You're Dead to Me - The Battle of Salamis

Episode Date: July 31, 2020

Host Greg Jenner is joined by historian Professor Michael Scott and comedian Shappi Khorsandi to head back to 480BCE for one of history’s most notorious naval battles - The Battle of Salamis. On a journey through the events leading up to the battle and beyond we will uncover one of the most unique methods ever used to cross a body of water, one of the most spectacular deaths ever recorded and why sometimes it pays to give water a jolly good telling off.

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, a history podcast for everyone. For people who don't like history, people who do like history, and for people who forgot to learn any at school. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster, and I'm the chief nerd on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories. Thank you. setting our watches for 480 BCE and setting sail for the Mediterranean to get to grips with one of history's most notorious naval battles, the Battle of Salamis.

And to help me do that, I'm joined by a returning crew of salty sea dogs, both of them on their third voyage with us. In History Corner, he's a classicist from the University of Warwick, an author, TV broadcaster, the man who puts the pro in professor. He's already talked us through the Spartans and the ancient Olympics, both of them available on BBC Sounds. It's the marvellous Professor Michael Scott. Hi, Michael. How are you? Hey, Greg, sending virtual hugs. And in Comedy Corner, she's a stand-up, a novelist and even more of a cultural icon than last time.

You'll have seen her on all the telly shows, including Live at the Apollo and I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. And you'll definitely remember her from the lol-tastic episodes of this show about, well, the ancient Olympics and Justinian and Theodora, both of them available on BBC Sounds. It's the wonderful Shappi Korsandi. Hi, Shappi, how are you? I'm really well. How are you? I too send you virtual hugs because I'm not under your table.

That would be weird, wouldn't it? Can you imagine? That would be very inappropriate. Is that, Shappi, what you did for the last You're Dead to Be podcast? Well, yes, I'm normally made to sit under tables at podcasts. I don't know why. But do you know what? In lockdown, it's sent my brain to a very odd place. I was listening to the radio and Fern Cotton was the DJ

and she introduced a song and then the song came on and I thought to myself, that's such a coincidence, because Fern Cotton was just talking about that song. And it took me a while to compute that she was in the radio and not under my table. So I think I've spoken to so many people, you know, remotely, that in my head, they're just under my table. So that's where that thought came from. So what you're saying to us is that Greg and I are both in your mind under your table right now? Well, I'm a Persian that slightly lost her mind. It's very apt, I think.

Well, speaking of Persia, you didn't love history at school, but you're definitely on board now. Were you growing up very aware of the Persian Empire? Were you up on your Dariuses? Do you know all your Xerxes? I don't think there's an Iranian descendant ever that doesn't have the Persian Empire hammered over their head relentlessly by older people. Funnily enough, there were quite a few people in antiquity

who had the Persian Empire hammered over their heads as well. I was at a party once in my 20s and I remember there was an Argentinian guy there and he said yeah the thing about Iranians is that they're very nice but once they get drunk they start banging on about how big their empire was and I don't know the nuts and bolts of it you know I don't know my battles I just know Khashoggi, as we call him, and Cyrus. And I know that they had fabulous noses in profile. And lovely beards.

I mean, there's some really top-notch facial hair going on. And some, frankly, excellent costumes that I think I'm quite jealous of. Half the time we don't get the chance to wear out and about on a regular Sunday afternoon. I remember my mum had a book by her bedside called The Persian Boy when I was a kid. And she wouldn't let me read it because she said it's not appropriate for children. And so that made me really want to read it. Everything I think I learned about the Persian Empire, the Persians and the Greeks was from that book. The Persians and the Greeks was from that book. And I remember it has a very vivid chapter about how they make a boy a eunuch and how boys are used for sex.

And basically, my mother was absolutely right. It was not appropriate for a child. Eye-watering in places. All right. Well, we won't get into that today, hopefully. There are no eunuchs made and no people harmed in the making of this programme. So this leads us nicely onto our first segment of the pod. So what do you know? So what do you know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you at home might know about today's subject, the Battle of Salamis, not to be confused with salamis. And I mean, there are plenty of

pork swords in this story, and the movie 300, Rise of an Empire, is quite the sausage fest. But no, we will not be serving up any cured meats today. Salamis was a huge naval battle between the ancient Greek alliance and the Persian Empire. Now, maybe you haven't heard of it, but it's actually closely linked to the Battle of Thermopylae, which we talked about in a previous episode with Joel Domet and Michael. That's the 300 movie, Spartans against the Persians, the stupid one with all the abs. And the sequel movie is called 300, Rise of an Empire. It's even more ridiculous and even more violent.

