In 480BC the Persian Empire invaded Greece with the largest military force the world had ever seen. Meanwhile in Athens, a man named Themistocles had spent the last ten years preparing for this moment. He had come up with a plan to defeat Persia, but it would require a mix of strategy, intrigue, deception, and plain old good luck...
Contents of the episode, with timestamps:
[05:45] How to Win Friends and Influence People
[13:10] The Mines of Laurion
[19:30] Athens VS Aegina
[25:10] Battle of Thermopylae
[32:00] Battle of Artemisium
[40:10] The Wooden Wall
[49:55] The Battle of Salamis
[53:30] Conclusion
Support Ancient Greece Declassified on Patreon: patreon.com/greecepodcast
Or make a one-time donation: paypal.me/greecepodcast
Episode Transcript
Prologue
In 480BC the Persian Empire invaded Greece with the largest military force the world had ever seen. Leading the expedition was Persian King Xerxes himself. His aim was twofold. Conquer the entire territory and punish the Athenians in particular for having provided assistance to the Ionian Revolt against Persia. A few months later, he seemed to have accomplished his mission. The majority of Greece was now occupied or had surrendered. And Xerxes had captured Athens, plundered it, and his men were now putting the entire city to the torch.
This should have been his moment of triumph. But there was something he and his men couldn’t quite understand. Where were the Athenians?
The city they had just entered so triumphantly was a ghost town. The only signs of life bigger than a cockroach were the occasional animal they found wandering the streets confused, or the birds picking through garbage heaps.
You see, the Athenians had evacuated their city. The men were now crowded on warships miles off the coast, while the women and children had been ferried to nearby islands and the northern coast of the Peloponnese. But all of them were still within sight of their homeland. They could see across the water the distant glow of fire and the column of black smoke rising from their former homes. And they now remembered a prophecy they had received from the Delphic oracle, which said, “Fly, you wretches, to the ends of the earth, leaving your homes behind… Fire and Ares destroy your city.” (Hdt. 7. 140). The oracle had been right, it seemed. All now appeared to be lost.
But amidst the thousands of mournful faces peering across the waves, eyes swollen with heartache and despair, there was one face that did not look dejected. A glint in his eye gave the impression of optimism. The look on his face was the look of a man with a plan. And for him everything was going according to plan.
Now, that might sound delusional, seeing as his entire city was being committed to the flames. But, history vindicated him. Not only would he lead the Athenians to a surprising victory against the Persians, which turned the tides of war and sent King Xerxes home packing, but the Athenians would rebuild their city with unprecedented splendor and would go on to experience a golden age that few civilizations have been able to rival. Who was this man? His name was Themistocles. And this is his story.
***Intro music***
Introduction
In the previous episode, we covered the events that culminated in the first Persian invasion of Greece, namely: the birth of democracy in 508 BC in Athens; the assistance that that new, inexperienced, democratic regime provided to the Ionian revolt against Persia, thus incurring the wrath of the Great King; and finally the punitive expedition that the Persians sent to Greece once they had crushed the revolt and which the Athenians surprisingly defeated at the Battle of Marathon.
We also introduced the Athenian statesman Themistocles, who lived through those turbulent times but still had not made a name for himself by the time that first invasion of Greece was over.
This episode will cover the second – and much bigger – Persian invasion of Greece, picking up the story right after Marathon. At that time, most Athenians thought that they had dealt with the Persian threat once and for all. (Plut. Them. 3.4) And after enduring two turbulent decades which saw the overthrow of tyranny, a democratic revolution, two Spartan invasions, a Theban attack from the north, and a Persian invasion, the Athenians thought it was finally time to relax, celebrate, enjoy life for once. But at least one man foresaw that their greatest challenge still lay ahead. For Themistocles, the unexpected victory at Marathon was like hitting the snooze button. It might have bought them time. But the Persians would be back with the full force of their empire, and he knew that the only hope the Athenians had was to start preparing immediately for that inevitable epic contest.
So, Themistocles is feeling like he’s in a tight spot. He sees the danger lurking on the horizon, he knows what needs to be done if they’re going to survive, but he has no way of getting that message across to his fellow citizens because of two obstacles. It’s not what they want to hear; they want to party. And who the hell is he to tell them otherwise? He’s a nobody.
He’s been working hard his entire life to become somebody respected. His teachers and family all predicted it would happen, given his incredible drive and talent. And yet, here he is at 34 years old, still with no impressive accomplishment on his resume. So he decides to tackle that problem first. He needs to make a name for himself.
Now, put yourself in Themistocles’ sandals for a moment. What is your strategy? How do you become a respected political voice in a democracy when the cards seem to be stacked against you? You come from a humble, middle-class background, you’re only half Athenian technically, and you don’t have the connections that the elite families have? How do you even begin?
Part 1: How to Win Friends and Influence People
The first thing Themistocles had to do was to decide which team he was going to be on. Because just like our society today, the Athenians had a two-faction system. Notice that I’m not calling it a two party system, because they did not have political parties in the modern sense, with official organizations, headquarters, memberships, bureaucracies, etc. This wasn’t quite that.
