Category: Inspiration

Heroic though it was, the stand at Thermopylae was only a holding action to allow the Peloponnesians to fortify the Isthmus at Corinth and the Athenians to complete the evacuation of the city. Once Thermopylae was overrun the allied Greek fleet withdrew to the bay of Salamis. The Corinthians wanted to withdraw to south of the Isthmus and mocked the now city-less Athenians led by Themistocles. He tricked the Persians into committing their attack on the Greek fleet in the narrows of the Bay of Salamis before the Greeks could disperse. It is suggested that the Corintho-Athenian spat was a put up job to fool the Persians’ spies that the Greeks were disunited and therefore easy pickings.

The result of the Battle of Salamis was that the Persian fleet composed mainly of Phoenicians, Ionian Greeks and Egyptians lost control of the Aegean Sea. (The Greeks of Sicily and Italy were under a coordinated attack from the Phoenician-Carthaginians and won the Battle of Himera, purportedly on the same day as the Battle of Salamis)

Xerxes scuttled back over the Hellespont bridge to Asia Minor leaving a much reduced Persian army under Mardonius. It was defeated the following year by the allied Greek army led by Pausanias, Leonidas’ nephew, at Plataea. After the battle, so the story goes, he took the allied generals to Mardonius’ tent. He pointed to the lavish Persian food and then at the Spartans’ standard ration of porridge saying “They came to rob us of of this!”