Chapter 5
Introduction
The perils of sailing the Mediterranean have been recognized since the time of Hesiod and Homer. The Odyssey is fraught with stories of storms, shipwrecks, hostile inhabitants and even whirlpools that devour men and destroy ships. Hesiod notes that ‘it is terrible to die among the waves’ (Works and Days 687), and he does his best to deter his brother from seeking a life of seamanship and trade. For these reasons, ancient seafarers often sailed close to shore so that they might find quick shelter from storms, and they sought seaways that offered protection from unpredictable currents and weather. One such route wound its way through the narrow strait between the island of Euboea and mainland Greece. This strait was known as the Euripus and was of immense strategic importance. Not only did the strait offer access to both Boeotia and Attica (for example, the Persians attacked Euboea before landing at Marathon in 490), but it also offered some reprieve from the dangers of sailing the open seas east of the island. At its narrowest point, the strait is less than 40 metres wide, making it a defensible bottleneck not unlike the pass at Thermopylae. The entrance to the Euripus opens up on the northern shore of Euboea at Cape Artemisium – named after a temple of Artemis at the site – and it was here, late in the summer of 480 BCE, that the combined fleet of the Greeks first met the enormous navy of Xerxes, King of Kings, of the Persian Empire. While the battle that ensued would not decide the outcome of the Persian Wars, Pindar took notice of the extreme importance of the Greek efforts at Artemisium, ‘Where the sons of the Athenians laid the shining foundation of freedom’ (as quoted by Plutarch, Themistocles 8.2).
Directions to the Site
There are numerous places from which the adventurous traveller can view the ‘battlefield’ at Artemisium. The island itself is accessible by car and ferry, though a car is certainly recommended regardless of how one reaches the island. From Athens, take the National Highway (E75) north to Schimatari and then turn northeast toward Mikro Vathi and Chalcis (Euboea). From Mikro Vathi, a bridge crosses the strait into Chalcis. From Chalcis, travel north-west along the Chalcis-Loutra Edipsou Road (77) to Orioi, a lengthy drive of over 100km. The coast at Orioi provides a vantage point from which to view the entrance to the straits near the Artemisium promontory, where the battle was likely fought. To actually travel through the strait itself, take the ferry from Agios Konstantinos to Skiathos, the small island where a portion of the Persian fleet was wrecked in a storm preceding the battle. Agios Konstantinos can be reached by following the National Highway from Athens (about 170km) and following the exit for the city. Finally, for those travellers with the time to do so, the Artemisium promontory can be viewed from north of the strait by travelling to Glypha. Glypha is accessible from the National Highway, but requires a drive of almost 270km from Athens, though it is only 70km from Thermopylae for those wanting to visit both battle sites. Those who make the trip, however, will not be disappointed. The Artemisium promontory can be easily reached by taking a very short ferry ride from Glypha to Agiokampos on Euboea; and the hills to the east of Glypha offer an excellent view of the straits below. The truly adventurous can then follow the tiny road out of Glypha east toward Agios Demetrios. This road skirts the coast and not only offers additional views of the strait north of Euboea, but also holds some of the most spectacular scenery in all of Greece (not to mention access to numerous delightful and hidden beaches). From Agios Demetrios, continue the drive north and west to Achilleio to return to the main roads. While the final leg of this lengthy drive does not offer any views of the site of the Battle of Artemisium, the spectacular scenery continues along the road to Achilleio, and the drive will reward those who take the time to explore the area.
