When Herodotus wrote his account of the Battle of Salamis, people were still alive who had fought in the battle or had heard their fathers talk about it. Herodotus, however, did not restrict himself to oral interviews with veterans and their children. He also had a written eyewitness account composed by the tragedian Aeschylus (Ion of Chios, BNJ 392, Fr. 7) for his play the Persae ("Men of Persia") which was performed only eight years (Arg. Pers.) after the battle in front of an audience which included thousands who had participated in the battle just as Aeschylus had.
While these circumstances do not mean that Aeschylus provided an absolutely accurate version of the battle, the presence in the audience of thousands of veterans who had been there set certain limits to any "artistic" reworking of the battle. Herodotus would have been remiss if he had not consulted this eyewitness account, and, fortunately, he very clearly did. In one passage Aeschylus wrote of how many ships the Persians had. A Persian messenger is speaking:
Xerxes - and I know it for a fact - had 1,000 ships, but in speed two hundred and seven were superior. . . (Pers. 341-343)
Did Xerxes have 1,000 ships (i. e., the 207 fast ships are included within the 1,000) or 1,207 ships in all? The statement is frustratingly ambiguous, but Herodotus, for reasons of his own, interpreted it as meaning 1,207 (VII 184). Its unroundness, incidentally, makes it certain that Herodotus was using Aeschylus, since no two people could possibly have hit upon that figure independently. Other ancient commentators, incidentally, read the passage in Aeschylus as meaning "1,000" (e. g., Plato, Laws, 669; Ctesias, BNJ 688, Fr. 13.30).
Yet Herodotus did not use Aeschylus slavishly; his figures for the Greeks' fleet, for example, differ markedly from Aeschylus' (Aes. Pers. 337-340; Hdt. VIII 42-48). For Herodotus had many other sources for the battle - and not just veterans' orally recounted memories. On the island of Salamis itself various inscriptions were displayed for all to see - for example, that which recounted the Corinthians' contribution during the battle (IG I3 1143) and to which Herodotus may well refer at VIII 94. Throughout Greece stood additional inscriptions for example, that of the Corinthian general Adei-mantus who, on his tomb, spoke of his participation in the battle (e. g., Plut. On the Malice of Herodotus, p. 870). Each little community in Greece, insofar as it had taken part in the great collective effort to repel the Persian invader, had its own monument to the glorious dead (for Megara, see Fornara, Nr. 60). The inscriptions on these monuments commonly contained historically useful information - see also Box 12.1 for another such memorial to the fallen of later wars and consider its importance for reconstructing events of the 450s bc.
With Salamis the campaigning season of 480 ended (Hdt. VIII 109). The rump of the Persian fleet sailed across the Aegean to Cyme (Hdt. VIII 130); Xerxes returned to Persia (Hdt. VII 113-117); and Mardonius, whom he left behind as commander, went into winter quarters in Boeotia (Hdt. VIII 113).
The next year the Greeks dispatched the Persian land forces, as it turned out, easily enough. In the spring the Lacedaemonians, under Pausanias (regent for Pleistoanax, Leonidas’ underage son) marched northwards from their position south of the Isthmus (Hdt. IX 10), some ten thousand strong, with Spartiates and Perioeci in roughly equal numbers. All the members of the anti-Persian alliance contributed however many they could. The total came to 38,700 hoplites (Hdt. IX 27-28). Herodotus’ somewhat confused account of the battle (Hdt. IX 47-65) precludes detailed reconstruction, but, as at Marathon, the Greek hoplite proved his superiority over the Persian bowman. In the early stages of the battle, the Greeks did suffer heavy losses to arrow fire (Hdt. IX 61), but once the hoplites came to close quarters the battle quickly became a rout.
The comparative ease with which the Greeks won at Plataea perhaps suggests that they need not have been so cautious initially. Yet one must reckon with the effects of Salamis on both sides - sapping the Persians’ morale while boosting the Greeks’. Additionally, after Salamis it became easier to persuade more states to send troops to fight the Persians. This bolstered the Greeks’ numbers, whereas the Persians may well have been steadily losing troops owing to attrition, desertion, and Xerxes’ departure with some men. The situation in 479 may have differed radically from that of 480.
The Persians were now in full-scale retreat even if mopping-up operations would go on for some time. Those operations belong, more properly, however to an account of the Pentecontaetia (see chap. 12) since a growing dissension between the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians characterizes them - a dissension which would lead to the establishment of an Athenian-led alliance in the place of one led by the Lacedaemonians. Moreover, both for the Greeks and for the Persians the battles of Salamis and Plataea marked an epoch.
For the Persian Empire, the “Greek Wars” were the last known attempt at major expansion. Its future wars would be about the suppression of rebellions or the warding off of invaders. From this moment forwards the empire was mostly concerned with maintaining itself in its existing boundaries; and it did so for another century and a half until Alexander the Great conquered it.
For the Greeks, on the other hand, the “Persian Wars” consolidated a nascent nationalism. Many Greek states had cooperated to defeat the Persians - and talk arose of how a “Greek” army (Hdt. IX 30) alongside of the “Greeks’” fleet (e. g., Hdt. VIII 1) had waged a “Greek” war (Thuc. I 128). It encouraged reflection on who “Greeks” were and what made them different. Herodotus’ Histories from a certain point of view are nothing other than an extended reflection on a definition of “Greekness.” By continually describing non-Greeks’ customs throughout his work, Herodotus slowly circumscribes “Greekness.” Such reflection took on concrete form as well. A “Greek” war ought by rights to be waged on behalf of all “Greeks” - including those in Asia Minor and on
Cyprus who currently stood under Persian rule and had done so, the Ionian revolt notwithstanding, for six or seven decades. That issue would, however, remain unsettled until the time of Alexander the Great.
World History
