Thermopylae (26 page)

There can be no doubt that Sicinnus did not have an audience with the king, but with some senior officers - possibly no more than the trierarchs of one or more of the Persian triremes. It seems surprising that he was not detained for further questioning, but it is possible that he may never even have left his boat for, ‘his message delivered, Sicinnus lost no time in getting away’. One can hazard the guess that this message was delivered in the early hours of 19 September, and purported to be the conclusions of the Greeks’ last council of war from which Themistocles had recently withdrawn. Quite apart from the account given by Herodotus the story of Sicinnus is borne out by Aeschylus in his play
The Persians
. It seems also confirmed by the fact that, after the war was over, Themistocles freed his former slave and had him made a citizen of Thespiae at a time ‘when the Thespians were enrolling additional citizens, and made him a rich man’. Themistocles - despite his many virtues - was not noted for his generosity, so one may reasonably conclude that Sicinnus performed a service that was almost ‘beyond the call of duty’.

Xerxes, it would seem, swallowed the tale. On the surface this is almost impossible to believe: the king and his advisers had never previously shown themselves at all ingenuous about the duplicity and cunning nature of the Greeks. On the other hand, they cannot have been ignorant of the fact that there was deep dissension among the Greeks at Salamis (they hardly needed Queen Artemisia to remind them of that) and it must have been clear to all that Xerxes’ manoeuvre in sending an army corps to march blatantly along the coast road in the direction of Megara would bring the division among the Peloponnesians and the Athenians to a head. The message that now reached them from this slave sent by Themistocles seemed to confirm this. Green comments that ‘Xerxes’ experience during this campaign, not least in Phocis and Boeotia, might well have convinced him that any Greek state’s resentment against Persia ran a very poor second to the implacable hatred it reserved for its own neighbours: why should Athens be any exception to this rule?’ And then there was the example of the Arcadians who had come over to join the Persian army after the defeat of the Spartans at Thermopylae. If Greeks from remote Arcadia were willing to defect, was it not possible that even the Athenians, despite their deep hostility to Persia, had now - having seen their city and their shrines go up in flames - abandoned hope and decided to throw their hand in with the all-conquering monarch? Spies must have been rife in those days, and word may even have reached the king that Themistocles had already threatened to pull out the Athenian fleet and found a new colony in southern Italy. In conclusion one must take into account the nature of the Great King himself.

Xerxes had not yet achieved the kind of overwhelming triumph that his nature craved. Thermopylae had been a dearly bought victory and the price paid for it in Persian dead had necessitated a cover-up before the men from the fleet could be invited over to inspect the scene. Furthermore, what was the destruction of a handful of men in a little rocky pass? This was not the way major battles were fought in the East, where the monarch sat and surveyed the whole field from some suitable place and watched an enormous drama opening before his eyes - a drama of which he was the author, director and producer, and which he expected to conclude exactly as he had planned it. The capture of undefended Athens, even the assault on the Acropolis, had not provided the denouement that was called for by the years of preparations: by the massive works of bridging the Hellespont and turning Mount Athos into an island. The epic nature of the whole expedition required a grand finale and now it seemed that the opportunity presented itself.

Although Xerxes was hardly the Oriental hubristic tyrant that Greek writers depicted, yet certainly there was enough arrogance in his nature to wish for a climactic battle to round off the campaign. The Greeks, furthermore, had not taken the bait of his advanced ships - proof, perhaps, that they were afraid? If this was so, then the likelihood of their trying to slip away under cover of darkness seemed plausible. Quite apart from the fact that it was now the third week of September, and the weather might be expected to break at any moment, there were other practical reasons why Xerxes would have wished to conclude the Greek campaign as swiftly as possible. Admirably organised though it was, the Persian Empire was held together by the military might of the army, the ability of his generals, councillors and advisers, and the presence of the Great King himself. Ionia, despite - or perhaps because of - the absence of its ships and commanders, was restless; Egypt, where the influence of the priests was still strong, had not forgotten the harrowing of its religious practices, nor forgotten its harsh conquest; and the borders of empire were always being frayed by savage tribes. Furthermore, Xerxes must have known of the failure of ‘Operation Europe’ in the West. For, whether the battle of Himera took place in August or September, the news would certainly have reached the Persians that the great Carthaginian expedition against Sicily had ended in disaster. There was every reason for haste.

