Empire: World History - 101. Salamis: Athens’ Revenge

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

Leonidas and the 300 have been defeated at Thermopylae, leaving the way to Athens open. With the Persians advancing, many Athenians flee to the island of Salamis in the hope it will give them shelter. From there, they see flames lick the sky as the Persians burn Athens. But their leader, Themistocles, has readied the fleet for one last battle with Xerxes. Listen as William and Anita are once again joined by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones to discuss the Battle of Salamis and the end of the Persian invasion of Greece. For bonus episodes, ad-free listening, reading lists, book discounts, a weekly newsletter, and a chat community. Sign up at https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm/ Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. So, and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durimple. And by a huge public acclaim, I think probably one of our most popular guests, on the Empire podcast is back with us. Yay! Wonderful Lloyd! Welcome, welcome, Lloyd. Lloyd Llewellyn Jones.

Thank you so much. We didn't scare you off last time. On the contrary, on the contrary, I loved it. I really did. And thank you very much for the kind feedback. And it's wonderful, wonderful, wonderful to be back with you. My daughter has fallen in love with your voice and said, I want to meet this wonderful, charming Welsh historian, she said. It's all in the accent. No, it's not just the accent.

It's the twinkle. that you bring with you. Ah, well, thank you very much. Not at all. Now, look, we are here to talk about the Battle of Salamis, the end of the Persian invasion of Greece. William, just remind us where we're picking up from in this relay race through history. So, Lloyd, in the last episode, we had Paul Cartledge talking about the Spartans. Ah, fantastic.

And so we had a wonderful sketch by him of who the Spartans were, what they're doing for, and their military ways and their tough Spartan. Crazy ways, yeah. Perhaps you'd give us your view, seen from the Persian perspective. Why were the Spartans crazy in your view? But also your view on Gerard Butler would also be very instructed, if that's all right. We had Paul's reading of Gerard Butler. Yes, both, please.

I just think that the Spartans, I mean, they really are the craziest, most kind of idiosyncratic civilization of antiquity, I think. I mean, they just do the Spartan way. So tell us why you think that? Why are they so much crazier than lots of other warrior groups dotted around? Well, I suppose it's their ethos, I suppose. It's so deep set in them and this kind of almost entire rejection of anything to do with the good life at all.

You know, even the idea, it seems, of celebrating war seems to be anathema to them. They cut themselves no slack whatsoever. And of course, there's a very dark. sort of legacy of Sparta too. For instance, in Germany in the late 19th century and, you know, the sort of Prussian militarism, Spartan education had a kind of second wind. Was that the inspiration for the Prussians? Absolutely. I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But worse, I think, is under the Third Reich when the Nazis really set up these military schools for young lads based on the Spartan system. I didn't know that. I didn't know that at all. And what they actually said it?

They credited it? Constantly. And in the sort of reports we have from former old boys who were there, you know, they say that basically our education was Greek language, Greek history, with an emphasis on Sparta and physical education. It's quite staggering. So all that sort of third-riky stuff of sort of naked sunbathing and sort of gymnastics outside, is that all based on Spartans leaving their babies out on hillsides and this sort of thing? Very much so, indeed, very much so. I never knew that. Yeah, Hitler had a very soft spot for the sort of Hellenic past, which was very much in contrast to Himmler, who liked all of this kind of European Bronze Age kind of stuff. You know, it was never enough for Hitler. Hitler were always saying, like, you know, why does Himmler get so worked up about a pothshed from some camp in northern Germany, where we have the acropolis to look at and so forth? This is all due to me. I didn't know. The Nazis drew very, very heavily on Spartan ideology. There's a book in there. I really want to write one day. So you would set against these sort of proto-Nazi Spartans, the fun-loving pro-pleasure Persians? Certainly the Persians knew how to enjoy the good life. They could be as hard on the battlefield and on horseback as any other soldier.

They were every bit as good at a massacre as anyone else. We have had some people on Twitter reacting to the earlier series that you did, Lloyd. by saying that we were very light on criticism of Persia, that in fact Persian imperialism was in effect every bit as brutal as any other kind of imperialism anywhere else? Absolutely. And I remember us talking actually about the fact that, you know, the empire is built and maintained on square-jured soldiers terrorising communities.