But these were two separate social groupings that cut across the society, two contrasting ideologies, two opposed networks of people, where each side rallied around common political and economic interests. There was the aristocratic faction, as they called it, and the popular faction. And looking at the surviving sources, I’m not aware of any major politician who was unaligned with either faction. It seems that, just as in our case, you couldn’t make it to the very top without picking a side.
Themistocles decided that he was going to be on team popular. Which meant he needed to win support among the common people, the common citizens.
So, the first thing he did is he decided to make himself known the old fashion way. He spent countless hours downtown by the agora or in the various assembly places and talked to everyone. He learned as many people’s names as he could by heart. And in a city of thirty thousand male citizens, if we take Herodotus’ number as accurate, that’s actually not a bad strategy. Because although the ekklesia or public assembly is open to all citizens, not everyone would actually show up on a regular basis. People have work. Some people are too old. Some people don’t care. So let’s say of the thirty thousand citizens, at most half are part of your faction, and of them, probably less than ten percent have the leisure and desire to be regulars in the ekklesia. That’s a little more than a thousand names you need to remember. Which is totally doable, if you set your mind to it. And that’s what Themistocles did.
So, you know, you’d be walking down the street and Themistocles would be like, “Hey Callicles, what’s up?” And you’d be thinking, “Wow, he knows my name! That’s cool.”
In that way, he became known to all the regulars downtown, and they probably spread word to their friends about this new down-to-earth politician who actually cares about the people.
So that was a good start. But it wasn’t enough. And Themistocles knew he was going to have to get creative. Cause there’s a lot of people who want prestige in every society. There’s a lot of people who want to succeed in politics. A lot of them have connections. A lot of them have money. He is working at several disadvantages here so he needs a way to hack the system.
And he comes up with all kinds of clever stratagems to put himself in positions where people come to him and get to know him. For example, a very famous musician was coming through town. And of course everybody wanted to hear him play and everybody wanted to talk to him. Themistocles runs to him before he even arrives and offers his hospitality to the guy, saying, “Dude, I’m a huge fan. Please stay with me. I’ve got a great place in a great location. You can host all the gatherings you want. And I’ll even provide catering, free of charge.”
And the guy is like, “Awesome! Free accommodation would be fantastic.”
And so for the next however many weeks, everybody who wants to see this musician or talk to him comes to Themistocles’ house, and he’s there to say, “Hi, I’m Themistocles, nice to meet you. Won’t you come in. Make yourself at home.”
So, stuff like that. Meanwhile, of course, he would have been – we don’t have all the details, but he would’ve been – practicing his oratory skills, his rhetoric in the ekklesia or public assembly, where every single male citizen had the right to get up and speak.
Now again, that’s thirty thousand people who had the right to do this. You might be thinking, wouldn’t that be total chaos? All those people trying to get their word in. No, because not all of them chose to get up and speak. In fact, probably only a small minority of citizens ever did so. Why? Because it’s terrifying. (pause) Would you get up and speak in front of thousands of people?
Remember, it’s outside, often windy, people are rowdy, no microphones. You need a very loud and clear voice to be heard. You need confidence. And you need to know how to command the attention of a crowd. If you get up and no one can hear you, or you fumble your words, or it's obvious that you’re nervous, you can get booed or laughed at within seconds. So, it is not easy.
Themistocles probably studied the big players very carefully before he decided to make his first public statement. I can imagine he started with something small. You pick an issue that isn’t terribly controversial, you figure out what the popular faction wants, and you get up and deliver a quick argument in favor of that policy. If you’ve practiced your delivery sufficiently, there’s a good chance the people will like what you said. And if you keep it short, you minimize the risk of embarrassment if something goes wrong.
Then maybe you try that again a few times. If that goes well, you build your confidence, you start delivering longer speeches. And every time you do, you make sure you are building important alliances. Cause you don’t just want the support of the common people. That’s not enough. You want the support of the leading members of your faction. So, you figure out what they want. And you start making speeches in defense of their policy proposals. And if you’re good at that, they start to notice you and see you as an up-and-coming voice that they want to promote and have on their team. You get the idea.
Again, this is informed speculation because our sources don’t tell us anything about Themistocles’ early forays into public speaking. But based on what we do know, it stands to reason that he used public debates to hone his skills, build up popular support, and forge important alliances. And it paid off. By the time we get to 483BC, which is seven years after Marathon, Themistocles is one of the leading figures, if not the leading voice, of the popular faction.
And I would bet that in the day-to-day, mundane business of the ekklesia during those seven years, his priority was personal aggrandizement. The policy decisions themselves were usually not that consequential.
But one day in that year of 483 BC, a hot new issue was brought before the assembly for discussion, and for the first time, Themistocles felt that this was bigger than any personal ambition or political rivalry. In fact, he recognized that this was the moment he had been waiting for. This was the moment he had been working towards. All those hours chatting with the everyman on the streets, all those carefully crafted speeches, all that strategic alliance-building was preparation for this moment. And the funny thing is, the issue under discussion, while important, probably didn’t strike anyone else as such a big deal. But in Themistocles’ reckoning, the outcome of this debate would not only determine his fate, but the fate of Athens.
