island of Salamis and the west coast of Attica. Athens was able to supply the largest contingent to the Greek navy at Salamis because the assembly had been financing the construction of warships ever since a rich strike of silver had been made in Attica in 483 B.C. The proceeds from the silver mines went to the state⁵ andat the urging of Themistocles, the assembly had voted to use the financial windfall to build a navy for defense⁶, rather than to distribute the money among individual citizens. As at Thermopylae, the Greeks in the battle of Salamis⁷ in 480 B.C. used topography to their advantage. The narrowness of the channel prevented the Persians from using all their ships at once and minimized the advantage of their ships' greater maneuverability. In the close quarters of the Salamis channel, the heavier Greek ships⁸ could employ their underwater rams to sink the less sturdy Persian craft. When Xerxes observed that the most energetic of his naval commanders appeared to be the one woman among them Artemisia of Caria⁹ (the southwest corner of Turkey), he reportedly remarked, “My men have become women, and my women, men.”