I mean, there's no other way around it. This is how empires operate, even with the laissez-faire approach to the bureaucracy, that the Persians had. Nevertheless, if people didn't pay up their taxes, the Persians came down on them like a ton of lead. That's very important distinction from what we said last time. And it's, I think it's really, really important to focus on that for a second, because last time we were giving a slight picture that there was a Persian model of imperialism, which was somehow less imperialistic, that was somehow softer around the edges than the model used, for

example, by the British or the 19th century British colonists. Yeah, I think there is a difference, however, which is important to recognise, and that is, of course, the idea that the Persians never imposed a language, never imposed an infrastructure necessarily. They did impose their laws, however, and they demanded absolute obedience to the great king. There was no doubt of that. And rebellion is treated almost as a form of heresy. Because in the royal inscriptions, we have these things, you know, that the world is created by Ahura Mazda. You'll remember he's the wise lord, the great god of the Iranian pantheon, and Hora Mazda gives the king the right to rule. So therefore, the king is ruling under the auspices, almost as the viceroy of Ahura Mazda.

If a society goes against that, then, of course, they are breaking the laws of the God. They are heretics, essentially. And I think that really is what sits behind the way in which Darius would have seen the uprisings in Asia Minor, which led to the Battle of Marathon, and essentially then what leads on to Xerxes invasions of Greece as well, which is kind of retribution. Sure, we've talked about Marathon. We talked about Thermopylae where Xerxes was victorious. I think we've been remiss.

We missed one thing. Can you give us a thumbnail sketch of Artemisia? Because we didn't cover it. And it is battled by sea and why it's important. Well, it went on simultaneously with Thermopylae. That's the really interesting thing. Off the same coast? Off the same coast, absolutely.

And don't forget, the coastline was much, much further inland than it is today. So almost within eyesight distance, we have this land battle going on, you know, at the past, and then just across the way, we've got a first sea battle going on. And Lloyd, you gave us a brief description last time, but for those who may not have heard that, describe the difference between the two navies. The big thing is this. The Persians are using light fleets. So they are ships built by the Phoenicians, who are the master ship builders of the ancient world. And they are quite light craft. They could dart in and out. Very, very fast indeed. They're this kind of, you know, the real sports cars of antiquity. You know, the beautiful sort of, you know, the motorboats. The motorboats. The swift motorboats of antiquity. Whereas the Greek triremes are heavy. They sit. low in the water. They bear a lot of weight, not just in the construction, but also, of course, then when you add the rowers. And their ram is capped with what, with copper, with iron?

With copper, we think, mainly copper, but it's thick. And the actual prow of the boat, you know, has got very, very solid timbers. That's what did a lot of damage at Artemisia. As well as talking about the size of the ships, can we talk about the size of the fleet? Because the Greeks have fewer ships to lose, that's fair to say, isn't it? That is absolutely fair to say. First of all, we should say there's no such thing as Greece, okay, at this time. If you remember what we say, you know, a lot of different city-states, okay? The Athenians were very crafty in preparing a fleet. Under their leader, Themistocles, who seems to have had this really quite remarkable vision into the future, when the Athenians discovered that they had silver in the hills around Attica, they started mining it. rather than actually using it on building projects or anything,

themistically is persuading them to put the money into shipbuilding. And this really made them a very important naval power in the Aegean at that time. So they have a decent fleet, a very good fleet, as far as any Hellenic society goes, but certainly nothing on a par with the enormous amount of ships that the king has at its disposal. Okay, so just in a very short space of time, what happens at Artemisian when these two very different fleets face each other? Well, there's a lot of ramming from the Greek fleets into the side of the Persians, but the Persians are also very light and could dodge and can get around these bigger ships in much, much quicker ways, and essentially what forms at the end is simply a draw. it's really, really hard to say that there's a victory for anybody

at Artemisim. But it's the Greeks who break and withdraw. Yes, that's right. They pull back first because I think they realize that here we are dealing with mass forces. And I think that unnerves them a bit, and so they pull back. But it's kind of interesting

that now, quite literally, both sides have tested the waters. And that's what's really important for what follows in the successive months, of course. I mean, in a way, what's happened is that there's a free path now created for the Persians to get to Athens. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So they have the desire, but now they also have a pathway. Tell us about just before, you know, we actually get to when they reach there, the Oracle of Delphi.

Now, I'm glad because we get, I've missed the Oracle of Delphi, missed the Oracle very, very much. So the Oracle has got something to say, which is kind of not very helpful. There's always something to say, but it's always cryptic. You know this? You approach this oracles. She's probably chewing Rora Reeves, leaves. So she's quite high with all this stuff. Would she be young? Or would you be young and beautiful? Like in the Harry Harry House and films? Or would she be like sort of old and wizened? I mean, what would she look like? We really don't know. We really don't know. Shall we go with her being young and beautiful?

