galley of Pallene in Macedonia, commanded by a good soldier, Arminias. He was one of those who was doing his best to check the panic. Resolved that whoever else gave way he would sink rather than take to flight, he turned the prow of his trireme against the approaching enemy, and evading the ram of a Persian ship ran alongside of her. The intermingled oars broke like matchwood, and the two ships grappled. The battle had begun. Attacked on the other side by another of the ships of Asia, Arminias was in deadly peril. The sight of their comrade's courage and of his danger stopped the retirement of the Greeks. Their rowers were now straining every nerve to come to the rescue of the isolated trireme, and from shore to shore the two fleets met with loud outcry and the jarring crash of scores of voluntary or involuntary collisions.

All order was soon lost. The strait of Salamis was now the scene of a vast mêlée, hundreds of ships crowding together in the narrow pass between the island and the mainland. Themistocles in the centre with the picked ships of Athens was forcing his way, wedge-like, between the Phœnician and Ionian squadrons into the dense mass of the Persian centre. The bronze beaks ground their way into hostile timbers, oars were swept away, rowers thrown in confusion from their benches stunned and with broken limbs. Ships sank and drowning men struggled for life; the Asiatic archers shot their arrows at close quarters, the spearmen hurled their javelins; but it was not by missile weapons the fight was to be decided. Where the stroke of the ram failed, the ships were jammed together in the press, and men fought hand to hand on forecastles and upper decks. Here it was that the Greeks, trained athletes, chosen men in the prime of life, protected by their armour and relying on the thrust of the long and heavy spear, had the advantage over the Asiatics. Only their own countrymen of the Ionian squadron could make any stand against them, and the Ionians had to face the spears of Sparta, in the hands of warriors all eager to avenge the slaughter of Thermopylæ.

Some of these Ionian Greeks, fighting under the Persian standard, won local successes here and there in the mêlée. They captured or sank several of the Spartan triremes. One of the ships of Samothrace performed an exploit like that of Paul Jones, when with his own ship sinking under the feet of his crew he boarded and captured the "Serapis." A Greek trireme had rammed the Samothracian ship, tearing open her side; but as she went down her Persian and Ionian crew scrambled on board their assailant and drove the Greeks into the sea at the spear-point. It was noted that few of the Persian crews were swimmers. When their ships sank they were drowned. The Greeks were able to save themselves in such a disaster. They threw away shield, helmet, and spear, and swam to another ship or to the island shore.

This fact would seem to indicate that with the exception of those who manned the Ionian and Phœnician squadrons the crews of the Persian fleet were much less at home on the sea than the Greeks. And we know from the result of many battles, from Marathon to the victories of Alexander, that on land the Greek was a better fighting man than the Asiatic. The soldiers of the "Great King," inferior in fighting-power even on the land, would therefore find themselves doubly handicapped by having to fight on the narrow platforms floating on an unfamiliar element, and the sight of ships being sunk and their crews drowned would tend to produce panic among them. So the Greek wedge forced itself further and further into the mass of hostile ships, and in the narrow waters numbers could not tell. The Greeks were never at any given moment engaged with a superior force in actual hand-to-hand conflict, and they had sufficient ships behind them to make good any local losses. Such a battle could have only one result.

All order had been lost in the Persian fleet at an early stage of the fight. The rearward squadrons had pressed into the strait, and finding that in the crowded waters they were endangering each other without being able to take any effective part in the battle they began to draw off, and the foremost ships, pressed back by the Greek attack, began to follow them towards the open water. The whole mingled mass of the battle was drifting eastward. The movement left the island of Psytalia unprotected by the Asiatic fleet, and Aristides, the Athenian, who had been watching the fight from the shore of Salamis, embarked a force of spearmen on some light vessels, ferried them across to Psytalia and attacked its Persian garrison. They made a poor show of resistance, and to a man they were speared or flung over the rocks into the sea. The poet Æschylus, who was fighting as a soldier on one of the Athenian triremes, told afterwards, not in pity, but rejoicing at the destruction of his country's enemies, how the cries of the massacred garrison of Psytalia were heard above the din of the battle and increased the growing panic of the Persians.

Even those who had fought best in the Asiatic armada were now losing heart and taking to flight. Queen Artemisia, with her five galleys of Halicarnassus, had fought in the front line among the ships of the Ionian squadron. She was now working her way out of the mêlée, and in the confusion rammed and sank a Persian warship. Xerxes, watching the fight from his throne on the hillside, thought it was a Greek ship that the Amazon had destroyed and exclaimed: "This woman is playing the man while my men are acting like women!"

Two Persian ships in flight from the pursuing Greeks drove ashore at the base of Mount Ægaleos. Xerxes, in his anger at the disaster to his fleet, ordered the troops stationed on the beach to behead every officer and man of their crews, and the sentence was at once executed. The closing scene of the battle was, indeed, a time of unmitigated horrors, for while this massacre of the defeated crews was being carried out by the Persian guardsmen, the victorious Greeks were slaying all the fugitives who fell into their hands. The Admiral of the Persian fleet, Ariabignes, brother of Xerxes, was among the dead.

The pursuit was not continued far beyond the straits. The Greeks hesitated to venture into open waters where numbers might tell against them if the Persians rallied, and they drew back to their morning anchorage. The remnant of the Persian fleet anchored off the coast near Phalerum, the port of Athens, or took refuge in the small harbour. They were rejoined by a detachment which had been sent to round the south side of Salamis to attack the western entrance of the straits, but which for some reason had never been engaged during the day.

The victorious Greeks did not realize the full extent of their triumph. They expected to be attacked again next morning, and hoped to repeat the manœuvre which had been so far successful, of engaging the enemy in the narrows with each flank protected by the shore, and no room for a superior force to form in the actual line of fighting contact. But though they did not yet realize the fact, they had won a decisive victory. Xerxes had been so impressed by the failure of his great armada to force the narrows of Salamis that he had changed all his plans.

In the night after the battle he held a council of war. It was decided that the attack should not be renewed, for there was no prospect of a second attempt giving better results. Artemisia was directed to convey Prince Artaxerxes, the heir of the Empire, back to Asia. Xerxes himself would lead back to the bridge of the Hellespont the main body of his immense army, for to attempt to maintain it in Greece during the winter would have meant famine in its camps. The fleet was to sail at once for the northern Archipelago, and limit its operations to guarding the bridge of