Part 2: The Mines of Laurion
The southeastern tip of Attica (which is the territory of Athens) is a resource rich area called Laurion that had been mined since at least the Bronze Age for copper and lead. In 483 BC, however, a large vein of silver ore was discovered, which looked like it was going to bring in about 100 talents of pure silver, or roughly 2 ½ tons. It’s always difficult to compare ancient money to modern money, in part because silver was much more valuable back then than it is today. But if you want a modern equivalent, we’re talking about somewhere between 50-100 million dollars of revenue.
And that’s public money. Because Athens is a democracy, and for the Athenians that meant that natural resources belong to the people. Mines were therefore state-run operations and up until this point their revenue had been distributed among the citizens.
A debate arises in the ekklesia or public assembly about what they’re gonna do with all this new cash. The leader of the aristocratic faction – a man named Aristides – takes the populist stance that the money should be distributed among the people. Every citizen should get a check in the mail every month. Wouldn’t that be sweet?
Themistocles has another idea, though he doesn’t tell anyone just yet, because he knows it will be unpopular. These funds could be used to build a navy. And that navy could prove to be the salvation of Athens. Because when the Persians return, the Athenians won’t be able to fight them on land. They will be massively outnumbered. But with a strong enough navy, they just might have a chance.
Now, let’s change course for a moment and take stock of what was happening in Persia at this time. First of all, why hadn’t the Persians attacked yet?
Well, about a year after Marathon, king Darius began preparing for a large-scale invasion of Greece. He spent the next three years amassing an army. But, as luck would have it, Egypt decided to revolt in 486BC, and so Darius decided to use the army he had gathered to suppress that rebellion. And, as luck would further have it, he died before he could set out.
His son Xerxes then takes the throne and his first order of business is to suppress the Egyptian revolt. Which he does, but it takes a couple years, after which his army is tired. This is not a standing army. He has to send all these people back home to their villages and fields and families. But he still wants to complete his father’s mission of conquering Greece. So, he spends another four years raising a new army.
Thus, by sheer luck, the Greeks got ten years to prepare for the second invasion instead of the five years they would’ve had if Darius had lived and Egypt had remained subservient.
Ok, now back to the ekklesia of Athens and the debate about the silver of Laurion.
It’s hard for us today to appreciate just how radical Themistocles’ idea of building a navy was at the time. Because we think of Athens as a naval power. But that’s because of Themistocles. Before him, Athens had never had an exceptionally strong navy.
One of the many anecdotes about Themistocles that we find in Plutarch’s biography (which by the way is the main source we have for his life) says that when Themistocles was still a boy, his father took him one day for a walk along the southern coast of Athens. When they passed through Phaleron, which was the old port, Themistocles was struck by what he saw. On full display before him was the pitiful state of the Athenian navy. The old galleys, which hadn’t seen action in years and were not that many in number, lay rotting in the sand. (Plut. Them. 2.6)
The image left an indelible mark on the young man’s mind, and he later developed a vision that Athens could become a great power if it built a great navy. Which was a totally revolutionary idea. If you told anyone at that time that there would come a day when the power of Athens would surpass that of Sparta thanks almost entirely to its ships, they would think you’re crazy.
Which is probably why Themistocles was hesitant to propose in the ekklesia that the silver of Laurion be used to build a navy. They would think he’s crazy. First, they’d think he’s paranoid for believing the Persians were coming back. And they’d think he’s out of his mind for believing that, if they did, a navy would be the best defense against them.
Now I can imagine Themistocles at this time feeling a little bit like Cassandra in Greek Mythology. Cassandra was a Trojan princess and priestess, who had received from the gods both a gift and a curse. She had the gift of prophecy and the curse that no one ever believed her. She could see all the mistakes the Trojans were making which were going to get them killed. But no one believed her warnings, so she had to sit there, powerless, and watch them all seal their doom exactly as she foresaw it all happening.
I think what makes the story of Cassandra so powerful is that it speaks to something we all recognize in human nature. Which is that the truth often falls on deaf ears. A lot of times, people don’t want to hear it. And they will employ mental gymnastics in order to deny what you’re saying, like claiming you’re crazy.
When he was thinking about how to approach the debate about Laurion, Themistocles may or may not have called to mind the story of Cassandra, though he certainly knew it well. He also may have remembered the visit of Aristagoras to the Athenian assembly almost two decades earlier, which we talked about in the last episode, where that demagogue managed to set in motion an entire war that he wanted, not by telling the truth but by lying and employing rhetorical tricks.
Whatever avenue of deliberation he took, Themistocles arrived at a decision. He would not tell the truth. But he wouldn’t exactly lie either. He would tell the people what they needed to hear in order to get that damn navy that he’d been dreaming about for years finally built.
***musical jingle***
At that time, the island of Aegina, just south of Athens had perhaps the best navy in Greece. And the Aeginetans had been using it to cause the Athenians no small amount of trouble. There was a longstanding rivalry between the two poleis, Herodotus calls it an “undeclared war,” which included occasional raids on each other’s territory, and skirmishes at sea, with each side attempting to sabotage the other’s maritime commercial interests.