Yeah, okay. I'll go with that. That's fine. Okay. If you insist. But she's high as a kite. High as a kite, yeah. So the Athenians, they go and they say, oh dear, Oracle, which, you know, stops having snacks and just talk to us for a second, oh, high Oracle. Exactly. What is going to happen with the Persians? So what does the Oracle of Delphi say about this? Well, when they go there, they put these questions to her.

And the questions always seem to be quite sort of straight, you know, the answers aren't necessarily so. Anyway, what she says is something like, you know, not in the coming of horses or the marching of feet, but you will meet yourself in battle at Holy Salamis, and you will be the death of many women's sons there. So it's all kind of, ooh, what's going on? I mean, doesn't sound good. No, it's not good. There's another bit, isn't there?

Why sit you doomed one? Fly to the ends of the earth. All his ruins for fire and the headlong god of war shall bring you low. Yes. And the Spartans also go and they think, well, we'll have a crack to see if we can get a better deal. a better forecast. And what she gives them, I think, is far worse. She says, the strengths of bulls or lions cannot stop the foe. And do we think she's in the pay of Xerxes by this point? Does he give her a nice golden something or other to sweeten her? Well, it depends on where we

sit with the idea of faith, isn't it, really? You know, I suppose if we're cynical, we could say that, yes, this is a nice payoff going on here, maybe central Greece, perhaps in the power of the Persians here. But, I mean, the thing is, whatever the reality, these kind of oracles have an effect, don't they? And there's the one final cryptic line we should add, though all else should be taken, Zeus, the all-seeing, grants that the wooden wall only shall not fail. I mean, honestly, what the bloody hell is she talking about? I know. I mean, the last thing they thought of was this wooden wall would be ships. They immediately, in Athens, they immediately started erecting a sort of a huge barricade around the acropolis, a wooden barricade there.

So thinking, okay, that will be the wooden wall surely, you know. But this is the way that oracles worked. You'll remember we talked about Cresas of Sardis. When he sent to Delphi to ask the oracle, who will win in the battle between us, the Lydians and the Persians, the answer was, whoever it will be, you can be assured that a great empire will fall. well he thought of course it's going to be the Persians but of course it was him you know

but this is the way they work this is the way the Delphi works it is a little bit like reading your zodiac sign in the newspapers and you can read in it whatever you want whatever you want you shall meet a dark eyed stranger from a count sonita and his name and his name shall be Fernando

so look thermostocles who you mentioned before he's the leader of the Athenian fleet does he take any of this Delphic stuff seriously and does it change the way he prepares for the Persians. It's kind of hard to know really because, of course, all of this is being filtered through Herodotus, right? Herodotus is writing about 40 to 50 years after the event. Tom Holland is very upset that we're discussing Herodotus we should say here.

Tom, I'm sorry. I think that when we look at Themistically, we only see him filtered through Herodotus and Themistically you see after all of these battles are done with is exiled from Athens, gets a bad reputation. And he kind of goes Persian. Give us a little portrait of Themistocles, because he's a greengrocer's son, isn't he? Yeah, yeah, he's an absolute nobody really. I mean, we know that he's a son of an Athenian man, greengrocer, but a non-Athenian woman. So as far as Pericles, later Athenian citizenship laws would go. It would mean that he's not really seen as a bona fide Athenian. You have to have, you know, Athenian parents on both sides. He's quite a Churchill-like figure, I think, quite literally, if the bust of him is anything true, he's kind of bullnecked and quite sort of round-faced.

He has that ability to make the good speech and to step in when needed. And he seems to be very, very sensible. But also, he's not at all opposed to lying familiar to us. I have no idea who you're thinking of. Which comes this PM are you thinking of here, Lloyd? Oh, I couldn't possibly say. But an interesting kind of policies that develop from him. But his later reputation is tarnished by the fact that he actually goes and lives in Persia.

He probably spoke Persian by the end of his life. And so Erroditus puts him under the heading of a bad thing by the end. So he's very difficult to get to know. I mean, I've seen sort of busts created of Themistocles. And he is often sort of depicted, and these are sort of 1800s, with almost like a papal hat. I don't know what you call those hats that the Pope would wear. But I mean, do we know what he looked like are all these all projections into the past?

Were they in contemporary? You're talking about a papal tiara? No, no, no. It's, you know, the pointy hat thing, whatever it is that they're called. It's the front of a Corinthian helmet. It's a visor, isn't it, on the front of a helmet? I don't know. It looks like a, okay.

It looks like a bishop. Bishop hat. Oh, okay. It does. That's what it is. Whatever the traditions were, certainly, by the late classical period and into the Hellenistic period. When most of these portraits are created, they all look the same. They all look the same, exactly. And they're not at all reliable at all. Square George.

