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

THE BATTLE OF SALAMIS.

259

I have thus attempted to show how the passage of Herodotus
(viii. 85) which makes the battle begin with the Persian right "towards
Eleusis and the west" can be reconciled with the other authorities,
especially Aeschylus, without supposing that the Persian fleet was
arrayed before daybreak along the coast of Attica opposite Salamis.
Let it not be forgotten that, unless some such reconciliation can be
effected, we leave Herodotus in direct conflict with Aeschylus, whose
plain statements on so fundamental a matter of fact cannot reasonably
be questioned.

Diodorus relates that the Athenians put to flight the Phoenicians
and Cyprians on the Persian right, and that these were soon followed
in the panic by the Cilicians, Pamphylians, and Lycians, who were
next to them.1 But the Persian left wing made a vigorous resistance to
the Aeginetans and Megarians, until the Athenians returned from the
pursuit of the Phoenicians and Cyprians, whom they had driven to
the shore of Attica; then the rout of the Persian fleet became com-
plete. This is probably the point in the battle to which Herodotus
refers where he says that, when the barbarians were sailing in full
flight towards Phalerum, the xA.eginetans stationed themselves in the
narrows and destroyed Persian ships as they passed out: the Atheni-
ans, he adds, were attacking the enemy within the straits, and those
which escaped them fell into the hands of the Aeginetans." We must
suppose the Aeginetans to be near the eastern end of Psyttaleia, and
it was then that the battle raged fiercest about this island, as Plutarch
describes it.3 Herodotus confirms Diodorus again in viii. 90, where
he tells of certain Phoenicians, "whose ships had been destroyed,"
coming to Xerxes as he sat on Aegaleos during the battle, and
charging the Ionic Greeks with causing the Persian defeat by their
treachery. While they were in the king's presence, a brilliant exploit
of a Samothracian ship convinced Xerxes that the charge against his
Greek subjects was false and malicious, and he at once ordered the
heads of his Phoenician visitors to be cut off for their slanderous
story. These must have been some of the Phoenicians who had been
driven by the Athenians to the Attic shore and had found their way
to the seat of Xerxes. Diodorus, who says nothing of the visit to
Xerxes, says that the king ordered those Phoenicians who had been
chiefly responsible for the flight to lose their heads, and threatened

1 Diod. XI. 19. 2 Herod. VIII. 91. 3 Plut. Arist. 9.