Xerxes I c. See all related overviews in Oxford Reference ». A naval battle fought in the Aegean Sea during the Greek-Persian wars. Themistocles, the Greek commander, lured the Persian fleet of Xerxes, the Persian king, into the narrow waters between the island of Salamis and the mainland.
The outnumbered but nimbler and expertly handled Greek triremes took full advantage of the confusion engendered by the confined space to win a victory that offset the earlier reverses at Thermopylae and Artemisium.
View all reference entries ». View all related items in Oxford Reference ». Search for: 'battle of Salamis' in Oxford Reference ». All Rights Reserved. The battle The next morning possibly September 28, but the exact date is unknown , the Persians were exhausted from searching for the Greeks all night, but they sailed in to the straits anyway to attack the Greek fleet.
The Corinthian ships under Adeimantus immediately retreated, drawing the Persians further into the straits after them; although the Athenians later felt this was due to cowardice, the Corinthians had most likely been instructed to feign a retreat by Themistocles. Nevertheless none of the other Greek ships dared to attack, until one Greek trireme quickly rammed the lead Persian ship.
Havertown, UK: Oxbow Books, With more than a dozen contributors, this volume provides the data behind the summary Rankov presented in Morrison, et al.
Available online by subscription. Tilley, A. Oxford: Archaeopress, Whitehead, Ian. The number of triremes on each side is one of the most intractable problems historians face.
Commentators on Aeschylus, such as Garvie under Ancient Sources and Modern Commentaries , argue that in both disputed cases Aeschylus means to include the smaller figure in the larger one; that is, there were Greek and 1, Persian ships at the battle.
But did the Persians really outnumber the Greeks so heavily? Lazenby and Strauss accept larger numbers for the Persians at Salamis, perhaps — triremes, giving them a numerical advantage of close to But Wallinga accepts an original fleet of about 1, ships, intentionally undermanned so as to have room for the numerous captives Xerxes hoped to seize and deport; after losses, Xerxes still had more than at Salamis, a number that could be rounded to 1,, making the odds as high as Cawkwell, George L.
A concise treatment for scholars covering the entire history of Achaemenid warfare with Greeks, trying to see past the Hellenocentric perspective of most of the extant sources.
Hammond, N. Hammond, — Strauss, Barry S. Wallinga, H. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, Wallinga maintains that the factual information found in Aeschylus and Herodotus should be believed and explained rather than discounted.
The topography of the Salamis channel, in particular the identification of the island Psyttaleia on which Xerxes stationed troops in the expectation that it would be in the middle of the fighting, is critical for the interpretation of the battle. There are two claimants for Psyttaleia, championed by various scholars for more than a century. Perhaps the best representatives of the opposing views are Hammond and Pritchett together with Pritchett Neither author persuaded the other; more recent scholars tend to follow Pritchett.
About the only thing they agree on is that the water level has risen some five feet; at the time of the battle, the channel would have been narrower and shallower than it is today. They disagree on the location of Salamis town and the harbor for the Greek fleet. Hammond puts the acropolis of Salamis on the Kamatero peninsula between the Bays of Paloukia to the northwest and Ambelaki to the south, with the fleet in the Bay of Paloukia enfolding the island of Agios Georgios in the channel.
Hammond identified this island, Agios Georgios, with Psyttaleia; Pritchett preferred Lipsokoutali, a larger island outside the channel to the southeast, closer to the Persian fleet in the Bay of Phaleron. Lolos reports the discovery of a wall defining the northwest part of the Bay of Ambelaki, with two towers; Lolos argues that these finds show that the Greek fleet would have been based in the Bay of Ambelaki.
Wallace added the discovery of a cutting, approximately 1. Wallace suggested that this cutting was made for the base of a trophy for the battle; earlier travelers had seen blocks on Kynosoura that they speculated were the remains of this trophy, which is mentioned in ancient sources. Wallace also located the stones seen in the 19th century by Ludwig Ross, who speculated that they were the foundation of the trophy on Psyttaleia.
