them, and from afar these words were borne upon the breeze:  “Go, sons of Greece, deliver your country, deliver your children, your wives, and the temples of the gods of your fathers and the tombs of your ancestors.  A single battle will decide the fate of all you possess.”  The Persians fought with their accustomed bravery, “but before long their numberless vessels, packed closely together in a restricted space, begin to hamper each other’s movements, and their rams of brass collide; whole rows of oars are broken.”  The Greek vessels, lighter and easier to manoeuvre than those of the Phoenicians, surround the latter and disable them in detail.  “The surface of the sea is hidden with floating wreckage and corpses; the shore and the rocks are covered with the dead.”  At length, towards evening, the energy of the barbarians beginning to flag, they slowly fell back upon the Piraeus, closely followed by their adversaries, while Aristides bore down upon Psyttalia with a handful of Athenians.  “Like tunnies, like fish just caught in a net, with blows from broken oars, with fragments of spars, they fall upon the Persians, they tear them to pieces.  The sea resounds from afar with groans and cries of lamentation.  Night at length unveils her sombre face” and separates the combatants.*

* AEschylus gives the only contemporaneous account of the battle, and the one which Herodotus and all the historians after him have paraphrased, while they also added to it oral traditions.

[Illustration:  233.jpg PART OF THE BATTLEFIELD OF SALAMIS]

The advantage lay that day with the Greeks, but hostilities might be resumed on the morrow, and the resources of the Persians were so considerable that their chances of victory were not yet exhausted.  Xerxes at first showed signs of wishing to continue the struggle; he repaired the injured vessels and ordered a dyke to be constructed, which, by uniting Salamis to the mainland, would enable him to oust the Athenians from their last retreat.  But he had never exhibited much zest for the war; the inevitable fatigues and dangers of a campaign were irksome to his indolent nature, and winter was approaching, which he would be obliged to spend far from Susa, in the midst of a country wasted and trampled underfoot by two great armies.  Mardonius, guessing what was passing in his sovereign’s mind, advised him to take advantage of the fine autumn weather to return to Sardes; he proposed to take over from Xerxes the command of the army in Greece, and to set to work to complete the conquest of the Peloponnesus.  He was probably glad to be rid of a sovereign whose luxurious habits were a hindrance to his movements.  Xerxes accepted his proposal with evident satisfaction, and summarily despatching his vessels to the Hellespont to guard the bridges, he set out on his return journey by the overland route.