Yeah, and this is when we get the vogue for portraits of great men and stuff, you know, in the Roman period, essentially. Okay, so he's got this nebulous, but doesn't sound great Delphic oracle thing hanging. He knows the Persians are coming. So what does he do with the Athenian fleet to prepare them for this? Well, he's... He, first of all, gets them together. He drills them. He makes sure that they're all well-equipped. And of course, what we've got, these are triremes. So it's manpower, which is the most important thing, oarsmen, banks and banks of oarsmen, to move these great lumbering things through the seas. And we said before they are basically free men. They're not slaves. Yes, they're freemen by and large. I don't think we can write out the fact that they would have been forced labor on these ships as well. But by and large, it's an enterprise for the democracy itself, for Athens itself. Now, day by day, Themistically was receiving reports of the ever encroaching army. And the army had been moving from the strait.

of Artemisia and the Parsus Thermopylae, covering a lot of ground, eating everybody out of house and home as they went. This is like a locust plague really moving through Attica. Herodotus actually says that what scared the local inhabitants more that actually the idea of being invaded by the Persians was actually feeding them for more than one night because, you know, they just strip all of the food in an area. And then finally, if they begin to approach, Attica properly. This is when themistically sounds the alarm and he evacuates the city of Athens. Is it everybody or is it women and children and does he say, look, women and children first? Women and children first, most definitely, and the elderly. Most of the men stay behind.

Many of them haul themselves up to the top of the Acropolis. Which you'd have thought was quite a good place to defend yourself. It's a very good place. That's why it's there in the first place. You know, the Acropolis we know in Athens, you know, dates back to the Mycenaean period. And obviously and survived a lot of attacks. And you'd imagine the perfect defensive side? Completely. I mean, this is why virtually all ancient cities have some kind of hill-top fortress around them.

I mean, it's the ideal place. Now, the place that the exiles go to is just across the straits to the island of Salamis. And there they set up essentially a refugee camp so that they can still look back on their city. They can virtually see it in the distance. And what, in their view, is gained by leaving a good defensive position, going to an island. They're scared. They're scared. They're terrified. I mean, you know, it's, it's what we are seeing in the Middle East at the moment, isn't it? You know, mass movement of people just trying to save

their lives. Nothing, nothing more than that. You know, nothing more than that. Prusa-Shaj. So, okay, so the Persians are just basically cutting through this territory like a knife through butter. So easily. Nothing can stop them. And what do they do when they take over territory, the Persians? I mean, are they people who scorch earth? Or, I mean, how do they make their progress? By and large, no. And it's not really Xerxes concerned to do that here. What Xerxes wants to do is to get into Athens to prove his point, that basically this is retaliation for the sack of Sardis, the humiliation of his father, Darius. Zerxes just wants to take Athens. And so his troops advance very, very quickly. The Athenians are preparing the

themselves. It's really interesting, actually. We can see some of the ways in which the Athenians preparing for this attack. From the archaeology, in about 1900, on the top of the Acroboros, German archaeological teams found these deep, deep trenches dug into the earth of the Acropolis. And inside there, they found these incredibly beautiful statues of naked young men called Kuroi and these beautiful young women, Khorai. And these were probably images of the victorious dead of former generations of beautiful maidens in Athens. And they were exquisite statues, painted originally, of course. And they'd been deliberately taken off their pedestals and buried into these trenches,

less the Persians get to them, smash them or take them away. And you also write in your book about how archaeologists at Persepolis have found Greek statues brought from earlier looting expeditions. Absolutely. So it was, you know, it was a perfectly standard thing to do. do. And don't forget, if the Persians would have thought that these were images of gods, then that was always a bonus. There was a long, long tradition across the ancient Near East that when you conquered a city, you took the gods away from that city. And in ancient Hindu India,

if you look at the pre-Islamic, places like the palavers and the cholas. Would you just, you kidnap the gods or you destroy the gods? What do you do? You take them away, you kidnap the gods. Because you've got a hostage situation, as it were then, you know? And that is really about psychological warfare, isn't it? The Cholas bring back to Tangor gods from other parts of India. That's fascinating. Exactly the same, exactly the same we have across the Near East.

