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Updated: June 14, 2025
Eventually the Thirty Years' Peace was concluded in 445; Athens gave up Megara, but retained Euboea; her definite policy for the future was concentration on a maritime empire; she controlled nearly all the islands of the Aegean and was mistress of the Saronic gulf, Aegina, "the eyesore of the Peiraeus", having fallen.
A storm and a second engagement near Artemisium, severely injured the fleet of the Persians, but the Greeks also sustained great losses, as half of their ships were partly destroyed and partly rendered unfit for further service. When at the same time they received intelligence of the defeat of Leonidas, at Thermopylæ, the Greeks resolved to retreat from Artemisium, and sailed to the Saronic gulf.
Neither of them had read many pages, but as the strong radiance began to soften about them on the height, and the breeze from the Saronic Gulf came to them with a more feathery warmth and freshness over the smiling bareness of the Attic Plain, Dion, who had been half-dreamily turning the leaves of his little book, said: "Rosamund." "Yes?"
The slander was believed, and Theseus prayed to his sire Poseidon to avenge the imagined wrong. So while Hippolytus drove in a chariot by the shore of the Saronic Gulf, the sea-god sent a fierce bull forth from the waves. The terrified horses bolted, threw Hippolytus from the chariot, and dragged him at their hoofs to death.
Among the modern poems on Xerxes and the battle of Salamis, is one by the Scotch poet and translator, JOHN STUART BLACKIE, from which we take the following extracts: Seest thou where, sublimely seated on a silver-footed throne, With a high tiara crested, belted with a jewelled zone, Sits the king of kings, and, looking from the rocky mountain-side, Scans, with masted armies studded far, the fair Saronic tide?
The headland cliffs that darkly down O'er the Saronic waters frown, Are pass'd with the swift one's lurid stride, And the huge rock glares on the glaring tide, With mightier march and fiercer power It gain'd Arachne's neighbouring tower Thence on our Argive roof its rest it won, Of Ida's fire the long-descended son Bright harbinger of glory and of joy!
The appearance of a Persian fleet in the Saronic gulf was a strange sight to Grecian eyes, and one which might have served as a severe comment on the effect of their suicidal wars. Conon dexterously availed himself of the hatred of Pharnabazus towards Sparta to procure a boon for his native city.
From its summit you may survey, here, the mountains of Hymettus, Pentelicus, and, far away, "the silver-bearing Laurium;" below, the wide plain of Attica, broken by rocky hills there, the islands of Salamis and Aegina, with the opposite shores of Argolis, rising above the waters of the Saronic Bay.
"For at that very time our king was sojourning at Troezen on the other side of the Saronic Sea, and he knew nothing of the young prince's death. We ourselves managed the city's affairs while he was abroad, and we know whereof we speak.
In the meantime the Persian fleet arrived in the Saronic gulf, and the fears of the Peloponnesians were revived and doubled, and nothing seemed to be able to keep them together. At this last and critical moment Themistocles devised a plan to compel them to remain and face the enemy.
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