The Persians brought to Greece the largest army the Greeks had ever seen. Even before Herodotus many had speculated as to the size of this enormous host. Herodotus himself quotes an inscription displayed at the battlefield of Thermopylae:
Four thousands here from Pelops' Land
Against three millions once did stand.
(Hdt. VII 228; trans. after de Selincourt)
(Pelop's Land is the Peloponnese; that is to say, 4,000 Peloponnesians stood among the Greek troops at Thermopylae to hold the pass against the Persians.) Herodotus had various other such written sources for the numbers on both sides. Thus, at Sparta an inscription recorded by name each of the three hundred Spartiates who fell in the famous last stand at Thermopylae (Paus. III 14,1).
Meanwhile, another source of Herodotus' - evidently a written one again - purported to give the numbers for the Persians at that point in time when they crossed the Hellespont - at the impressive total of 1,700,000 (Hdt. VII 60; VII 184). That figure conflicts with the even more wildly inflated figure in the epigram at Thermopylae quoted above. Herodotus attempted to reconcile the two figures with a series of mostly dubious assumptions at VII 184-185. By counting the fleet with the army and by adding some 300,000 infantry between the Hellespont and Thermopylae, Herodotus raised the total from 1,700,000 to 2,641,610 which was close enough to the 3,000,000 in the epigram.
Despite Herodotus - who took both the epigram as well as the other source seriously -, both figures (3,000,000 and 1,700,000) are obviously wild guesses. Yes, the Persian host appeared enormous, but so large an army was, first, an utter impractical-ity and, second, could not possibly have lost to a Greek force at Plataea which numbered a mere 38,700 hoplites (Hdt. IX 29).
As the Greeks had no doubt hoped, the Persians at Cape Sepias - despite outnumbering the Greeks opposite - hesitated to attack. The weather, too, worked in their favor for the Persians also lost a number of ships in a storm (Hdt. VII 188). At this point the Persians gambled. Wary of meeting the Greeks at Artemisium in a straightforward sea battle, they opted to send a squadron around the eastern coast of Euboea. This squadron would then sail up the strait. The plan evidently was then to launch a concerted attack from two directions on the Greek fleet (Hdt. VIII 6-7). The Greeks were, in fact, reckoning with the possibility, since an Athenian contingent had remained near southern Euboea (Hdt. VIII 14) - so the gamble was not reckless, but calculated. Unaware of the departure of that squadron, the Greeks at Artemisium now attempted to provoke the Persians to battle by attacking (Hdt. VIII 10). The weather, moreover, went hard against the Persians again, and the entire Euboean squadron went down in a catastrophic storm off the “Hollows of Euboea” - probably a particularly dangerous if unfortunately unidentifiable stretch of coastline. The same storm buffeted the Persian fleet to the north of Euboea as well (Hdt. VIII 12-13). After additional skirmishes, the Persian fleet finally did attempt a straightforward battle against the Greeks. Herodotus describes the ensuing battle as a closely run affair, but at the end of the battle the Persians had failed to dislodge the Greeks from their position at Artemisium (Hdt. VIII 14-18). The naval arm of the Greeks’ forces had fought the invaders to a standstill.
Where the fleet had failed, the Persian army, however, succeeded. Although the Persians could not push through the pass at Thermopylae, they learned about the narrow track which ran around the pass (Hdt. VII 213); and slowly they sent small detachments along that path during the night (Hdt. VII 217). The Phocian troops, whom the Greeks’ commander, the Lacedaemonian king Leonidas, had sent to guard against this eventuality, failed in their task (Hdt. VII 218). At dawn on the third day of the fighting at Thermopylae, Leonidas learned that a Persian army was on the Greeks’ side of the pass and that he would soon be surrounded. He ordered the bulk of the army to retreat while this was still an option. He himself with 300 Spartiates as well as 1,100 unsung Boeotians from Thespiae and Thebes remained behind (Hdt. VII 219-222 with 202) - possibly to cover the retreat of the rest.
The legend which arose around the last stand of the 300 erased whatever the truth may have been. The famous Thermopylae epigram best encapsulates the legend:
Go tell the Spartans, passer-by,
Obeying orders, here we lie. (Hdt. VII 228)
Because Leonidas’ orders were to hold the pass, he himself - so the legend goes - declined to retreat with the others; and the Spartiates with him preferred a fight to the death over the ignominy of retreat. The last stand at Thermopylae enshrined the legend of Sparta forever.
Meantime, the retreat of the army compelled the retreat of the fleet. The Greek fleet now sailed down the strait between Euboea and the mainland, rounded Attica, and took up its new position in the sound between Attica and the small Saronic island of Salamis. The land army moved to the south of the Isthmus, the next logical place at which to make a stand (Hdt. VIII 40). As at Thermopylae and Artemisium, fleet and land army took up corresponding positions. Salamis was, however, not so ideal as Artemisium had been; and the Greek commanders debated whether or not to move (Hdt. VIII 56sqq.).
The retreat from Thermopylae placed the inhabitants of central Greece into the same situation as the Thessalians after the decision not to hold the pass at Tempe. The Boeotians, with two exceptions (Thespiae and Plataea), submitted earth and water and in the next year fought on the Persian side (Hdt. VIII 50). The Phocians refused to submit, and Xerxes let his army plunder their land thoroughly (Hdt. VIII 32-33) with the exception of Delphi which Xerxes probably spared for his own reasons though legends soon arose about how the gods themselves had defended the oracle (Hdt. VIII 36-39). In Athens the assembly voted to evacuate the women and children to Troezen on the other side of the Saronic Gulf. All men who could fight went to the island of Salamis where the fleet lay (Hdt. VIII 41). The Persians entered a practically deserted Athens and, in revenge for the destruction of Sardis in 499, burned it to the ground (Hdt. VIII 51-55).
It was now autumn, and the campaigning season would soon be over. The Persian fleet had lost a fair number of ships to storms (both at Cape Sepias and off Euboea) and had come off second-best in the actual fighting at Artemisium when it had had more ships than now. For some reason, however, the Persians decided to risk all on an attack upon the Greek fleet at Salamis. The explanation which arose in the immediate aftermath of the battle was that Themistocles, the Athenian statesman and commander by whose counsels the Athenians had built 200 triremes and who had argued strenuously for keeping the fleet at Salamis, had sent a secret message to Xerxes to promise him, in effect, that what had happened at Lade would now happen again (Aes. Pers. 355-360; cf. Hdt. VIII 75). In any case Xerxes, in full confidence of a great victory, had a special viewing platform built on a hill overlooking the stretch of water where the battle would take place (Aes. Pers. 465-467; cf. Hdt. VIII 90). The assurances of dissension among the Greeks - if historical - must have been particularly persuasive.
The actual course of the battle is hotly contested among historians, but the result, fortunately, is clear-cut. The Greek fleet, far from dissolving as at Lade, held together and won a resounding victory as Xerxes, struck dumb, gazed on from his throne (Aes. Pers. 353-471; Hdt. VIII 84-95). Themistocles, the Athenian commander, was the hero of the day (Hdt. VIII 123-124). On the Persian side Herodotus, though clearly proud of the Greeks for their victory, cannot help but make much of Artemisia, the ruler at the time of Halicarnassus, his hometown, in addition to the islands of Cos, Calydna, and Nisyros. She, according to him, displayed greater skill and courage than the other captains in the Persian fleet (Hdt. VIII 87-88; cf. VII 99 and VIII 68).
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