Let’s just say, the Athenians really didn’t like the Aeginetans, and vice versa. And Themistocles decided to harness that hatred and exploit it for his purpose. He was going to propose that the Athenians build a navy, but he would be careful not to make any mention of Persia. Instead, he would use Aegina as his boogeyman.
What exactly did he say in his speech? We have no idea. But I think it’s fun to speculate. Here’s how I imagine it going down.
In the days before he addressed the people, I bet he spoke privately with a few powerful allies in his faction. Maybe some of them owed him a favor. Maybe others were merchants whose ships were often harassed by the Aeginetans and therefore were ready to support any plan against Aegina. Either way, he made sure that going into the debate he had a quorum of powerful supporters who promised to support his motion and to get their followers to enthusiastically cheer when Themistocles spoke. Again, I want to be clear, this is not in our sources. This is just some fun speculation.
The next day I imagine Themistocles finally getting up in the assembly to speak. Everyone hushes, because they’ve been wondering, Why hasn’t he spoken up yet, and what’s he going to say now about the silver?
But he looks distracted, upset even. And he says, “Men of Athens, please excuse me if I seem disturbed right now. But on my way here I ran into my good friend Timarchus and was reminded of his misfortune at the hands of the Aeginetans.
“Timarchus, won't you stand up so they can see you.” A man gets up, and on his face can be seen deep wrinkles and the signs of a hard life.
“As some of you know, Timarchus here is an Athenian hero. He fought bravely at Marathon and elsewhere. If there was any justice in this world, he would be enjoying a comfortable retirement right now. And yet, last month his ship was attacked by the Aeginetans and sunk off the coast of Sounion. Not only is he now a ruined man, but several of his friends and fellow sailors died. And I ask you, how long are we Athenians supposed to endure this abuse?” He pauses. There’s grumbling in the crowd. “I don't know about you but I've had enough.” “Yeah we've had enough too,” someone cries out. “In fact, I'm angry and I'm not going to take this anymore.” “Yeah, we're angry too, Themistocles!” someone else yells.
“We've been enduring this abuse for over two decades. For twenty years our politicians have been promising to make our ships safe from the Aeginetans. What do we think of those broken promises, Athenians?” “Boo, boo,” goes the crowd.
“I say the time has come to give the Aeginetans what they deserve.” The crowd erupts in enthusiastic applause.
“But how do you propose we do that? asks someone, perhaps planted by Themistocles to ask that exact question.
“Funny you should ask that, Diodorus. Because the answer has just been given to us as a gift from heaven.” Dramatic pause. Everybody’s eyes widen with curiosity.
“What if I told you all that we could use the funds from Laurion to teach the Aeginetans a lesson once and for all.”
“But how, Themistocles?” perhaps another planted question.
“The only reason they’ve been able to get away with their crimes for so long is that they have the finest navy in all of Greece. We are no match for them at sea. But we could be. We have been praying for justice for decades. We’ve sent offerings to the god at Delphi asking for help. Well, the silver of Laurion is the answer to our prayers. We can use it to build two hundred warships, and Aegina will never bother us ever again.”
Murmurs rush through the crown. Some people cheer. Some members of the other faction boo.
“Now, I know what you’re thinking,” Themistocles continues. “You're thinking about that check in the mail every month for a couple hundred bucks. But ask yourselves honestly, Is it really going to make a difference in your lives? Especially when the price of goods is so high, because the Aeginetans sabotage our ships. Wouldn't you rather see affordable prices in the market and see the Aeginetans humiliated finally for all their crimes against us?”
At this point not everyone is convinced. But, as if on cue, a large portion of the crowd starts chanting, “Down with Aegina! Down with Aegina! Down with Aegina!” The chanting starts to spread like a contagion. Just as in a stadium when the whole crowd roars and before you know it you find yourself also cheering as well, so too the assembly is overcome with emotion. Pandemonium ensues and they vote in favor of Themistocles' motion.
Athens is getting a brand new navy.
Part 3: Thermopylae and Artemisium
Let’s fast-forward now three years. The Athenians have one hundred brand new triremes, which are the most advanced warships of the day. They also repair and upgrade their older vessels, which brings the total number of their fleet to 180 ships. That’s by far the largest navy in Greece. The Persians of course have way more ships than that. But I would argue that the Athenians at this time have the most high-tech navy in the world, because these are brand new vessels crafted with the latest technology. I mean, these triremes are lean, mean, ramming machines. They are sleek, fast, agile, and deadly. The historian Paul Cartledge likens a trireme to a guided missile. (Democracy: A Life, p. 81)
Getting those triremes built was the first great achievement of Themistocles’ career. But he also accomplished another major political feat shortly thereafter. One of the peculiar features of Athenian democracy was the institution of ostracism. Every year, the citizens had the opportunity to vote to expel one person from the city for 10 years. Now, Themistocles manages to get the people to ostracize Aristides. With his chief rival out of the way, Themistocles becomes the most powerful politician in Athens.