Historical Outline of the Battle
In 499 BCE, a number of Greek cities in Ionia on the west coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) revolted against Persian rule. In need of support for their cause, the cities sent for aid from both Sparta and Athens. The Spartans refused their request, citing the great distance they would have to travel from their own homeland. The Athenians, on the other hand, agreed to send twenty ships to bolster the Ionian naval forces. These twenty ships were joined by an additional five sent by Eretria, one of the pre-eminent cities of Euboea. The decision to aid the Ionians would have serious implications for both Eretria and Athens. The Athenian forces only participated in the revolt for a single year, returning home after the sack and destruction of Sardis in 498; nevertheless, as Herodotus would write in his Histories, ‘These ships marked the beginning of evils for both Greeks and barbarians’ (5.97.3). The Ionian Revolt was a short-lived affair. In 494, the Greek fleet was defeated in a disastrous battle at Lade near Miletus. Insubordination amongst the rowers led to confusion and disorder, and numerous contingents of ships fled before the battle had even begun. Those who stayed to fight were soon routed, and Miletus, the leading Greek city in the revolt, was besieged and sacked. The Athenians took the fall of Miletus particularly badly. A year after the revolt was quashed, a playwright named Phrynichos produced a tragedy entitled The Capture of Miletus. The Athenian audience was moved to tears during the production and fined the playwright for reminding them of their own misfortunes. It was forbidden that the play ever be produced again. And yet Phrynichos’ play was the least of the Athenians’ worries. Following the sack of Sardis in 498, Darius, the Persian king, swore that he would seek retribution from the Athenians for their participation in the revolt. It was even said that he had one of his attendants tell him three times each day as dinner was served to remember the Athenians. Darius would not forget the Athenian slight, and by 492 he was already planning his revenge.
In the years following the Ionian Revolt, Darius quickly subdued the Ionian cities and soon turned his attention to mainland Greece. A large force of both ships and soldiers was placed under the control of Mardonius, the son-in-law of Darius. The plan of Mardonius was to sail his fleet and march his army to Eretria and Athens, thus fulfilling Darius’ promise of revenge against the Greek cities that had offered aid to the Ionians. According to Herodotus, this campaign for retribution was only a pretence for the Persian king’s desire to conquer as many Greek cities as he could. The fleet, for its part, set out from the Hellespont and soon subjugated the island of Thasos. Staying close to the shore, the ships then turned south and attempted to sail around the Athos Peninsula, the northernmost prominence of the Chalkidiki. As they were sailing around the mountainous peninsula, a north wind suddenly struck, wrecking many ships and damaging even more. Herodotus’ description of the aftermath of this storm is particularly vivid:
For it is said that three hundred of their ships were destroyed along with over 20,000 of their men. And since this sea around Athos was full of wild beasts, some of the men, having been snatched up, were killed by the creatures, while others were dashed against the rocks; some of them did not know how to swim, and on account of this perished, while still others froze to death. (Histories 6.44.3)
Mardonius’ campaign suffered further setbacks when the land forces were attacked by Thracians while they were encamped in Macedonia. While the Thracian threat was repelled, the losses of men and ships now suffered by the Persians forced Mardonius to turn back to Asia before reaching Eretria and Athens. The first expedition against Greece was unsuccessful, but the Persians had learned a valuable lesson about the dangers of sailing along the coast of Greece.
In the years following this setback, the Persians sent heralds throughout Greece demanding earth and water from many city-states, a sign of their willingness to yield to Darius and his rule. Darius took note of those who refused his offer, and once again used the pretence of exacting revenge against Eretria and Athens as justification for invading and conquering mainland Greece. For this task, he appointed two new generals, Datis and Artaphernes – Mardonius had been relieved for his failures in the campaign of 492 BCE. Having once again mustered a large land army, the Persian forces gathered on the southern coast of Cilicia (modern Turkey) and met the fleet which would carry them to Greece. In the summer of 490, the Persian fleet, with the entire land army on board, set out for Greece. Rather than sailing along the shore as they had done under Mardonius, this fleet sailed across the Aegean, passing Samos and Ikaros before conquering Naxos, thus jumping from island to island on their way to Euboea and Attica. Herodotus suggests that they took this course because they feared that they might once again lose their fleet in an attempt to sail past Athos. Having passed Delos, the fleet set out for Euboea and besieged and eventually conquered Eretria. The Persians sacked the city and burned its sanctuaries to the ground, all as atonement for the destruction of Sardis in 498. The citizens of Eretria were enslaved by order of Darius, who wished for them to be sent back to Persia. Upon their arrival, however, Darius took pity on the captives and settled them in a village not far from the royal capital at Susa. There they prospered for many years, even continuing to speak their native language. Following their sack of Eretria, the Persians turned their attention to the Athenians. The Persians sailed across the Euripus Strait and landed at Marathon, where they were famously repulsed by the combined forces of Athens and Plataea (see the earlier chapter on Marathon in this book).
