Salamis 23 September 480 B.C.

Abstract Although Darius’s attempt to invade Greece in 490 B.C. failed, he was not about to allow the Greeks to go unpunished for their earlier aid to rebellious provinces in Ionia. He would have immediately mounted another invasion, but first had to deal with a rebellion in Egypt. Before subduing that revolt, Darius died in 486 B.C., to be succeeded by his son Xerxes. Xerxes finished the job in Egypt and then set about mounting the punitive expedition to Greece. It is impossible to know for sure just how large an expedition it was because contemporary writers are notorious for exaggerating numbers, whether to make their own victory look better or because the Persian juggernaut seemed so immense it had to be the 2.6 million people Herodotus claimed. Then again, if one assumes that this number includes not only soldiers but also all the various support personnel (cooks, clerks, launderers, etc.), then perhaps it is not too outrageous. Herodotus, however, claims that with the support personnel the total number on campaign with Xerxes was more than 5 million. More modern writers (Maurice, journal of Hellenic Studies, and Munro, The Cambridge Ancient History) place the fighting forces at between 150,000 and 180,000, drawn from all the Persian Empire. Since their stunning victory in 490 over the Persians at Marathon, the Greeks had not been as focused as the Persians on the upcoming war. Athens, Sparta, and most other poleis (city-states) had returned to their contentious ways and fallen out among themselves. When hearing the news of Xerxes’s oncoming forces in the winter of 481, they finally sublimated their differences by meeting in a panHellenic conference under Spartan leadership at the Isthmus of Corinth. Many of the northern poleis did not send representatives, however. The major point of discussion was where to make their defensive stand. Sparta argued that, because the Peloponnese, the peninsula upon which they lived, was the heart of Greek independence, the stand should be made at the Corinthian isthmus. This, however, would abandon all of northern and central Greece to Persia without a fight, and such a decision might lead to the poleis north of the isthmus defecting to Xerxes in order to save their lands from destruction.