Meanwhile, Xerxes finally launches his long-awaited amphibious invasion of Greece. He has a land army that’s going to march along the coast and down into Greece. And he has a massive navy that’s going to mirror that army off the coast and provide logistical support as well as another way to attack the Greeks. Herodotus gives the total number of Persian forces, both on land and at sea, at around 2.5 million fighting men, plus another 2 ½ million non-combatants, so over 5 million people in total, which is impossibly high. No scholar today buys that number. Current scholarly guestimates put the land forces at somewhere between 40k and 90k fighting men, and the navy between 300 and 600 warships, which would mean between 50 and 100 thousand rowers. If you do the math, the total number of fighting men in these estimates ranges between 90 and 190k. And when you add non-combatants, like cooks, engineers, attendants, servants, you’re looking at an absolute minimum of 150k people, which is gargantuan. It’s more than twice the size of the army that Alexander used 150 years later to conquer Persia. And it’s bigger than any fighting force ever assembled by the Roman empire.
In order to get his land forces over to Europe, Xerxes has two impressive pontoon bridges built across the Hellespont – the narrow strait that separates Europe from Asia. And ironically it’s the Greeks of Ionia with their ship-building know-how who construct those pontoon bridges.
So, the Persians make the cross over to Thrace, then start marching west, towards Macedonia in northern Greece.
At this point most of the northern Greek states have already submitted to Persia. But in central and southern Greece there are still well over 30 poleis that are determined to fight. Among them, Sparta is of course the most powerful. And Athens isn’t too far behind.
In Athens, there is a vote to see who will be the commander in charge of the Athenian war effort. Plutarch tells us that, ahead of the vote, it was looking like Themistocles would come in second place. The guy who was on track to win the most votes was very ambitious. But Themistocles considered him incompetent and thought, if this guy takes over, all is lost.
So, what does he do? What would a Machiavellian politician do? Well, he bribes the guy. He says, “Look, I’ll pay you all this money if you just get out of the race.” And the guy accepts. So, Themistocles wins the election.
As soon as he becomes commander, he proposes to the assembly that the Athenians send their brand new navy to start harassing the Persians from the sea before they get to Greece. He says, Why wait till they are threatening our homes? Let’s take the fight to them far away from here and see what damage we can do.
But the people don’t like this idea. They vote against it.
Meanwhile, Themistocles is meeting with the leaders of Sparta and other poleis to discuss what their combined strategy should be.
Given the far superior number of Persians, the obvious strategy on the Greek side is to try to defend choke-points in the path of the Persians – in other words, narrow passes where the Persians would have to funnel through and would not have space to deploy even a fraction of their entire army.
The most famous choke point is of course Thermopylae, which we’ll get to in a bit. But before the Persians reached Thermopylae, there was another choke point further north called Tempe, right between Macedonia and Thessaly. Thessaly at this point still had not submitted to Persia.
So, Themistocles and his colleagues from Sparta start leading a Greek force ten thousand strong to block the vale of Tempe. However, before they even get there, they are informed by King Alexander 1 of Macedonia, who had already submitted to Persia but secretly wanted his fellow Greeks to win, that Tempe was not safe, since there was a detour that the Persians could and would use. Hearing this news, the Greeks cancel the expedition and return home.
The next choke point along the Persians’ route is Thermopylae, a narrow strip of land between the sea and the mountains. Initially, King Leonidas of Sparta leads a force of about 7000 Greeks to hold the pass. And I should say here that the term “king” is a bit of a misnomer, because Sparta is a constitutional aristocracy. So he’s not a king in our sense of the word. He’s not a monarch. He’s more of a figurehead in charge of military campaigns.
Anyway, for two full days of fighting, Leonidas and his 7000 troops hold their ground against the Persians, who, as mentioned, likely numbered between 40-90 thousand combatants. After the second day, a local resident named Ephialtes turns traitor and shows the Persians a path around the mountains, in exchange for gold. When Leonidas learns that they will soon be encircled, he dismisses all the other Greeks except for his 300 Spartans, for whom retreat is unthinkable. It’s against Spartan law. But the soldiers from a town called Thespiae also refuse to leave, and there are 700 of them. And the Spartans have with them 900 helots, or slaves, who also stay to fight, and do so willingly it seems, because they have a chance to surrender in the last moment but do not. So, the famous last stand at Thermopylae was not actually of 300 but of 1900 Greeks who fought till the death.
***musical jingle***
One of the reasons why the Greeks had chosen to defend Thermopylae was that the sea route for the Persian fleet also came to a choke point not far off the coast from there. It would have made no sense to block Thermopylae if the Persian navy could just sail around it and deposit thousands of troops behind the Greek defensive line.
So, while Leonidas was leading the 3000 Greeks to Thermopylae, Themistocles led an allied fleet of warships up the coast of Greece to a place 25 miles northeast of Thermopylae called Artemisium, which is a narrow strait between the island of Euboea and the Greek mainland that the Persian armada would have to squeeze through.
When the Greek fleet gets there, the Spartan commander named Eurybiades starts giving orders like he’s the boss. And the Athenians are like, wow wow wow, slow down tiger, who put you in charge?
And Eurybiades is like, “Uh, I’m the Spartan commander. Duh.”
