The Historians' History of the World 03 [Greece to the Peloponnesian War]

The result of this first day’s combat, though indecisive in itself, surprised both parties and did much to exalt the confidence of the Greeks. But the events of the ensuing night did yet more. Another tremendous storm was sent by the gods to aid them. Though it was the middle of summer,—a season when rain rarely falls in the climate of Greece,—the most violent wind, rain, and thunder prevailed during the whole night, blowing right on shore against the Persians at Aphetæ, and thus but little troublesome to the Greeks on the opposite side of the strait. The seamen of the Persian fleet, scarcely recovered from the former storm at Sepias Acte, were almost driven to despair by this repetition of the same periclass="underline" the more so when they found the prows of their ships surrounded, and the play of their oars impeded, by the dead bodies and the spars from the recent battle, which the current drove towards their shore. If this storm was injurious to the main fleet at Aphetæ, it proved the entire ruin of the squadron detached to circumnavigate Eubœa, who, overtaken by it near the dangerous eastern coast of that island, called the Hollows of Eubœa, were driven upon the rocks and wrecked. The news of this second conspiracy of the elements, or intervention of the gods, against the schemes of the invaders, was highly encouraging to the Greeks; and the seasonable arrival of fifty-three fresh Athenian ships, which reinforced them the next day, raised them to a still higher pitch of confidence. In the afternoon of the same day, they sailed out against the Persian fleet at Aphetæ, and attacked and destroyed some Cilician ships even at their moorings; the fleet having been too much damaged by the storm of the preceding night to come out and fight.

But the Persian admirals were not of a temper to endure such insults,—still less to let their master hear of them. About noon on the ensuing day, they sailed with their entire fleet near to the Greek station at Artemisium, and formed themselves into a half moon; while the Greeks kept near to the shore, so that they could not be surrounded, nor could the Persians bring their entire fleet into action; the ships running foul of each other, and not finding space to attack. The battle raged fiercely all day, and with great loss and damage on both sides: the Egyptians bore off the palm of valour among the Persians, the Athenians among the Greeks. Though the positive loss sustained by the Persians was by far the greater, and though the Greeks, being near their own shore, became masters of the dead bodies as well as of the disabled ships and floating fragments, still, they were themselves hurt and crippled in greater proportion with reference to their inferior totaclass="underline" and the Athenian vessels especially, foremost in the preceding combat, found one-half of their number out of condition to renew it. The Egyptians alone had captured five Grecian ships with their entire crews.

Under these circumstances, the Greek leaders—and Themistocles, as it seems, among them—determined that they could no longer venture to hold the position of Artemisium, but must withdraw the naval force farther into Greece: though this was in fact a surrender of the pass of Thermopylæ, and though the removal which the Eubœans were hastening was still unfinished. These unfortunate men were forced to be satisfied with the promise of Themistocles to give them convoy for their boats and their persons; abandoning their sheep and cattle for the consumption of the fleet, as better than leaving them to become booty for the enemy. While the Greeks were thus employed in organising their retreat, they received news which rendered retreat doubly necessary. The Athenian Abronychus, stationed with his ship near Thermopylæ, in order to keep up communication between the army and fleet, brought the disastrous intelligence that Xerxes was already master of the pass, and that the division of Leonidas was either destroyed or in flight. Upon this the fleet abandoned Artemisium forthwith, and sailed up the Eubœan strait; the Corinthian ships in the van, the Athenians bringing up the rear. Themistocles, conducting the latter, stayed long enough at the various watering-stations and landing-places to inscribe on some neighbouring stones invitations to the Ionian contingents serving under Xerxes: whereby the latter were conjured not to serve against their fathers, but to desert, if possible—or at least, to fight as little and as backwardly as they could. Themistocles hoped by this stratagem perhaps to detach some of the Ionians from the Persian side, or, at any rate, to render them objects of mistrust, and thus to diminish their efficiency. With no longer delay than was requisite for such inscriptions, he followed the remaining fleet, which sailed round the coast of Attica, not stopping until it reached the island of Salamis.