And that means that the city is unprotected, you see. There's no longer anyone, any divine power looking after you. And certainly the Athenians were making preparations so that at least couldn't happen. Well, I mean, we made a really important point that from Salamis, they can see all of this happening. They can see the Acropolis for, they can see the smoke

rising into the air, and they can smell the destruction of their conquering army. So what are they to, so what do they do? I mean, they can't just cry on Salamis. That's not going to help. I mean, what are they doing on well? Well, there's very little else they can do because they do see, first of all, you know, their sacred buildings go away and up in flame. And then the Persians put all of the domestic housing to the torch as well. Presumably the Acropolis as it stands now does not exist yet. No, it was a much, much more modest affair, far more wooden structures than was later erected. better to burn them with. Exactly, much, much easier to burn. And this, you know, they could really

see it. So there was nothing really that those on Salamis could do until themistically said, okay, let's move the ships. They'd already brought out the Tiremes from the Pereus, which is the port of Athens, across the straight into the Bay of Salamis. So they were all prepared there. And now they think, okay, let's man these ships, because the next thing is going to happen, obviously, is there's going to be a battle by sea. And in modern terms, this is sort of opposite Piraeus, or where is this? Yes, yes, pretty much so, pretty much. When you drive today from the main airport at Athens into the city centre,

you pass along the coast, and you can see really easily, you can see Salamis that runs alongside it for a good 15 minutes worth of the drive. So it's all building up. Zerxes, though, I mean, he can take his fleet into Salamis to destroy for Mr Cleese fleet, but he has an advisor who is saying, you don't need to do this. Now tell us about Artemisia, the queen of Heliccanasis. I'm completely fascinated by her.

Tell us more about her. And she is worthy of our fascination as well. So she's one of these rare women that stand forward in the histories of Herodotus. She's from the town in which Herodotus was born, of course, Haliccanassus, modern-day Bodrum. Played by Eva Green in the movie. Eva Green, who can ever forget. in less sweary form than her recent court case.

Indeed. And she is one of the real move as the shakers of the satrapy in Halicannasis. We don't really know much about her background other than what Herodotus tells us. But he says that she is a very able commander at sea. And it's kind of interesting that, of course, he uses a woman to tell Xerxes some plain truths, but Xerxes is more than happy to dismiss her advice. Of course, what we have to remember is Herodotus, or any of his informers, were never in the war council, you know, in Xerxes tent at the time. So anytime we go into these very often long digressions about war council

tactics in Herodotus, we have to admit that there's a lot of make-belief going on. Okay, all right. But I mean, the argument goes, and we have Herodotus to thank, that she's saying, look, just hold on, hold on, let the weather do the work. And he's saying, I'm not, I'm not happy for that. We're going in. Should we take a break here? And after the break, come back and join us where we find out what Xerxes actually does. If he's not going to listen to Artemisia, the Queen, and wait, what is he going to do? Welcome back. So just before the break, and we were talking about Xerxes, who is now poised on avenging Sardis. He's poised to crush the Athenians once and for all, and he's there approaching Salamis, and the people there are just watching in terror.

And all they've got between themselves and the dreaded Persians who they fear is the Mastikles and his fleet in the bay of Salamis. So is it a unified, when we say the Greeks, and I know we hate that term, and I understand why, but do we have unity and do we have discipline among the Greek ranks with this storm approaching? No. No, we don't. And you can see how that is played out by some of the tactics that Themistocles undertakes at this moment. So some really sneaky stuff goes on at this point. Now, according to Herodotus, Themistocles sends a messenger to Xerxes. And this messenger says that Themistocles promises that in all honesty, he is pro-Persian and will help Zerxes. in whatever way he can. Yeah, right. He's misunderstood. Yeah, you've just got it wrong.

He says, you know, come into the bay tomorrow morning with all of your ships. And I will make sure that you will have a free pass and that you will win this. They were Greeks bearing gifts. Too right, absolutely. Now, the other story that is told simultaneously with this by Herodotus is the fact that amongst the Greek sailors themselves, there were lots, of course, of people who were under the Persian banner.

So especially those from Ionia, those who had been involved in the revolts beforehand. We have to say, is that your lovely dog again, Lloyd? We've met him before. It is. It's Yanto, I'm afraid. He's very pro-Athenian, you see.

So you'll have to bear with him, I'm afraid. It's a divide down the middle of the household. We certainly are. are. We certainly are. Right. So simultaneously, at the time that Herodotus is telling us this, this trick is going. Thomistically is busy ordering some Athenians to erect essentially billboards around the cliff tops, which overlook the straits, saying, don't fight for the Persians, fight for the Greeks. Let's all be Greek together. So, you know, now either we say, Now Herodotus is getting mixed up because there are two different messages going on here.

Or maybe that really was Themistically's plan all along to confuse and confound Xerxes and his troops. You know, who are we to believe? Oh, to be honest, if you put it on a billboard, it's kind of clear intent. Don't you think? I mean, like, okay. It's bizarre. So what does happen, of course, the next morning when the sun rises and the battle begins? Okay, this is the 29th of September for 80.