As might be imagined, Darius did not take the news of yet another defeat in Greece particularly well. He immediately began to muster another force to exact his revenge upon Athens. This one was to be even larger than that defeated at Marathon, and for three years all of Asia began to organize men, ships and materiel. Before this invasion could be realized, however, a revolt broke out in Egypt, which was under Persian control. Darius was now compelled to prepare for two campaigns, one against Greece and another against Egypt. While these preparations were underway, however, Darius died, leaving the throne to his son Xerxes. According to Herodotus, Xerxes did not share his father’s enthusiasm for an invasion of Greece. Rather, he immediately turned his attention to restoring order in Egypt, which he accomplished in 485. Despite his initial hesitancy, Xerxes was then persuaded by those around him to renew his father’s plan to invade Greece. Those calling for a renewal of the campaign included Mardonius, the leader of the disastrous first expedition against Greece in 492, and the descendants of Pisistratus, the expelled tyrants of Athens who were hoping to reclaim their authority over the city. Xerxes was easily persuaded, and he soon set out to organize a combined land and sea force of epic proportions. It took nearly four years to fully assemble all the men, ships and provisions needed for the conquest of Greece. As Herodotus notes, Xerxes’ expedition dwarfed the earlier campaigns of Darius, and not even the assembled forces of Greece that had set out against Troy could compare with this Persian army:
All these expeditions, even if others were combined with them, were not worthy of this single one. For which nation did Xerxes not lead out of Asia and into Greece? Which water-source did they not leave behind drunk dry, except for the mightiest rivers? (Histories 7.21.1)
Because of its massive scale, the land army would march across the Hellespont through Thrace and south into the heart of Greece. The fleet would support the army, staying close to shore as it sailed around the Aegean, following the same course taken by Mardonius so many years before. Nevertheless, the lessons of this earlier campaign were not lost on Xerxes, and, before he set out with his combined army and fleet, he undertook a number of engineering projects designed to protect the Persians from any additional disasters.
Most famously, Xerxes constructed a pair of bridges across the Hellespont. These bridges were formed by linking ships together to create pontoon structures that could then support temporary wooden bridges. This ingenious design, however, was still subject to the elements, and the first two bridges were heavily damaged by a storm. In response, according to Herodotus (7.35.1), Xerxes had the engineers executed and ordered that the waters be whipped and shackles thrown into their depths, thus asserting his dominance over nature itself. He rebuilt these bridges by lashing together more than 600 ships and anchoring them across the straits. These ships were then linked with wooden planks covered with brush and dirt and lined with fencing. In this way, the Hellespont was temporarily bridged, and men, horses, cattle, wagons and supplies could cross unhindered. Perhaps more impressively, Xerxes also constructed a canal through the Athos Peninsula, where Mardonius’ fleet was so heavily damaged in 492. This represented a tremendous engineering feat and highlights the extraordinary lengths to which the Persians went to conquer Greece. At its completion, the canal was supposedly wide enough for two triremes to sail through side-by-side, and it was clearly recognized even in antiquity as a marvel. Herodotus, for instance, claims that the project was a mark of Xerxes’ arrogance but admits that the canal was a sign of and monument to Xerxes’ power. Even the architect of the canal, a Persian named Artachaias, was worshipped as a hero by the Greeks living near the canal. And so, with these preparations in place, Xerxes set out with his army and fleet. As both reached the Hellespont, Xerxes was moved to tears at the sight of his accomplishments.
The construction of the canal across the Athos Peninsula is of particular importance for the Battle of Artemisium. The preservation of his fleet was essential for Xerxes’ invasion of Greece. The land army was to be supported and protected by the navy, and the campaign was carefully coordinated so that the two forces would never be too distant from one another. In the years between 490 and 480, the Greeks (especially the Athenians) had developed an impressive naval force of their own, and Xerxes was well aware that he would have to possess a comparable fleet in order to compete with this new Greek threat. If Herodotus is to be believed, Xerxes was more than equal to the task. According to the historian, Xerxes compiled a fleet of 1,207 triremes (a number also recorded in Aeschylus’ Persians) drawn from Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria, Cyprus and other regions. The Dorian and Ionian Greeks in Asia Minor even contributed triremes to the cause, as they were still under Persian control. In support of these warships, Herodotus notes that 3,000 additional vessels also sailed out from Persia to carry horses, supplies and men. In total, over half a million men were said to be required to man these varied ships. As is so often the case, however, the numbers given by our ancient sources seem greatly exaggerated, especially since the Greeks mustered fewer than 400 ships of their own to resist the Persian invasion. Scholars still do not agree on the exact size of the Persian fleet, but an estimate of around 700 or more triremes seems reasonable, with perhaps the same number of smaller vessels in support. Regardless of the exact numbers, however, it seems as though the Persian fleet possessed considerably more warships than the combined navies of Greece.
