Salamis Turns Tide: Greeks Sink Persian Fleet

The Greek fleet, outnumbered and cornered in the narrow strait between the island of Salamis and the Attic mainland, destroyed the Persian navy on September 20, 480 BC, in the most consequential naval battle of the ancient world. Roughly 370 Greek triremes, fighting in waters too confined for the larger Persian fleet to maneuver, rammed and sank an estimated 200 to 300 enemy vessels while King Xerxes watched the disaster unfold from a golden throne erected on the shore. The victory at Salamis saved Greece from Persian conquest and preserved the independent city-states that would produce the foundations of Western philosophy, democracy, drama, and science. Xerxes had invaded Greece in the spring of 480 BC with an army and navy of staggering size, the ancient sources claim over a million soldiers and 1,200 warships, though modern estimates reduce these figures considerably. The Spartans had fallen at Thermopylae, Athens had been evacuated and burned, and the Greek alliance was fracturing under the pressure of imminent annihilation. The Peloponnesian states wanted to withdraw behind a wall across the Isthmus of Corinth. Themistocles, the Athenian commander, argued that the fleet was Greece’s only hope. Themistocles lured the Persians into battle through a calculated deception. He sent a slave to Xerxes with a message claiming that the Greek fleet was planning to scatter and that an immediate attack would trap them. Xerxes, eager for a decisive engagement, ordered his fleet into the strait during the night. At dawn, the Persian ships found themselves crowded into a channel barely a mile wide, their numerical advantage neutralized by the confined waters. The heavier Greek triremes, crewed by experienced rowers who knew the local currents and tides, attacked the disordered Persian line. The battle devolved into a chaotic melee in which Persian ships collided with each other as they tried to advance, retreat, or maneuver in the narrow waters. By afternoon, the Persian fleet was broken. Xerxes withdrew to Asia Minor with the bulk of his army, leaving a force under General Mardonius that was defeated at Plataea the following year. Salamis ensured that Greece remained free, and the century of cultural achievement that followed, including the construction of the Parthenon, the tragedies of Sophocles, the philosophy of Socrates, and the birth of Athenian democracy, unfolded in the space that victory at Salamis created.