also sent a large reinforcement after the first action.  Though no one has ever surpassed Themistocles in the faculty of correctly estimating the importance of sea-power, it was understood by Xerxes as clearly as by him that the issue of the war depended upon naval operations.  The arrangements made under the Persian monarch’s direction, and his very personal movements, show that this was his view.  He felt, and probably expressed the feeling, exactly as—­in the war of Arnerican Independence—­Washington did in the words, ’whatever efforts are made by the land armies, the navy must have the casting vote in the present contest.’  The decisive event was the naval action of Salamis.  To have made certain of success, the Persians should have first obtained a command of the AEgean, as complete for all practical purposes as the French and English had of the sea generally in the war against Russia of 1854-56.  The Persian sea-power was not equal to the task.  The fleet of the great king was numerically stronger than that of the Greek allies; but it has been proved many times that naval efficiency does not depend on numerical superiority alone.  The choice sections of the Persian fleet were the contingents of the Ionians and Phoenicians.  The former were half-hearted or disaffected; whilst the latter were, at best, not superior in skill, experience, and valour to the Greek sailors.  At Salamis Greece was saved not only from the ambition and vengeance of Xerxes, but also and for many centuries from oppression by an Oriental conqueror.  Persia did not succeed against the Greeks, not because she had no sea-power, but because her sea-power, artificially built up, was inferior to that which was a natural element of the vitality of her foes.  Ionia was lost and Greece in the end enslaved, because the quarrels of Greeks with Greeks led to the ruin of their naval states.

The Peloponnesian was largely a naval war.  The confidence of the Athenians in their sea-power had a great deal to do with its outbreak.  The immediate occasion of the hostilities, which in time involved so many states, was the opportunity offered by the conflict between Corinth and Corcyra of increasing the sea-power of Athens.  Hitherto the Athenian naval predominance had been virtually confined to the AEgean Sea.  The Corcyraean envoy, who pleaded for help at Athens, dwelt upon the advantage to be derived by the Athenians from alliance with a naval state occupying an important situation ’with respect to the western regions towards which the views of the Athenians had for some time been directed.’[15] It was the ‘weapon of her sea-power,’ to adopt Mahan’s phrase, that enabled Athens to maintain the great conflict in which she was engaged.  Repeated invasions of her territory, the ravages of disease amongst her people, and the rising disaffection of her allies had been more than made up for by her predominance on the water.  The scale of the subsequent Syracusan expedition showed how vigorous Athens still