An Update on Salamis and the Spartans

Jack's comment about the Athenians had Spartan help at the battle is more accurate than my account that they were all alone. That'll teach me for relying on memory!

The Wikipedia article he cites seems to be accurate. In my defense I will say that the basic point is still clear - the ancient Greeks, or at least the Athenians and their pals, thought of it as an Athenian victory because the action took place partly to protect the evacuated population of Athens, the general in command was Athenian, and about half the navy was Athenian (180 by Herodotus' account). When you consider that the next largest contingent was 40 ships (from Corinth), and most sent fewer than 10, you can see how vital Athens was to the project.

Most of the states sending ships were either Athenian allies or from the Peloponnese, i.e. south of the Isthmus of Corinth. Most of Greece north of the Isthmus went over to the Persians. You will also notice that the Athenian commander and the Spartan commander almost came to blows over strategy, with the Athenian finally resorting to trickery to get the battle started. I have to admit that this last detail seems likely to be Athenian propaganda, but who knows?

Here's a paragraph from Victor Davis Hanson's article on the battle in the Reader's Companion to Military History (since I wrote about five short articles for the same book you could say that we are co-authors, along with about 160 others):

... Greeks rightly saw the victorious rowers of Salamis as proof of the skill and courage inherent within the nascent democratic citizenry of Athens. But in the years subsequent, reactionary philosophers took a dimmer view. Plato and Aristotle traced radical democracy, Athenian maritime imperialism, and the collapse of the traditional Greek values back to Salamis -- a victory that had given enormous prestige to the poor and ill-bred of the fleet, and therefore in their eyes had made the Greeks "worse as a people." Few Greeks, however, shared their jaded appraisal, and instead
rightly commemorated Salamis as the battle that had saved the West.

Which also happens to be Hanson's view oddly enough.

Thanks Jack!