And so, with this impressive armada, Xerxes set out from Persia to Greece. While his army marched through Thrace, Chalkidiki and Thessaly en route to its eventual meeting with the forces of Leonidas at Thermopylae, Xerxes’ fleet, under the command of Megabates, sailed across the northern Aegean before turning south and passing through the canal at Mt Athos. From here, it skirted the southern peninsulas of the Chalkidiki and entered the Thermaic Gulf before continuing southward along the coast of Thessaly and into Magnesia. The Greeks, for their part, had been struggling with how best to resist the Persian invasion. They first resolved to defend the Vale of Tempe, the pass connecting the Pierian Plain of Macedonia with Thessaly; however, when they learned that the Persians were taking an alternate route, the Greeks abandoned this plan and opted to defend the pass at Thermopylae (see the previous chapter). Not only was this a narrower passage for the outnumbered land forces of the Greeks to defend, it also allowed for a joint defence by the Greek fleet at the straits near Artemisium. This plan was particularly favoured by the Athenians, who had hoped to turn back the Persian threat before it entered Attica. Nevertheless, many of the Peloponnesians had suggested that a resistance be mounted further south – at the Isthmus of Corinth – essentially giving up Thessaly, Boeotia and Attica as lost. Despite this suggestion, the Athenians were able to push for a defensive line at Thermopylae-Artemisium because, without them, the Greeks would have almost no ships with which to resist the Persians. In the decade between Marathon and Xerxes’ invasion, the Athenians had come across a particularly rich vein of silver at their mines in Laureion. Uncertain about what to do with these riches, the statesman Themistocles persuaded the city to construct a fleet of 200 triremes, thus transforming Athens into a naval power that surpassed any other in Greece.
Artemisium Map 1: The Persian route to Artemisium. Satellite image courtesy of the USGS.
Having decided on the dual defence of Artemisium and Thermopylae, the combined Greek forces set out to await the arrival of the Persians. The Greek fleet established a base at Artemisium, a broad shore where the triremes could be beached in case of a storm. The first engagement between the two fleets occurred when a contingent of ten Persian ships was sent to scout the harbours and seas around Skiathos, a small island to the east of the Magnesian coast and strategically positioned at the entrance to the straits of Euboea. A group of three Greek triremes from Troizen, Aegina and Athens were caught by surprise by this advanced force and immediately fled from the approaching Persian ships. The ships from Troizen and Aegina were soon captured, and, Herodotus reports, the best of the Troizenians was taken to the prow of the ship, where the Persians cut his throat – a human sacrifice performed to thank the gods for the successful first fruits of battle and to secure a good omen for the battles to come. The best of the Aeginetans fared much better: after fighting valiantly, his wounds were treated by the Persians and he was paraded through their camp as a marvel of courage and valour. The rest of the captive sailors were taken as slaves. The Athenian sailors managed to escape, but had to abandon their ship on the coast of Magnesia before making their way through Thessaly on foot. On learning of the arrival of the Persian fleet, the Greeks were said to have withdrawn almost their entire fleet southward from Artemisium to the narrower channels near Chalcis. Such a move has been largely doubted by scholars, who contend that this withdrawal would have left the land army at Thermopylae unsupported; nevertheless, the tale does add to the dramatic retelling of the battle, as it once gain highlights the terror caused by the scale of the Persian fleet and the bravery of the men who stood against it. The Persian ships, for their part, continued to reconnoitre the area in preparation for the arrival of the rest of the fleet and identified a number of small harbours for anchorages up and down the Magnesian coast. None of these small inlets, however, could support the enormity of the Persian fleet, and so many ships had to anchor off shore.
