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

The intimation sent by Themistocles perhaps had the effect of hastening the departure of Xerxes, who remained in Attica only a few days after the battle of Salamis, and then withdrew his army through Bœotia into Thessaly, where Mardonius made choice of the troops to be retained for his future operations. He retained all the Persians, Medes, Sacæ, Bactrians, and Indians, horse as well as foot, together with select detachments of the remaining contingents: making in all, according to Herodotus, three hundred thousand men. But as it was now the beginning of September, and as sixty thousand out of his forces, under Artabazus, were destined to escort Xerxes himself to the Hellespont, Mardonius proposed to winter in Thessaly, and to postpone further military operations until the ensuing spring.

THE VICTORY OF SALAMIS (BY CORMOT)

Having left most of these troops under the orders of Mardonius in Thessaly, Xerxes marched away with the rest to the Hellespont, by the same road as he had taken in his advance a few months before. Respecting his retreat, a plentiful stock of stories were circulated, inconsistent with each other, fanciful, and even incredible: Grecian imagination, in the contemporary poet Æschylus, as well as in the Latin moralisers Seneca or Juvenal, delighted in handling this invasion with the maximum of light and shadow, magnifying the destructive misery and humiliation of the retreat so as to form an impressive contrast with the superhuman pride of the advance, and illustrating the antithesis with unbounded license of detail. The sufferings from want of provision were doubtless severe, and are described as frightful and death-dealing: the magazines stored up for the advancing march had been exhausted, so that the retiring army were now forced to seize upon the corn of the country through which they passed—an insufficient maintenance, eked out by leaves, grass, the bark of trees, and other wretched substitutes for food. Plague and dysentery aggravated their misery, and occasioned many to be left behind among the cities through whose territory the retreat was carried; strict orders being left by Xerxes that these cities should maintain and tend them. After forty-five days’ march from Attica, he at length found himself at the Hellespont, whither his fleet, retreating from Salamis, had arrived long before him. But the short-lived bridge had already been knocked to pieces by a storm, so that the army was transported on shipboard across to Asia, where it first obtained comfort and abundance, and where the change from privation to excess engendered new maladies. In the time of Herodotus, the citizens of Abdera still showed the gilt scimitar and tiara, which Xerxes had presented to them when he halted there in his retreat, in token of hospitality and satisfaction: and they even went the length of affirming that never, since his departure from Attica, had he loosened his girdle until he reached their city. So fertile was Grecian fancy in magnifying the terror of the repulsed invader—who re-entered Sardis, with a broken army and humbled spirit, only eight months after he had left it as the presumed conqueror of the western world.

THE SPOILS OF VICTORY

Meanwhile the Athenians and Peloponnesians, liberated from the immediate presence of the enemy either on land or sea, and passing from the extreme of terror to sudden ease and security, indulged in the full delight and self-congratulation of unexpected victory. On the day before the battle, Greece had seemed irretrievably lost: she was now saved even against all reasonable hope, and the terrific cloud impending over her was dispersed. In the division of the booty, the Æginetans were adjudged to have distinguished themselves most in the action, and to be entitled to the choice lot; while various tributes of gratitude were also set apart for the gods. Among them were three Phœnician triremes, which were offered in dedication to Ajax at Salamis, to Athene at Sunium, and to Poseidon at the Isthmus of Corinth; further presents were sent to Apollo at Delphi, who, on being asked whether he was satisfied, replied, that all had done their duty to him except the Æginetans: from them he required additional munificence on account of the prize awarded to them, and they were constrained to dedicate in the temple four golden stars upon a staff of brass, which Herodotus himself saw there. Next to the Æginetans, the second place of honour was awarded to the Athenians; the Æginetan Polycritus, and the Athenians Eumenes and Aminias, being ranked first among the individual combatants.