Papers of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (1.1882-1883)

THE BATTLE OF SALAMIS.

241

ment, which is commonly supposed to be an essential feature in the
account of Herodotus, is once admitted, the plan of the next day's
battle becomes very simple. The Greeks, who had spent the night
on shore at Salamis, would have embarked on their ships soon after
daybreak and formed their line in the bay of Salamis directly in the
face of the enemy; so that little would remain but for each of the
fleets to advance a few hundred yards and engage the opposite
enemy. According to this plan, Xerxes must have intended that his
long left wing should take no active part in the battle, and that the
Persian nobles shut up on Psyttaleia should remain idle spectators of
a distant conflict. As this night-movement is believed to be the
decisive stroke upon the success of which Xerxes risked his whole'
plan of attack, it becomes the fundamental question, to be settled
at the outset, whether it really took place, — whether, in short, the
Persian fleet entered the straits of Salamis at all before the morning
of the battle. Several objections to the supposed movement at once
suggest themselves.

1. The straits and bay of Salamis are very narrow at some points.
The passage between the shore of Attica and Psyttaleia is less than
4000 feet wide. The foot of Aegaleos is hardly 4500 feet from the
point of Salamis, and hardly 3500 feet from the island of St. George
in the bay north of the town. Moreover, this last passage is broken
by a large shoal,1 which must have been not only very dangerous in
night navigation, but also a serious obstruction to naval movements,
practically reducing the width of the channel here to about 1800
feet. Can we now believe that the Greek fleet was allowed to form
quietly in line of battle in the two passages last mentioned, in the
very face of the Persian fleet only a few hundred yards distant ? It
is worth remembering here that our eye-witness, Aeschylus, implies
that it was only after the Greeks had rowed forward from their first

the Persian fleet enter the straits on the morning of the clay before the battle :
Als es tagte, sah man auch schon von Phaleros her die feindliche Flotte heranru-
dern, ura sich am eleusinischen Strande den Griechen gegenuber zu lagern. See
also Cox's Hist, of Greece, I. 534, and especially the opposite map, with the sup-
posed positions of the two fleets marked.

1 This rocky shoal can hardly have been formed in recent times. Dr. II.
Lolling, Die RIeeretige von Salamis, p. 7 (in Hist. u. Phil. Aufsatze, Festgabe an
E. Curtitis, 18S4), recognizes the smaller of the Pharmacussae islands in this
" Klippe," and the larger in the adjacent island of St. George.