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Updated: June 28, 2025
Taking the idea "world power" in the restricted sense suggested, Persia lost it to Greece at Salamis. As the Asiatic hordes fled behind their panic-stricken king, the Greeks, looking round their limited horizon, could see no power that might vie with them. The idea of pressing home their success and overthrowing the entire unwieldy Persian empire was at once conceived.
After he had acquitted himself gallantly in this battle of Salamis, he obtained great repute among the Athenians, and was regarded with affection, as well as admiration. He had many who followed after him, and bade him aspire to actions not less famous than his father's battle of Marathon.
About this time the Persian fleet arrived in the Bay of Phale'rum, and Xerxes immediately dispatched it to block up that of the Greeks in the narrow strait of Salamis.
And so the soldiers of Marathon and the sailors of Salamis became the schoolmasters of Hellas; the one teaching and habituating the Hellenes not to fear the barbarians at sea, and the others not to fear them by land. Third in order, for the number and valour of the combatants, and third in the salvation of Hellas, I place the battle of Plataea.
Such a design was entertained, or at least professed, by Xerxes after the destruction of his fleet in the battle of Salamis, and it was successfully executed by Alexander the Great, who took in this way the new or island of Tyre.
Now he could do some work. He sat down again. Shortly after the Draconian reforms, a war broke out between Athens and Megara respecting the island of Salamis, to which, both cities laid claim. Which was all very well, if he had only found out what the Draconian reforms were. A soft glow pervaded the room, and he suddenly became aware of it. What could cause it? He looked out of the window.
The invaders were met but hardly checked at Thermopylæ, where Leonidas and the immortal three hundred fell; all Greece north of the Isthmus of Corinth was in their hands, including Athens. But their fleet was shattered to pieces, chiefly by the Athenians under Themistocles and Aristides at Salamis, and the destruction of their land forces was completed by the united Greeks at Platæa.
A crown of olive was conferred upon him, together with one of the most splendid chariots which the city could produce. On the very same day on which the Persians were defeated at Salamis the Sicilian Greeks also obtained a victory over the Carthaginians.
Themistocles was in absolute command, and perhaps in his heart of hearts Democrates was not mournful if it lay out of his power to do a second ill-turn to his country. It was again summer, and again such a day as when Glaucon with glad friends had rowed toward Salamis. The Saronian bay flashed fairest azure. The scattered isles and the headlands of Argolis rose in clear beauty.
The fleet was anchored in the strait of Salamis, and beside the two hundred ships of Athens, it consisted of a large number from other ports of Greece. Among the Greeks there were divided counsels; some were for giving immediate battle, and some were for flying from the thousand Persian ships now advancing upon them.
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