In what must have been seen as an all too familiar repeat of the misfortunes of the campaign in 492, a violent storm set upon the Magnesian coast, borne in by the east and north winds. Those Persian ships that could be pulled ashore were spared, but many of the ships anchored out at sea were violently run aground against the rocky coastline. The storm lasted for three days, and when it finally subsided the shore was littered with treasures and debris from wrecked Persian ships. So much material was lost that one particularly resourceful local was able to accumulate a substantial fortune merely by collecting gold and silver vessels that washed up in the waves. This storm was attributed to the will of the gods, as the oracle at Delphi had predicted that the Greeks should pray to the winds in order to be victorious against the Persians. The Athenians even built a sanctuary to Boreas, the north wind, after the war, since he had taken an Athenian princess as his wife and so had come to the aid of the Greeks because of their familial connection. As much as a third of the Persian fleet was destroyed in this storm, but even so, the surviving ships still outnumbered the Greeks. The remaining Persian fleet continued south around the southern coast of Magnesia and took up positions scattered along the coast in a region called Aphetai, which stood directly across from the Greek position at Artemisium. It was at this time that the second minor engagement at Artemisium took place. A small contingent of Persian ships trailing behind the main fleet mistook the Greek ships anchored at Artemisium as their own. They accordingly sailed directly for the coast of Euboea and were quickly captured. In the end, the Greeks seized fifteen Persian vessels and their crews. The captured men were interrogated and then sent to the isthmus as prisoners.
Artemisium Map 2. Satellite image courtesy of the USGS.
Even with the capture of these fifteen ships and the substantial damage done by the storm, the Greeks were still shocked when they finally saw the size of the Persian fleet for themselves. The Spartan commander, Eurybiades, who was leading the Greek fleet, even considered withdrawing back to the isthmus immediately. If Herodotus is to be believed, it was only through the cleverness of Themistocles himself, along with substantial bribes, that Eurybiades was finally persuaded to stay and fight the Persians at Artemisium. For their part, the Persians were eager to engage the Greeks and prevent them from withdrawing without an engagement. To compel such a direct engagement, the Persians were said to have sent a contingent of 200 ships around Euboea to close the Greeks into the straits. This action is once again doubted by scholars, as it would have taken this force nearly four days to sail around the island, by which time the Greeks could have easily withdrawn. Instead, most scholars contend that this story was fabricated by Herodotus, who wanted to account for the exaggerated numbers he had reported earlier in his account. If they did in fact exist, these ships never made it around the island, as every last one of them was thrown off course in a storm and dashed upon the rocks of Euboea. Regardless of this flanking movement, the Greeks, after considerable debate, decided to sail out to confront the Persians, an action that took their enemy completely by surprise. The Persians, knowing that they greatly outnumbered the Greeks, were expecting them to maintain a defensive position, not to undertake an offensive. The Greeks’ boldness seems to have been yet another tactically brilliant move by Themistocles. The Persian fleet was scattered amongst numerous anchorages at Aphetai, while the Greek ships were anchored together at Artemisium. By taking the initiative, the Greeks were able to attack individual units while the Persians scrambled to bring together their entire fleet. In this way, the Greeks met with some initial success, but, once the Persian fleet had been organized, soon found themselves greatly outnumbered and surrounded.
Herodotus tells us that the Greek sailors were eager to try the diekplous manoeuvre against the Persians. Most think that the diekplous required ships to form in line, prow to stern, to pierce through an enemy formation at a single, concentrated point. Once through the opposing line, these ships could then wheel about and attack the enemy from the rear. The Greek hopes were never realized, however. Because the Persian ships were lighter, faster and more manoeuvrable than the Greek triremes, and because the Greeks were so greatly outnumbered, the Persians countered by employing the periplous, in which they simply sailed around the ends of the Greek line, thus turning the Greek flank. The Greeks then countered with yet another novel naval tactic, the kyklos: they quite literally formed a circle of ships with their sterns pointed inward and their bows facing the enemy. They may have been surrounded, but they could not be flanked and they had their formidable bronze rams aimed at the Persians. Upon a signal, the Greek ships burst out in every direction and engaged the Persian fleet. The battle that ensued was not decisive, but the Greeks did manage to capture thirty ships before both sides had to retire at nightfall. The stalemate was not what the Persians expected and it left their sailors demoralized, a feeling that was only compounded when another storm sprung up that night in the straits. This storm did only minimal damage to the Persian ships, but it washed ashore the debris from the day’s battle, including the corpses of many Persian sailors. This was a stark reminder of their failures and another portent that the gods themselves even seemed to be against them.
