Weeks after the pass at Thermopylae fell, the Persian army had overrun Greece and burned Athens. What was left of Greek freedom rested on the decks of its ships, packed into a narrow strait at Salamis. There, a smaller fleet turned the greatest invasion of the ancient world.
After Thermopylae
With the land route open, the Persian king Xerxes poured south and took Athens, whose people had already fled. The Greek allies argued bitterly about what to do next. Many wanted to fall back to defend the isthmus; the Athenian leader Themistocles insisted they fight at sea, in the strait between Salamis and the mainland.
The gamble of the narrows
Themistocles knew the Persian fleet was larger and, in open water, would simply surround the Greeks. In the narrow strait, that advantage vanished: too many ships in too little space could not manoeuvre. To make sure the Persians came in, he is said to have sent a false message that the Greeks were about to flee, luring the enemy fleet into the trap by night.
The trap closes
At dawn the Persian fleet crowded into the strait and lost its order. The Greek triremes, heavier and rowed by disciplined crews, rammed into the packed enemy ships, holing and sinking them faster than they could turn. Xerxes watched the disaster from a throne set up on the shore.
The retreat
The Persian fleet was shattered. Without it, Xerxes could not supply or protect a huge army so far from home, and he withdrew to Asia, leaving a force behind that the Greeks destroyed the next year at Plataea.
Why it mattered
Salamis saved Greek independence at the moment it seemed already lost. The classical world that followed, its ideas, art and politics, grew in cities that a Persian victory here would very likely have erased.