Throughout 19 September the king’s council together with the senior naval commanders debated what was the appropriate action to take. There were two ways in which the Greeks could escape from their Salamis base and it seemed clear that both would be used. The first was to slide around the promontory of Cynosura and, passing between it and the off-lying island of Psyttaleia, make their way south into the Saronic Gulf. This route, on the face of it the simplest, was hazardous because the Persian navy (by now on the qui vive) would be patrolling the area and it would be impossible for any large body of ships to escape detection. The moon was almost full and the nights at that time of the year, if the weather has not broken, are often cloudless. The fleeing Greeks should thus be easily visible and, in any case, in those phosphorescent waters the concurrence of many oars and the wakes of large vessels would stain the sea with silver. There was yet another factor which would have revealed the movement of triremes: the rhythmic plash of their oars as close on 200 men per vessel toiled at their thole-pins. Even if moving at a slow speed, three to four knots, the noise of a body of triremes would have been unmistakable. The other course for the Greeks to take - and one which would not be so easily detectable - was through the Bay of Eleusis, then down through the narrow Megarian Channel, and south into the Saronic Gulf. It was clear that this escape route must immediately be blocked. The Egyptian fleet, which had distinguished itself at Artemisium, was chosen for the task. Their heavily armed marines had already proved their worth and, in the narrows of the channel where the Greeks would not be able to deploy their ships, they would be met bow-to-bow by the larger Egyptian vessels. The channel would not be a means of escape, but a trap.

There can be practically no doubt, despite the assertion of Herodotus that ‘the Greek commanders at Salamis were still at loggerheads’, that the very reverse was true. The battle which was to follow could only have been the product of careful and close planning between all the Greek commanders involved. True, Themistocles deserves most of the credit for having envisaged the strategy of Salamis a long time before, but without sophisticated co-ordination between the whole fleet - not just the Athenians -the battle would have been lost. Xerxes, on the other hand, together with his council and commanders, accepted the Greek misinformation that had been fed to them and committed the gravest error: they diversified their forces. The strong and efficient Egyptian squadron was despatched (no doubt after dusk on that day) to round Salamis and head for the Megara Channel while two of the squadrons, which had been sent out earlier as bait to tempt the Greeks, were reinforced and ordered to guard the passages either side of the island of Psyttaleia. At the same time 400 men were landed on that island, ‘because it lay right in the path of the impending action, and once the fighting began, many men and damaged vessels would be carried on to it, and could be saved or destroyed according as they were friends or enemies’. Aeschylus tells how, after the evening meal, the Persians manned their ships and, once the sun was down, ‘the long ships moved, each out to its appointed place’. The net, it seemed, was closed around the Greeks.

Disentangling our sources, which are confusing and which tend to have a bias implanted by later Athenian landowners (the hoplite class who had shown little initiative since Marathon) and were designed to denigrate Themistocles and the ‘navy party’, is not easy. Aristeides ‘the Just’ is purported to have returned from exile at this crucial moment and had a meeting in which it is claimed that it was he who told Themistocles that the Greeks were now surrounded and offered his services in this hour of need. Themistocles, if we are to believe the account, remarked that this was good news and just what he had hoped for (true), and asked Aristeides to go in person and tell the assembly because they would certainly believe him - while they would not believe Themistocles. The imputation is that the Greek leaders were
still
arguing the pros and cons of staying at Salamis or withdrawing to the Peloponnese. And this on the eve of the Battle of Salamis - one of the most perfectly coordinated and long-devised stratagems in all naval history!