Lolos, Yannos G. Very brief report of the major finds of a three-year underwater survey project. Pritchett, W. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wallace, Paul W. According to Herodotus, the Athenian general Themistocles sent his slave Sicinnus to give a message to the Persian king on the night before the battle.
Aeschylus tells a similar story, though he names neither Themistocles nor Sicinnus, and some of the details differ, such as the time of day the messenger was sent. The message, according to Aeschylus, was that the Greeks were frightened and were going to try to escape that night.
Herodotus adds that the slave told the king that the Greeks were arguing with each other. In response, King Xerxes deployed his ships to block the southeastern end of the channel. According to Diodorus, he also sent ships round to block the exit on the other side of Salamis.
Every treatment of the battle takes a position on this tale of intrigue. Representative are Hignett , which doubts the veracity of the story; Lazenby , which defends it; and Wallinga , which argues that the story makes sense as a response to the Persian deployment in the afternoon, which the Greeks correctly interpreted as a dress rehearsal for an assault.
The messenger did not trick the Persians into attacking, which they already planned to do. A learned treatment, often skeptical of Herodotus, the source on whom Hignett relies most. Lazenby, who tries to understand the perspective of both sides, finds Herodotus the most credible source.
A provocative study based on the premise that the Persian high command was competent. Historians trying to reconstruct the battle itself have reached highly divergent conclusions. The Greeks withdrew into the bay, the Persians followed them up the Salamis channel, and the Greeks attacked as the Persians began to enter the bay, bottling them up in the strait. See Kromayer and Veith for a plan according to this interpretation. Hammond , in accordance with his identification of Psyttaleia with the island of Agios Georgios, puts the battle far inside the channel, in front of Agios Georgios.
See Kromayer and Veith for a plan illustrating this interpretation, which the authors favor. Skeptics find it hard to imagine the Persians moving into the channel without being detected and equally hard to think that inside the channel they could have heard the Greeks before they saw them, as Aeschylus says they did. Wallinga under Numbers suggests that the Persians sent their fast ships at dawn racing up the channel to surprise and cover the Greek fleet, with the rest of the Persian ships crowding in behind.
Burn and Lewis and Green maintain that the Greeks must have faked a withdrawal in order to lure the Persians into the channel. As the Corinthians and Athenians withdrew early in the morning toward Eleusis, the Persian fleet went after them; the Aeginetans and Megarians then charged out from Ambelaki Bay against the exposed Persian left wing.
Goodwin argued that the Persians did not enter the channel at all. Xerxes put men on the island of Psyttaleia expecting it to be in the path of the fighting, and the Persian fleet guarded the exit routes on both sides of Psyttaleia throughout the night. In the morning, the Persians advanced north of Psyttaleia, but before they passed the Kynosoura peninsula, the Greeks came out. The Persians heard them singing before they saw them, as Aeschylus says, and then the Greek right wing came into view as it rowed round Cape Kynosoura.
This interpretation deserves more positive attention than it has received since Grundy A revised version of the original publication, with a sound and sensible treatment of the battle, including a plan. History of the Art of War. Translated by Walter J. Renfroe Jr. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, Goodwin, William W. Green tells a good story, giving credence to later sources.
Grundy, G. London: John Murray, Kromayer, Johannes, and Georg Veith. The Atlas of Ancient Battlefields. Translated by Tristan Skupniewicz. A welcome translation of the Schlachten-Atlas zur antiken Kriegsgeschichte , a standard reference work since the original publication in — Rados, Constantin N.
La bataille de Salamine. Paris: Fontemoing et Cie, A venerable study by a naval historian who knew the topography. Still worth consulting. Numerous plans. During the night before the battle, Xerxes stationed some troops— of them, according to Pausanias 1.
Both Aeschylus and Herodotus say that Xerxes expected shipwrecked men to wash up on the island and deployed these soldiers to rescue their own men and kill their enemies. Instead, the Greeks killed them all after the battle. Scholars have treated this story with some skepticism. Marines normally included hoplites and archers.
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