The Athenians say, “Yea but we provided the largest contingent ships, and this whole operation was Themistocles’ idea.”
And Eurybiades says, “Sparta is in charge of the Greek resistance. Not Athens”
But the Athenians are like, “Sorry, the only commander we recognize is Themistocles.”
Now, if you were Themistocles, what would you do in this situation?
See, this is one of those moments that really adds complexity to his character and seems to differentiate him from the likes of Alcibiades or Julius Caesar or even Napoleon. Because it seems that, while he was just as shrewd and machiavellian as them, he was also capable of taking a back seat once in a while in the service of a higher goal.
In this case, seeing that the expedition was in danger of falling apart due to dissension, Themistocles relinquished his command and urged the Athenians to obey the Spartan admiral. Thus, the unity of the fleet was preserved.
When the Persian navy finally appeared on the horizon. And the Greeks saw an endless swarm of ships as far as the eye could see, Eurybiades was like, “Screw this, let’s go home. Thermopylae is going to be lost anyway. Let’s go to the Peloponnese and regroup there.”
And Themistocles must have been thinking, “Crap, why did I give up my command to this guy?” But then he gets some unexpected visitors. Delegates from a few poleis on the island of Euboea arrive and seek an audience with him. The Euboeans really didn’t want to be conquered by the Persians, perhaps remembering the fate of Eretria on their island, which the Persians had razed to the ground ten years earlier. These delegates approach Themistocles’ and say, “Please don’t leave. We need you to fight. And we have brought bags of money to give you if you agree to stay and give battle.
So, what does Themistocles do? He accepts the money. And he then uses it to bribe Eurybiades in turn to stay and fight, which works. The Greek fleet prepares for battle.
***musical jingle***
The Battle of Artemisium happened over the same three days that fighting at Thermopylae took place. On the first day, the vanguard of the Persian fleet arrived, saw the Greek ships, and sailed forth to attack them immediately.
In hindsight, that was a bad idea. The Greeks had already been there for some time. They were familiar with the topography and the currents and had ample time to come up with a strategy.
But hindsight is always 20/20. At the time, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Because there had only ever been one previous major naval engagement between Greeks and Persians. That was the Battle of Lade during the Ionian revolt, in which the combined fleet of the Ionian Greeks was decisively defeated by a Persian fleet composed of Phoenician, Egyptian, Cilician, and Cypriot ships.
So, at Artemisium, the Persian navy had every reason to think they could quickly destroy the smaller Greek fleet that came to meet them.
Now, I say smaller Greek fleet, but it wasn’t small by any stretch. By the third day of the battle, when the Greeks get some reinforcements, they have 280 ships, according to Herodotus – a number accepted by most modern scholars – which would put the total number of rowers and marines involved at around fifty thousand. Almost half of those ships and men were Athenian.
The Persians had 1200 ships according to Herodotus. And while some scholars accept that number, most of them doubt there could have been more than 600 warships, which is still massive and would have meant a force of over 100,000 sailors and marines. The Persian fleet was drawn from the various coastal sea-faring peoples of the Persian Empire – the Egyptians, Phoenecians, Carians, Lycians, Cilicians, and the Greeks of Ionia.
On the first day, as I said, the Persians give battle as soon as they encounter the Greeks. But the Greeks are well prepared. They have various prearranged signals to coordinate their movements. And they surprise the Persians by sinking or capturing thirty of their ships while sustaining minimal losses. That night, a violent storm does serious damage to the Persian Fleet, much of which is still out at sea, while the Greek position is well protected from the storm.
On day two, the Persians do not give battle. This is the second devastating storm they’ve endured in the past weeks and they spend the day repairing their ships and planning their strategy. Even so, the Greeks manage to capture a small number of Persian ships that somehow get separated from the main fleet.
So, two days in a row, the Greeks are doing surprisingly well, and Mother Nature is helping them in no small measure. On the third day, the Persians give battle. And this time they are well prepared. The fighting is much more intense than on the first day. And both sides suffer immense losses, with each losing about 100 ships. That’s about 20,000 casualties on each side.
Late in the day, the Greeks get the news that Thermopylae has fallen. With the Persian land army advancing past Thermopylae, there is no longer any reason for the fleet to continue its blockade at Artemisium. And given their heavy losses, they can’t really afford to stay anyway. So, they leave and regroup off the coast of Athens.
Technically speaking, the Battle of Artemisium was a Persian victory. However, the ancient Greek historians believed (and I think they’re right) that this engagement was a moral victory for the Greeks. It gave them much needed practice in naval warfare, an opportunity to learn Persian naval tactics, and it taught them that the Persian navy was not invincible. All of these factors would be of crucial importance in their next – and much more consequential – naval confrontation with the Persians.
Here’s how Plutarch puts it:
“Though the fights between the Greeks and Persians in the straits of Euboea were not so important as to make any final decision of the war, yet the experience which the Greeks obtained in them was of great advantage. For thus, by actual trial and in real danger, they found out that neither number of ships nor riches and ornaments nor boasting shouts nor foreign songs of victory were in anyway terrifying to men that knew how to fight.” (tr. modified)
Part 4: The Wooden Wall
It’s hard to imagine the fear and commotion that must have filled the streets of Athens when the news arrived that the Persians were marching towards their city, with nothing standing in the way to prevent them.
