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Themistocles, perceiving that the admiral, Eurybiades, was unable to overcome the mood of his forces, and yet recognizing that the narrow quarters at Salamis could be a great aid in achieving the victory, contrived the following ruse: He induced a certain man to desert to Xerxes and to assure him that the ships at Salamis were going to slip away from that region and assemble at the Isthmus. [2] Accordingly the king, believing the man because what he reported was in itself plausible, made haste to prevent the naval forces of the Greeks from making contact with their armies on land. Therefore he at once dispatched the Egyptian fleet with orders to block the strait which separates Salamis from the territory of Megaris.1 The main body of his ships he dispatched to Salamis, ordering it to establish contact with the enemy and by fighting there decide the issue. The triremes were drawn up by peoples one after another, in order that, speaking the same language and knowing one another, the several contingents might assist each other with alacrity. [3] When the fleet had been drawn up in this manner, the right wing was held by the Phoenicians and the left by the Greeks who were associated with the Persians.

The commanders of the Ionian contingents of the Persian fleet sent a man of Samos to the Greeks to inform them of what the king had decided to do and of the disposition of his forces for battle, and to say that in the course of the battle they were going to desert from the barbarians. [4] And when the Samian had swum across without being observed and had informed Eurybiades about this plan, Themistocles, realizing that his stratagem had worked out as he had planned, was beside himself with joy and exhorted the crews to the fight; and as for the Greeks, they were emboldened by the promise of the Ionians, and although the circumstances were compelling them to fight against their own preference, they came down eagerly in a body from Salamis to the shore in preparation for the sea-battle.

1 This closed the route by which the Greeks could move west and south to the Peloponnesus; the Persian fleet already blocked the straits to the east.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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