BC we're talking about. We know we can pinpoint the date, okay? So September is still quite hot, it's lovely blue skies. Yeah. But it is the end of the sailing season. So for Xerxes, it's now or never. Because if he doesn't hit now, he'd have to withdraw his troops and then come back a year. I crossed to Patmos from Koss in September this year. It's quite heavy seas you can get at that time of year. Most definitely, most definitely. And if you'd waited until October, it would have been, you know, a no-go entirely. Okay, so the Themistocles of the Billboard,

now he's got to speak to his troops. And does he give good speech, this man in the morning? He does. Churchill, like, he gives really good speech, most definitely. What does he say? What does he say to get them to not be scared anymore? Herodotus puts some words into his mouth, how much of these are really themistically we don't know,

but basically he talks about freedom. And this is always the buzzword. for the Athenians, that, you know, we are fighting for our freedom here against the enslavement of the barbarians. Can I just read a bit of what... Oh, please do. Can I just... I mean, you tell me if this is all bullshit or if, you know,

he probably did say this, but he apparently urges his soldiers to consider all that was best in human nature and affairs and all that is worst and choose the former, that Mr. Cleese says. It's quite good, isn't it? Yeah. No, it's great, absolutely, absolutely. That whole idea, again, of course, about the... barbarity of the Persians, that's what's there.

You know, if you want to live a civilised life, fight for us. I spent last weekend, Lloyd, in the classical departments of the Met Museum, looking at the vases. Ah, yeah, yeah. And you get all these images of these sort of almost naked Greek soldiers with their shields and their amazing helmets, locked together, shield by shield. And then the very different Persians with these sort of very trendy trousers with little round rings, weird little caps, and their bows and arrows. I mean, it's, you know, a different people and a sword, as different as different can be. I want to talk a little bit about

the ghosts in the water. So what is all this about the ghost serpents in the water? And what do they mean? Water is a very important facet at Salamis, not simply because the battle is fought on it, but for the kind of mysteries that surround it as well. So, for instance, we know thousands of Persians fell into the seas and drowned. And that's because the Persians have no tradition of swimming at all, whereas the Athenians were very good swimmers. The Athenians always said that really, if you're to be considered a civilized man, you have to learn how to read and you have to swim, have to learn how to swim. And so we get all of these stories of the drowning Persians, meeting their fates with the kind of sea monsters and the fates that live within the seas as well.

I've always found it a thing in India that people don't learn to swim. And I'm used to a world from Britain where everyone can swim. Yeah. And you go to India, you find that most people can't. Incredible. Yeah. But the other thing about these ghosts that I mean, I've charmed by this story, of course. But, you know, the idea that these are the sons or the descendants of Greek gods who are waiting to protect Greece, they've done it before.

And they pull the Persians down to the depths. So, I mean, that's the whole thing of that imagery. We have the most incredible account of this, of course, not from Herodus, but actually we can go much, much closer to home in time. And that is the great tragedy Persians, Persi, by Iskullus. Which is pretty close in date, isn't it? Eight years later. 472 BCE.

That's as good as you're going to get in BC, isn't it? Oh, it's quite incredible. I mean, you know, our first surviving full Greek tragedy is not set in the distant past of gods and heroes, but set, essentially, it's a modern history piece. As recent as Brexit is to us almost. And as traumatic, I would say, absolutely. And what does he say? What does he say in this kind of quite contemporaneous peace? Well, in this, he has this incredible description that a Persian messenger takes home to the

Persians in Susa and the Queen listens to this message and the messenger talks about the drowning masses. Shall I read you a little? Yes, please. Oh, we'd love it. Yes, please. This is part of the chorus and the messenger speeches. First of all, Iskilas peppers his text with kind of Persianism's exotic, strange words on Amatapia. So it goes like this. Ototoy, ottoe, invained at our weapons, innumerable and various, go from Asia to Zeus's country, the land of Greece. The shores of Salamis and all the neighboring regions are filled up with the corpses of those who met unhappy deaths.

Otta toy, ottoe, you are saying that the dead bodies of our friends are tossed, drenched and carried along by the seas, their cloaks wandering around them. Our bows and arrows were useless, and the entire force was defeated by the ramming of ships. Yehel out of the melancholy, shout of ill omen against our enemies, the gods have ordained utter catastrophe for the Persians. Ah, aye, aye, the army is destroyed. O Salamis, most hateful name to hear. Oh, I was so lush. Oh, wonderful. I loved that. It is amazing. But what's really, I think, incredible about this play is just to think about that first performance when it happened seven years later.