What does seem perfectly true about the accounts of the night’s events is that a trireme from the Persian-occupied island of Tenos, commanded by a Greek whose name is deservedly commemorated, Panaetius son of Sosimenes, slipped out of the Persian lines and joined the fleet at Salamis. Panaetius brought them the latest news: how Xerxes had divided the fleet and sent the strong Egyptian contingent to guard the narrows of Megara, while the others guarded the ‘escape routes’ north and south of Psyttaleia. Night actions were unthinkable in those days (and were to remain so for centuries to come) and the suggestion that any of the Persians had already slipped past Psyttaleia and closed in on the coast of Salamis is absurd. It will have been quite enough that, even with the advantage of bright moonlight, they had got into the positions allocated to them and were now resting on their oars, or paddling and back-paddling to maintain station.

Themistocles and the other commanders - not excluding the Spartan commander-in-chief Eurybiades - can only have been delighted. The most formidable contingent of the Persian fleet, the Egyptians, was far away, committed to a fruitless watch-and-ward away to the west. The bulk of the remaining ships was now divided either side of Psyttaleia Island. While the Greeks were rested in their rocky lair, waiting for dawn and the onslaught of battle, the Persians were at sea: their triremes slopping to-and-fro, the oarsmen cold and possibly wet, and getting hungry, forced every now and then to take up the stroke to maintain position, or idling over oars that kicked and thrust with the least breathing of the ocean. The bull, which had found its ‘area of quietness’, had only to watch and wait for the first pass of the matador.

As dawn was breaking ‘they called an assembly of the marines ……..’

While the sailors manned their ships and prepared them for sea Themistocles was chosen to address the armoured men upon whom would fall the brunt of the day’s fighting. Seeing that the fleet was fairly widely dispersed it can be assumed that it was only the Athenians whom he addressed, but the fact that his speech was so long remembered shows the quality of the resolve that inspired all the Greeks on that autumn morning. ‘The whole burden of what he said was a comparison of all that was best in life and fortunes, and an exhortation to the men to choose the better.’ Dawn, which found the rested Greeks manning their ships and preparing to give battle in the chosen narrows of the Salamis Channel, must have found the Persian commanders in more than something of a quandary. All night they had maintained watch and ward over the escape routes and had seen nothing. Perhaps all the Greeks, not just part of their fleet, had fled through the Bay of Eleusis and made for the Megara Channel?

If this was the case, there was nothing they could do about it; only hope that the Egyptian fleet would be able to stop them as they came in line ahead or individual groups through that congested strait. They had been informed by Xerxes that if they let the Greeks slip through their fingers ‘each captain would lose his head’. As the exit from the Salamis Channel was the area that had been assigned to them to guard they were hardly likely to turn back towards Phaleron with the dawn and say that there was no sign of the enemy - for the Greeks might then make a sudden dash for safety round Cape Cynosura and south of Psyttaleia. No, they were committed to their stations and certainly no one was going to act on individual initiative. What must always be remembered is the primitive state of communications in those days, and the nonexistence of them under night-time conditions.

The disposition of the Greek fleet had been well thought out: the main bulk lying behind St George’s Island with the Athenians on the left of the line. To the north of them the Corinthians held the narrowest part leading towards the Bay of Eleusis, while the Peloponnesian contingents with Eurybiades as commander-in-chief held the right flank, generally regarded as the position of honour, ‘and the ships of Megara and Aegina off the town of Salamis in Ambelaki Bay’. ‘The Greek object’, as Burn has pointed out, ‘was to envelop in a net formed of an ordered line the head of a column coming up the straits’. The Persian fleet possibly numbered 400 ships and the Greeks about 300. This meant that if the Persians could be enticed into the narrows their numbers would be to no advantage; rather the reverse, for triremes under way probably required about fifty-foot intervals between them since, although only about fifteen feet on the beam, their oars on either side required at least a further ten feet. It is easy to see what confusion could take place if such basically unwieldy vessels could be lured into a position where they could not happily maintain their distance from one another.