Around that time, the Athenians sent an urgent embassy to Delphi to ask the oracle what the they should do. We mentioned her reply at the beginning of this episode.
The full oracular pronouncement she uttered is quite lengthy and in poetic language and would take too long to analyze right now. But in short, she said, “why are you even still here, you doomed wretches, flee to the ends of the earth as fast as you can. Your city and temples will be completely destroyed.” The Athenian envoys emerge from the temple utterly crushed by this prophesy.
I hate to sound repetitive, but what would you do in their shoes if given such a hopeless prophecy? What the envoys do next strikes me at least as both charming and hilarious.
Rather than taking this message home, they go back into the temple and basically say, “Hey, that was really harsh what you said. Could you please give us a better prophecy? Pretty please?”
And the priestess obliges. Once again, the full thing is 12 lines long in dactylic hexameter, but the gist of it is contained in two riddles: 1) Your entire city will be destroyed except what is protected by the wooden wall, whatever that means. And 2) Divine Salamis will bring death to women’s sons.
The Athenian envoys thank the priestess for this marginally less terrifying prophecy and bring the message back to Athens.
As you can imagine, a vigorous debate breaks out in the assembly about what the hell that prophesy means. Herodotus writes [quote]:
“Among the various opinions which were expressed there were two mutually exclusive interpretations. Some of the older men supposed that the prophecy meant that the Acropolis would escape destruction, on the grounds that the Acropolis was fenced in the old days with a thorn-hedge, and that this was the “wooden wall” of the oracle; but others thought that by [wooden wall] the god indicated the ships, and they urged in consequence that everything should be abandoned in favour of the immediate preparation of a fleet.”
Themistocles of course was part of the second group, who thought the wooden wall was the fleet that he had built exactly for this purpose. But there was one problem for him and his allies in this, which was the last part of the prophecy, where it said, “Divine Salamis, you will bring death to women’s sons.” Salamis is an island just south of Athens, that is so close to the shore that it was part of Athenian territory. The oracle clearly meant that many men would die at Salamis. The question was, who were these men?
The local seers and soothsayers in Athens interpreted this to mean that the Athenians would die in a sea battle at Salamis.
Here’s how Herodotus explains what happened next [quote]:
“[Themistocles] now came forward and declared that there was an important point in which the professional interpreters were mistaken. If, he maintained, the disaster referred to was to strike the Athenians, it would not have been expressed in such mild language. ‘Hateful Salamis’ would surely have been a more likely phrase than ‘divine Salamis’... On the contrary, the true interpretation was that the oracle referred not to the Athenains but to their enemies. The ‘wooden wall’ did, indeed, mean the ships; so he advised his countrymen to prepare at once to meet the invader at sea.
“The Athenians found Themistocles’ explanation of the oracle preferable to that of the professional interpreters, who had not only tried to dissuade them from preparing to fight at sea but had been against offering opposition of any sort. The only thing to do was, according to them, to abandon Attica altogether and seek a home elsewhere.” (Hdt. VII 143)
It’s a testament to Themistocles’ persuasive powers that he managed to win this debate about a prophecy with the local professional prophets all united against him. Once the debate was settled, the evacuation began. And the ships that had now returned from Artemisium helped to transport the women and children to Aegina and Troezen, while the men of fighting age went with their warships to Salamis.
Here’s how Plutarch describes that scene:
“When the whole city of Athens were going on board, it afforded a spectacle worthy of both pity and admiration, to see them thus send away their fathers and children before them, and, unmoved with their cries and tears, pass over into the island of [Salamis]. But that which stirred compassion most of all was, that many old men, by reason of their great age, were left behind; and even the tame domestic animals could not be seen without some pity, running about the town and howling, wishing to be [taken] along with their masters…among which it is reported that Xanthippus, the father of Pericles, had a dog that would not endure to stay behind, but leaped into the sea, and swam along by the galley's side till he came to the island of Salamis, where he fainted away and died. And that spot in the island, which is still called the Dog's Grave, is said to be his.”
***musical jingle***
Now we finally get to the scene with which we opened this episode. The Persians are burning Athens to the ground. And the Athenians together with the entire allied fleet are looking at the columns of smoke from their warships in the strait between Athens and Salamis.
The Greek admirals now hold a meeting to discuss their plan. Due to the power of Sparta, Eurybiades is once again given the command. Like Sparta, most of the remaining allies are also from the Peloponnese, southwest of Athens. And the next defendable choke-point on the Persian land route is the Isthmus of Corinth – a narrow strip of land connecting the Peloponnese to the rest of Greece.
So, the Spartans and other Peloponnesians don’t really see any reason to stick around Athens. Athens seems lost. They can literally see it burning. Eurybiades wants to fall back closer to the Isthmus and replicate the earlier strategy of holding the choke-point on land while the navy tries its best to block the Persian fleet.