Now, it's highly likely that Eastonis himself was part of this battle, or if not, his father was, or maybe his brother was, because this is a soldier's eye view. And it's performed in Athens, seven years later, in that Amphia Theatre, just below what becomes the theatre Dionysus. It wasn't quite as it is now, but on the slopes of the Acropolis that seven years earlier had been burnt by the Persians, sitting in the open air, of course, in an afternoon, in a theatre setting where you could see your neighbours across the way, and it would have been full of war veterans, people who had lost sons, fathers, lost limbs, maybe. Limbs, absolutely. There they were watching this modern history in front of

them. But this is, I think, the most important thing to come out of this. When, you know, in 1978, Edward Said published Orientalism, he laid the origins, the blame for the origins of Orientalist writing. On Iskhalus. On Iskoulos, he says, you know, this is the first thing. But, you know, I question with my students all the time, how closely did Said ever read Persians? Because it is not what I see at all. The very fact, this is not jingoistic table thumping. This is, hey, you know, three Athens, make Athens great again. It's not about that at all. The fact that he sets it in the court of Persia, where this is defeated, in itself is a decision to try to empathize with the loser.

And what's incredible is, there's a scene in it where the women of Persia grieve for the dead boys of their homes, their sons, just in exactly the same way that the women of Athens grieve for their sons as well. this play is an anti-war play. How interesting. It is not an anti-Persian play. It is an anti-war play. Lloyd, quickly give us a detailed portrait of the actual battle and the geography it's set in. How narrow are these straits of Salamis? At the narrowest, I would say less than a mile, at the widest probably about 10 miles.

So it's not like Thermopylae. It isn't like there's just a very narrow space. No, no, no, no, no. There's enough room to maneuver. But the waters, as you rightly say, Willie, I mean, the waters that circulate through there are very, very choppy. They're very, very powerful current indeed. There is no consensus on how the battle played out because Herodotus is not really interested in that. He's always interested in the moral picture that emerges from battle.

Apart from Iskulis, which is actually the closest thing we get to eyewitness, we don't really know. And all Iskila says is that they die, that the Persians drown. Yeah, really. I mean, that's essentially the main thrust of it, as it were. But what he does talk about is the fact that the Persian ships receive a constant pounding because they are rammed time and time again by the Athenian triremes. And the other thing that the triremes do is to row very, very close and very, very fast. against the sides of the Persian ships,

snapping their oars, breaking all of the banks of rowers all the time as well. Here we go, another little bit from Turcay, if you like. This is the Queen. This is Xerxes mother speaking. What am I hearing? What am I hearing here is the height of calamity, a cause of disgrace to the Persians and of shill screams. But go back to your report, she says to the messenger, and tell me this.

How great was the fleet of Hellenic ships that they thought they could meet the Persians in a nearer. naval encounter with the ramming of ships. And he goes on and says, as far as the size of the fleet was concerned, your majesty, you can be sure that the barbarians should have won. The total number of Greek ships came just 300. But 10 of these were selected out separately from them. The size of Xerxes fleet, I know, was a thousand. So in other words, even with a sort of mythologization going on there, the odds were stacked against the Greeks, but they're relentless, of the light Persian craft really won the day.

They're just better at water. They're better at water. I mean, as you've said, brilliantly, you know, they understand water and they understand how to fight on water. Can I just ask, I mean, we've lost sight of it. Where is Xerxes? What all of this is going on? Is he anywhere?

Yeah, he's supposed to be up at a promontory sitting on his throne, looking down at all of this. There is a line that's, you know, supposedly given to him, that he says, my men have turned into women. I mean, where has that come from? Is this Herodotus again, our friend Herodotus? This is Herodotus again, of course. But what he's doing here is kind of paying an homage to Artimisia, the Queen, because, of course, you know, she actually had the foresight to think like a man

and to think her actually, you know, clearly as a military strategist. But in fact, you know, what he's basically saying there is, you know, I should have listened. Lloyd, I mean, so what Salamis does is it breaks the back of Xerxes, Navy. Half the Persian fleet destroyed in an afternoon. What is then, you know, what happens next? What is the now the future of Persian? Now it's been humiliated. Now it's been broken. It's ships and have been sunk and has lost half of the fleet. What next? Well, it's kind of interesting to know what Xerxes's intention was beyond humiliating Athens. That was, in a way, you know, game over and mission accomplished or one of the Acropolis. You know, I mean, it's exactly what he wanted to do.