While the Persians were becoming increasingly disheartened, the Greeks received a very welcome morale boost the following morning when an additional fifty-three ships arrived from Attica. Bolstered by these reinforcements, the Greeks once again set out to attack the Persians, destroying a Cilician contingent that was isolated in one of the scattered anchorages around Aphetai. Rather than await another full-scale engagement, though, the Greeks retired for the night. The next day, the Persians took the initiative and set out in force against the Greeks. This was the same day that Leonidas and his 300 Spartans made their last stand against Xerxes’ army. The freedom of Greece was at stake. As Herodotus tells us, the ships at Artemisium were protecting the straits just as the men at Thermopylae were defending the pass. The Greeks were fighting for their homeland, while we are told that the Persians at Artemisium set out that day not on account of valour or patriotic fervour, but because they had been disgraced by their performance in the first two engagements and feared what punishment they would receive from Xerxes if they did not succeed against such a small force of ships. So the Greek and Persian fleets once again met at Artemisium, and once again there was no clear victor when the day ended. We are told that the Greek fleet simply awaited the approach of the Persians, who formed a crescent-shaped line in order to outflank and envelop the Greeks. It is unclear whether the Greeks kept the shore and their anchorage behind them or whether they set out across the straits. Herodotus reports only that they took their position near Artemisium and waited until they were at risk of being surrounded before they engaged the Persians. It had always been the Greek plan to use the narrowness of the strait as a means of neutralizing the Persian superiority in numbers, and it was in this battle that that strategy finally paid off. Cramped in the confined waters around Artemisium, the Persian ships soon began to run afoul of one another and a number of them were wrecked; nevertheless, they continued to fight and at the end of the day both the Greek and Persian forces had suffered substantial losses, but neither had obtained a clear victory.
Artemisium Map 3: The positions of the fleets. Satellite image courtesy of the USGS.
Artemisium Map 4: The kyklos. Satellite image courtesy of the USGS.
After the battle, the two fleets returned to their anchorages, collected their dead and licked their wounds. The Athenians alone had lost nearly half of their ships, and the Persian fleet suffered even heavier losses, though Herodotus offers no exact numbers. It is hard to know what would have happened at Artemisium had another battle occurred. The Greeks had already proven their mettle and shown the Persians what a motivated force in defence of their homeland could do. No other engagements occurred, however, for that same night the Greeks were told of the destruction of Leonidas and his men at Thermopylae. Defending the straits at Euboea was no longer practical as Xerxes marched his army southward into Boeotia and Attica. In what must have been a heartbreaking undertaking, the Greek force withdrew. For the Athenians especially this must have been a bitter pill, as it was now clear that Attica would not be spared. It would not be long before their city was captured and destroyed, the burning buildings visible from their new anchorage at Salamis. But the Athenians had made their decision to put their faith in their ships, and the Battle of Artemisium showed them just how wise that decision had been. The Greeks had withstood a superior Persian fleet and comported themselves well. The experience gained at Artemisium would be on clear display at Salamis, when the Persian fleet was decidedly defeated and sent limping back to Asia. The importance of this sentiment was not lost on Plutarch:
Although the battles which occurred against the ships of the Barbarians in the straits did not determine a final decision in the whole affair, they greatly benefitted the Greeks through the experience they gained, for they were taught by actions in the face of danger, with the result that neither the number of ships nor adornment or splendour of figureheads nor boastful shouts or barbarian war-songs held anything fearful for men who knew how to come to blows and who had the courage to fight, but it was necessary that they, thinking little of such things, bear themselves against their enemies and fight it out to the end once they had engaged with them. (Themistocles 8.1)
The Battle Site Today
No clear remnants of the Battle of Artemisium survive. No remains of the wrecked Persian fleet have been discovered, no evidence of the Greek camp survives, not even the temple after which Artemisium was named has been securely identified. Scholars still debate the exact location of Aphetai, and some even contend that the battle was not fought north of Euboea but rather in the waters where the straits of Artemisium meet the Euripus, just off of the tiny island of Monilia and practically within sight of Thermopylae. Most scholars, however, still hold that the Battle of Artemisium took place somewhere between Euboea and the southern coast of Magnesia. Adventurous visitors can view the straits from the coast of Euboea near the modern towns of Peuki or Kanatadika, or take the ferry from Agios Konstantinos to Skiathos. However, the topography is easier to visualize from a vantage point above sea level, and so it is worth the drive to Magnesia to view the battle site. The best vantage point is probably the hills east of modern Glypha (N38° 57.398"; E022° 59.061). From here, the narrowness of the straits is apparent, and travellers will be rewarded with some of the most spectacular coastline in all of Greece.