Themistocles protests against this proposal during the meeting, and Eurybiades is offended that his authority has been questioned publicly that he raises his staff as if to hit Themistocles. And Themistocles says, “Strike me if you will, but listen!”
Plutarch reports that Eurybiades is impressed with Themistocles’ composure and listens to him, finding his arguments reasonable. However, the other commanders are not convinced and take turns taunting and insulting Themistocles. One of them says, “you don’t even have a city right now, bro, and you’re telling us what we should do.” To which, Themistocles says something to the effect of, “Our city is not the buildings that are burning right now. Our city is the fleet of two hundred trieremes that you see before you. The most powerful navy in Greece. And if you abandon us now, we will take our ships and sail far away from here and build ourselves a new, beautiful and free city while you deal with the Persians on your own.”
This scares the hell out of Eurybiades and the other Greeks. So they agree not to leave just yet. But Themistocles doesn’t just want them to stay. He wants them to risk everything in an immediate battle. Why? Well, he must have had many reasons, some of which we’ll never know. But I think an important consideration is that the Greeks at this moment have a larger fleet gathered together in one place than they will ever have again in the conceivable future. At this moment all the allied ships are there near Salamis. As time goes on, its size can only decrease. With every passing day, there is a chance that some polis or other will say, “you know what, this isn’t going to work, you guys. Let’s just give in to the Persians and save our skin.” So for Themistocles the only chance to hit the Persians with a united and large fleet is right now.
But, the meeting with Eurybiades has shown him that most of the other commanders are not on his side. He’s not going to get a battle by convincing them. They agreed to stick around for now because of his threat of leaving them. But they did so grudgingly. To get what he wants, he’s going to have to do what he usually does: employ deception and subterfuge.
That night, he sends his most trusted slave in a small boat to secretly go over to the Persians and deliver the following message to their commanders [quote]:
“I am the bearer of a secret communication from the Athenian commander, who is a well-wisher to your king and hopes for a Persian victory. He has told me to report to you that the Greeks are afraid and are planning to slip away. Only prevent them from slipping through your fingers, and you have at this moment an opportunity of unparalleled success. They are at daggers drawn with each other, and will offer no opposition – on the contrary, you will see the pro-Persians amongst them fighting the rest.” (Hdt. VIII 73)
Long story short, the Persians believe him, and spend the whole night quietly moving their navy to block both sides of the strait of Salamis in which the Greeks are anchored.
At daybreak, the Greeks are stunned to see the Persians closing in on them from both sides. And so they have no choice but to fight. Themistocles is getting the battle he wanted.
What ensues is probably the largest and fiercest naval battle in history up until that point.
The Greeks have about 375 ships, which means up to 74,000 sailors and marines. And the Persians, by modern estimates, have at least 400 ships with upwards of 80,000 men on board. And the Persian number might be significantly higher than that.
Over the course of a full day of brutal fighting, the Greeks score an astonishing and decisive victory. In the strait of Salamis, the numerical superiority of the Persian fleet becomes a liability, as their many ships crowd through the narrow passage. As at Artemisium, the topography and the currents are familiar to the Greeks but completely unknown to the invaders. Moreover, Herodotus notes that since the Persians spend the previous night furtively moving into position, they haven’t slept at all when the battle begins and are quickly exhausted. Finally, thanks to Artemisium, the Greeks have had practice in coordinating their maneuvers and signaling to each other across the water, while the various components of the Persian fleet, which are manned by people who speak totally different languages, do neet seem as able to coordinate and cooperate in the heat of battle.
According to Herodotus, Xerxes watches the battle from a throne he has installed on a hill in Athens. He is expecting a glorious show. Instead, he has to sit there and watch his magnificent armada getting obliterated before his eyes.
All in all, the Greeks lose 40 ships, though many of the men are able to swim safely to shore because the land is so near. The Persians, on the other hand, lose 300 ships. Even if, say, ⅓ of the men are able to swim to the Athenian shore where the Persians are still in control, and that’s very generous, that’s still 40,000 men killed, drowned, or captured.
***musical jingle***
Historians widely agree that Salamis was one of the most important battles in history. It effectively ended Xerxes’ great invasion of Greece. Although part of his army did stay in Greece for another year, the great king himself quickly retreated with the majority of his forces back to the safety of Asia.
As a final though, I’d like to return to the question I opened the last episode with, which was, how much can the actions of individual people shape history? And I must confess here that I generally tend to be very suspicious of great man historiography. I think individual people, even so-called “great figures,” have a minimal effect on history. There are much greater forces at work.
But then you come across someone like Themistocles. And I can’t help but wonder, what would history be like if he hadn’t existed? How would things have played out if he hadn’t spurred the Athenians to build a fleet. How would things have played out if he hadn’t gotten the Greek navy to fight at Artemisium and gain experience and confidence there in confronting the Persian fleet. What would have happened if he hadn’t convinced the Athenians to evacuate their city and put their fate in their ships? And how would history look if he hadn’t tricked both the Greeks and Persians into fighting at Salamis?
I’ll leave you to ponder those questions. In the next episode, we will consider the aftermath of the Persian Wars, the rise of Athens as a superpower, and the tragic end of Themistocles’ life.
***END***