But I think at this point, realizing that the seas were turning against him, the morale was completely lost. He also gets worse news that there's a revolt going on in Babylon, which he has to get back to put down. The opposite end of the empire. Absolutely. And the most, I mean, the cash cow of the empire as well. He actually returns to Mesopotamia to crush this revolt, leaving behind him very, very able series of generals, who clash again, of course, at another battle in the north, about a year later at Plataea, where again, the Persian forces are, you know, they're absolutely

humiliated again. And this is really the last time that the Persians ever attempt to hold together a force in Europe. And Lloyd, what's your final assessment here? Because there are two ways out there of looking at this. You could take the view that Herodotus is not telling the whole truth because he's very much on the Greek side, and that this is a huge exaggeration of a minor blip on the Persian radar. Or you can take the view that this is actually one of the great turning points of history

and that the high watermark of the Persian Empire has been met, and it's now a neptide heading back towards that moment, ultimately when Alexander will take Persepolis and burn it. I think that it is a seismic shift in the identity of the Greeks from Salamis onwards, they get a sense of self-worth, I think. I think it creates the Greeks as a people, but it would be very wrong to say that from here on in,

it's all downhill for Persia. Not at all. This is still, don't forget, a costly battle, an expensive series of battles on the Western peripheries of the empire. A more interesting question, I think, is what would have happened, had Salamis gone the other way, I think there's no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Athens would have become a satrap, a satrable center. And probably I think that Xerxes and his army would have pushed down into the Peloponnese and met the real enemy of the state, and that is the Spartans, and probably would have annihilated the Spartans as well, which would have changed the course of Greek history, of course, at that point.

As full of sort of the budding democracy, you know, people have often said, oh, well, you know, the Persians were there to take away the, freedom of the Greeks. That doesn't ring true to me at all, because when the Persians take over, as we've seen, different parts of their empire, they don't change the systems that go on inside. So I think democracy would have continued. As long as tribute was being paid, the Persians wouldn't have minded at all. Lloyd, as I say, I've been looking at a lot of the art over the last week and I'm wandering among those vases. And there's an awful lot of pictures of Persians being defeated. And there's one particular vase which you talk about, which takes and even more, it's horrific to our sensibilities, but it's also joking.

Yes, yes. It's dark. Yeah, I think it's horrible. Yeah, it's awful. You showed it to me, yeah. Describe it to us, Lloyd. I was teaching this to my students this morning. We call it the Urimidun vase.

It's a little wine jug. On one side of it is a naked Greek soldier holding in his hand his erect penis, and he's kind of running towards this Persian who is bending over. And there's a kind of two speech bubbles that come from. from their mouths, this Greek is saying, I am Eurimedon, and this Persian is saying, I stand bent over. Now, this is a play on the victory that the Greeks had in Asia Minor at the Battle of Eurimedon, which took place in the mid-460s when the Persians were once again defeated. So the meaning of the Vars is essentially, since this Persian is obviously going to be sodomized,

is essentially we bug at the Persians is the whole idea that that sits behind it. But there's actually a very much darker sort of element to all of this, of course. This is a boys drinking cup, isn't it? It's going to be passed around like in a rugby club or something. I've identified it as a group of squadies passing this around, drinking from it every time they do that they're passing the Persian round and they're reliving like I am Eurimidon, this is my Persian standing over. So, I mean, it literally is like sort of a football hooligans night out made into pottery.

Well, do you know what it puts me in mind of this whole idea of humiliating the enemy? And of course, you know, what war has not been fought when, you know, rape, female and male rape have not been part of the process? It really reminds me of the photographs we saw coming out of Iraq in the Gulf War. Oh, the Abu Ghraib kind of humiliation, yeah. where it's the naked, humiliated body of the enemy, which is put on display for the fun, but certainly for the kind of, I suppose, justification of war amongst the Athenian elite at this particular time anyway. Well, while it may be true, as you say, very powerfully, that, you know, this defeat doesn't put Persia in decline. It certainly is true that the Persians never try and invade Greece again.

And it does definitely, and you can see this reflective in the art, lead to a great rise in the self-confidence and you could say arrogance of Greece. And especially the arrogance of Athens, of course, who essentially go on from here to try to create their own empire as well. Well, you know what? It's a good place to end with the magnificent Lloyd Welland Jones, who we love so much on Empire podcast. You were fantastic, Lloyd. Thank you. And you have so beautifully set the scene, you know, that sort of swagger now that Athens and the Greeks have because. On Thursday, we're going to be discussing the man who invaded Persia, Alexander the Great.

So till then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnand. Goodbye from me, William Durenpil.