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Updated: May 28, 2025
These, with Euripides, were the three great dramatists of Greece. The choral song, which had been the chief thing, was made secondary to the dialogue. Aeschylus, at the age of forty-five, fought in the battle of Salamis; Sophocles, then fifteen years old, took part in the festival in honor of the victory; and Euripides was born, it was supposed, on the very day of the battle.
He then further moved that the Athenians should abandon the city to the care of its tutelary deity, that the women, children, and infirm should be removed to Salamis, Ægina, or Troezen, and that the men should embark in the ships. The fleet of the Greeks, consisting of three hundred and eighty ships, assembled at Salamis, still under the supreme command of Eurybiades.
We also fight, not merely as other Greeks do, in defence of our city and territory, but for the trophies of Marathon and Salamis, lest the battle of Marathon should be thought to have been won more by Miltiades and Fortune, than by the valour of the Athenians.
There was no help from the Spartans, for they had all flocked to the Isthmus of Corinth, as the last chance of protecting the Peloponnesus. In despair, the Athenians resolved to abandon Athens, with their families, and take shelter at Salamis. Themistocles alone was undismayed, and sought to encourage his countrymen that the “wooden wall” would still be their salvation.
So to Peiræus,—and to the rapid pinnaces which bore them across the narrow sea to Salamis, where for the moment at least was peace. All that day the boats were bearing the people, and late into the night, until the task was accomplished, the like whereof is not found in history. No Athenian who willed was left to the power of Xerxes. One brain and voice planned and directed all.
The real truth seems to have been that Phokion had a firm belief in Nikanor's honesty, since he refused to believe those who told him that Nikanor was plotting the capture of Peiræus, and had sent Macedonian soldiers into Salamis, and had even corrupted some of the inhabitants in Peiræus itself.
He had distinguished himself highly by his zeal in the invasion of the Medes, and the desertion of Athens for Salamis; and his valour in the seafight had confirmed the promise of his previous ardour.
By that time the Christians had taken 117 galleys and 20 galliots, and sunk or burnt some fifty other ships of various sorts. Ten thousand Turks were captured and many thousands of Christian slaves rescued. The Christians lost 7500 men; the Turks, about 30,000. It was an overwhelming victory. As far as the tactics go, Lepanto was, like Salamis, an infantry battle on floating platforms.
But Scaptius pleaded his bond, which provided for four per cent, monthly, and pleaded also a special edict that regulations restraining interest were not to apply to Salamis. The town protested that they could not pay if such terms were exacted terms which would double the principal.
A cluster of white stuccoed houses with a craggy hill behind, and before them a blue bay girt in by the rocky isle of Salamis—that is Eleusis-by-the-Sea. Eastward and westward spreads the teeming Thrasian plain, richest in Attica. Behind the plain the encircling mountain wall fades away into a purple haze.
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