Fig. 5.1: The Artemisium straits, looking from near Glypha towards the northern shore of Euboea. Authors’ photo.
Further Reading:
Ancient Sources:
–Herodotus 7.175-95, 8.1-23
Herodotus offers the lengthiest description of the Battle of Artemisium, though scholars have questioned his account of the size of the Persian fleet and the Greek and Persian movements before, during and after the battle. For example, Herodotus records that a contingent of Persian ships attempted to sail around Euboea but were destroyed by a second storm; such a movement does not offer a tactical justification, and so it has been suggested that Herodotus invented the story to bring the size of the Persian fleet down to a more realistic number. Even so, Herodotus must be the starting point for anyone interested in the battle.
–Diodorus of Sicily 11.12-13
Writing in the first century BCE, Diodorus only briefly mentions the Battle of Artemisium, but he does offer insight to Themistocles’ naval strategy against the Persians, most notably the attempt of the Greeks to engage single units rather than the entire enemy fleet. As such, Diodorus offers an intriguing supplement to Herodotus’ account.
–Plutarch, The Life of Themistocles 7-9
Plutarch, writing from the late first to the early second century CE, offers a rather moralizing account of the life of Themistocles. Nevertheless, his brief account of the Battle of Artemisium names the Greek and Persian admirals and quotes a poem by Pindar that highlights just how important the naval confrontation was in the Greek recollection of the war.
Modern Sources:
Books
–Green, P., The Greco-Persian Wars (Berkeley, 1996).
A detailed account of the Battle of Artemisium offered by a preeminent ancient historian. Green addresses many of the scholarly concerns raised by Herodotus’ account of the battle and highlights the importance of the double stand at Thermopylae and Artemisium.
–Lazenby, J.F., The Defence of Greece: 490-479 BC (Warminster, 1993).
A thorough, scholarly study of the Persian Wars with a detailed account of the Battle of Artemisium, including a discussion of the strategy behind the Greeks’ Thermopylae-Artemisium line and the impact of the battles.
–Molyneux, J.H., Simonides: A Historical Study (Wauconda, 1992).
While not a historical treatment of the battle, the work focuses on how the battle was commemorated, especially in light of the discovery of new fragments of the poet Simonides – again emphasizes the importance of Artemisium in Greek memory.
Articles
–Evans, J.A.S., ‘Notes on Thermopylae and Artemisium’, Zeitschrift für Alte Geschicte 18.4, pp.389-406.
A discussion of the strategic motivations behind the Thermopylae-Artemisium line. Evans suggests that the Battle of Artemisium, in particular, was not intended to be a decisive victory, but rather a chance for the Greeks to test their fleet against the Persians and support Leonidas at Thermopylae.
–Holladay, A.J., ‘Further Thoughts on Trireme Tactics’, Greece & Rome 35 (1988), pp.149-51.
A brief and informative article offering some clarification on the arguments of Lazenby and Whitehead (whose work is included below) on trireme tactics.
–Lazenby, J.F., ‘The Diekplous’, Greece & Rome 34 (1987), pp.169-77.
A discussion about one of the standard tactics ascribed to ancient triremes, arguing that the manoeuvre was undertaken by single ships, rather than entire formations as some scholars have suggested.
–Sidebotham, S., ‘Herodotus on Artemisium’, Classical World 75.3 (1982), pp.177-86.
Sidebotham proposes that the Battle of Artemisium took place not north of Euboea but rather where the straits of Artemisium meet with the Euripus. While this conclusion has not been widely accepted, Sidebotham’s article does highlight some of the difficulties present in Herodotus’ account of the battle.
–Whitehead, Ian, ‘The Periplous’, Greece & Rome 34 (1987), pp.178-85.
A discussion of another standard tactic of Greek triremes, likening this manoeuvre to a ‘dog-fight’.