Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/159

BATTLE OF SALAMIS.- RETREAT OF XERXES. 135 Salamis near at hand. It appears that the Phenician seamen of the fleet threw the blame of defeat upon the Ionic Greeks ; and some of them, driven ashore during the heat of the battle under the immediate throne of Xerxes, excused themselves by denounc- ing the others as traitors. The heads of the Ionic leaders might have been endangered if the monarch had not seen with his own eyes an act of surprising gallantry by one of their number. An Ionic trireme from Samothrace charged and disabled an Attic trireme, but was herself almost immediately run down by an -^ginetan. The Samothracian crew, as their vessel lay disabled on the water, made such excellent use of their missile weapons, that they cleared the decks of the -Slginetan, sprung on board, and became masters of her. This exploit, passing under the eyes of Xerxes himself, induced him to treat the Phenicians as dastardly calumniators, and to direct their heads to be cut off: his wrath and vexation, Herodotus tells us, were boundless, and he scarcely knew on whom to vent it.' In this disastrous battle itself, as in the debate before the bat- tle, the conduct of Artemisia of Halikarnassus was such as to give him full satisfaction. It appears that this queen maintained her full part in the battle until the disorder had become irretriev- able ; she then sought to escape, pursued by the Athenian trie- rarch, Ameinias, but found her progress obstructed by the number of fugitive or embarrassed comrades before her. In this dilemma, she preserved herself from pursuit by attacking one of her own comrades ; she charged the trireme of the Karian prince, Da- masithymus, of Kalyndus, ran it down and sunk it, so that the prince with all his crew perished. Had Ameinias been aware that the vessel which he was following was that of Artemisia, nothing would have induced him to relax in the pursuit, — for the Athenian captains were all indignant at the idea of a female invader assailing their city ; ~ but knowing her ship only as one among the enemy, and seeing her thus charge and destroy another enemy's ship, he concluded her to be a deserter, turned ' Herodot. viii, 90. ^ Compare the indignant language of Demosthenes a century and ti quarter afterwards, respecting the second Artemisia, queen of Kai-ia, as the enemy of Athens, — vfielg (5' ovte^ 'A'&Tjvaloi. jSupfSapov uvd^pu-irov, Kal ravra yvi'aiKa, (pofSij^ijaeir^e (Demosthenes, De Rhodior. Libertat. c. x, p. 197^