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ἀνῆγον τὰς νέας ἁπάσας: advanced (or were advancing) their ships en masse; but before the movement was complete (ἀναγομένοισι δέ σφι), indeed while it was little more than begun (αὐτίκα), they found themselves attacked by the barbarians (ἐπεκέατο οἱ β.). Our whole conception of the actual engagement must turn upon the true interpretation of these words. They look simple enough, but their meaning is obscure. At first sight they might seem to lend themselves to Leake's interpretation of the movements recorded in cc. 70, 76 supra; the Greek fleet advances out of the bay of Ambelaki, and finds itself at once involved, front to front, with the king's fleet, which has also advanced to attack. But if that were the situation, the two fleets would have been in full view of each other all along since the first streak of dawn; and the element of surprise, involved in these words, is inexplicable. The Greeks are taken aback: before their own movement is complete they find the barbarians in motion against them. Nothing of that sort could have arisen on Leake's hypothesis. Granted that Hdt. so conceived the matter: but what sense is there in saying of two fleets, moving upon each other, front to front, that the one fleet advanced to the attack, and, while it was advancing, the other fleet attacked it? Such a statement is only intelligible on the supposition of a flank engagement. If the Greek fleet was emerging from the bay of Ambelaki just at the same moment as the Persian fleet was entering the straits, such a situation might arise: either the Greek fleet might cut the Persian column, somewhere behind its leading ships, or the head of the Persian column might strike the extreme right of the Greek fleet en flanc. If the Persian column were two or three ships abreast, or if there were two or more Persian columns — the one column perhaps pressing in between Psyttaleia and the island of Salamis, the other between Psyttaleia and the Attic mainland —a more complicated situation might easily arise: the extreme right of the Greek wing might be taken en flanc, or involved with the left column of the Persian advance, while the right Persian column might have to advance much further before becoming engaged with the Greek left. If such was, indeed, the whole situation adumbrated in this chapter, it is possible that the engagement opened, that actual contact with the enemy was effected, sooner than Themistokles intended or could have wished: he must have desired a large number of the Persian vessels to enter the straits before the actual fighting began.
οἱ μὲν δὴ ἄλλοι Ἕλληνες: other than ‘the Athenians,’ or other than the one Athenian named? The latter is an absurd supposition: Themistokles and the other Athenian Strategoi knew what they were about, and were not likely ‘to back water’—unless, indeed, the action of Ameinias of Pallene was ill-advised and premature. That the Greek right wing backed water (πρύμνην ἀνεκρούοντο), and, of course, by order, is likely enough; the Greeks on the right were much nearer the advancing enemy. That they were actually for beaching their ships (ὤκελλον) is probably a bit of popular (Attic) scandal, started by the man in the street, or the A.B. in the fleet, who did not understand what was going on, or the tactics of the admirals.
Ἀμεινίης δὲ Παλληνεύς: this Ameinias was, according to Diodoros 11. 27. 2, the brother of the poet Aischylos (who was an Eleusinian), cp. 6. 114, and according to Plutarch, Themist. 14, of the deme of Dekeleia, cp. 9. 73 infra (not of Pallene). The deme Pallene (site of the temple of Athene Παλληνίς, cp. 1. 62) belonged to the tribe Antiochis, and lay on the spurs of Hymettos crossed by the road to Marathon. Ameinias is not an uncommon name, and Aischylos, Pers. 409, does nothing for his supposed brother's claim, though he supports the Athenian claim by making a Phoenician ship implicated. The addition of the Demotikon here, if genuine, without the patronymic, would betray the Attic source, even without the express statement just below, Ἀθηναῖοι μὲν οὕτω λέγουσι, but it rather conflicts with ἀν. Ἀθ. and may be an interpellation; cp. App. Crit.
ἐξαναχθείς: passive in form, middle in force; cp. 7. 194 supra (of ships, not of shipmasters); “longius evectus,” Baehr. This chapter exhibits the verb ἀνάγειν in all three voices. νηί might be his own (instrumental) or an enemy's (objective), probably the latter; cp. ἐνέβαλε νηὶ φιλίῃ, c. 87 infra. τῆς νεός is his own. οὐ δυναμένων, sc. τῶν τοῦ Ἀμεινίου.
Αἰγινῆται δέ: plainly a rival tradition. If the Athenians were on the extreme left, and the Aiginetans on the right, and the situation was such as above indicated, each claim may have been made in good faith, but the Aiginetan was more probably the true one. Whether it was the ship that had been away for the Aiakids, which was actually the first engaged, may be more doubtful: it is such a happily ominous detail. The ship in question is clearly assumed to have been an Aiginetan; but Aristeides might have taken a berth in it.
λέγεται δὲ καὶ τάδε comes in well to remind us on what slender threads these λόγοι hang! The φάσμα here is nothing if not superhuman (cp. c. 94 infra); her voice alone is enough to prove that! Of the actual and living women and children, who, like enough, were lining the shores of Salamis and making the welkin ring, Hdt. says nothing.
διακελεύσασθαι: cp. c. 80 supra. τὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων στρατόπεδον seems here used of the navy alone and at sea; but there was a laager on shore which cannot have been wholly deserted, and perhaps this λόγος came from that quarter. Cp. c. 10. 14 supra.
δαιμόνιοι, ‘wretches,’ ‘luckless wights’; cp. 7. 48 supra.
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