And the abs are even more ridiculous as well. So why have we returned to this subject? Well, because 2020 is the 2,500th anniversary of both Thermopylae and Salamis. So what better time to dip our toes into this epic naval clash? Michael, we're dying to know, what are you doing to celebrate the 2,500 year anniversary of the Battle of Salamis? Well, I mean, my first plan was obviously to line up 100 oxen and sacrifice them in the streets. Standard.

Standard kind of anniversary fair. Then when I didn't get the official government permission for that, I decided to replay the Battle of Salamis in my bath with my collection of rubber ducks. There's a particularly good ancient Greek rubber duck from the British Museum, which kind of takes pride of place in my collection. They don't have a Persian rubber duck. It's an absolute scandal. But if I can, putting my rubber ducks aside the British Museum, which takes pride of place in my collection. They don't have a Persian rubber duck. It's an absolute scandal. But if I can, putting my rubber ducks aside for a moment,

can I be pedantic? Is that allowed this early on in the podcast? So, there's a wee problem, which is that 2020 is not actually the anniversary year of the Battle of Salamis. Whoa, hang on, what? It's not 2,500 years since Salamis or Thermopylae, for that matter.

Well, that's it, I'm leaving. Yeah, go on. Although it's absolutely right that we should be doing this podcast right now because the Greek government has declared that this year is the 2,500th anniversary of the Battle of Salamis. So they're celebrating it this year. But the pedantic thing is any date BCc actually you have to add one more year because when it got down to 1 bc there wasn't then a 0 bc it went from 1 bc to 1 ad oh and so we lose a year because there wasn't the one to zero

and then the zero to one bit which means that 2020 is actually only 2499 years since the battle of salamis and we technically technically should wait to 2021 okay i still think we should do the episode yeah so the battle of salamis is just one of many rounds in this kind of the wars between the greeks and persians we call them the persian wars because we have a kind of western bias broadly speaking the greeks aren't really a single people, are they, Michael? Yeah, I mean, I always think the best way to think about it is think about ancient Greece like a tapestry of many, many, many little constituent parts. And they all thought of themselves as that constituent part first. You were an Athenian first, you were a Spartan first, you were a Theban, whatever it might be. And there were about a thousand different city-states who spent most of their time, frankly, fighting one another and disagreeing with one another. And then very occasionally came together as this

bigger conglomerate that we might call the Greeks. Which is very much similar to football, isn't it? You know, Spurs fans, Arsenal fans, Chelsea fans hate each other until it's the Euros and then it's England. Exactly. Does the Persian Empire also have that same overarching one guy in charge, hate each other until it's the euros and then it's england exactly does the persian empire also have that same overarching one guy in charge but actually everyone's a bit different or are persians actually all pretty much persian no there is some similarities right apart from the fact that there was a persian king so there was an overlord ruler which is very different to the greek world where there wasn't that kind of one overlord for most of its history but it was such a vast place i mean it's 1.2 million square miles it's huge isn't it there's no way one person would certainly without the

internet you can't rule all that by yourself on your own that 1.2 million square miles was divided up into lots of little districts that were called satrapies and those satrapies each had a little individual governor they would report back to the king but they basically then got on and ruled themselves and in each of those satrapies was a massive mix of different ethnic groups uh religions uh so a complete smorgasbord of people as well yeah because i tend to think of the ancient persians as zoroastrian as their primary faith but actually i suppose there's lots of faiths going on yeah absolutely zoroastrian as their primary faith. But actually, I suppose, there's lots of faiths going on. Yeah, absolutely. Zoroastrianism was the kind of faith of the ruling elite, if you like. But underneath that, there was a whole heap of different religions being practiced

across the Persian Empire. It is really interesting what you're talking about, because Iranians, Persians, they so identify with their country, like before their religion, because there are so many different religions, so many different people from Iran, but the minute you know they're Iranian, that's the binding thing, which I've always found that very different to friends of mine from neighbouring countries, from India and Pakistan, etc, for whom their religion as an identity comes before their country. And I think it all goes back to the history of the Persian Empire. I mean, it just speaks to the Western bias that you mentioned, Greg, because I mean,

going back to that size of the Persian Empire at 1.2 million square miles, the Greeks, on the other hand, basically looked like an annoying mosquito on the rhino-sized Persian Empire. I mean, it really was ginormous and ginormously important in the whole history of the period and of that geographical region, compared to the Greeks, which looked pretty small and fairly insignificant, and certainly would have appeared so up to this point to the Persian ruler. And yet, we spend so much more time talking about the Greek Empire than we do the Persian Empire. So we should get on to, I suppose, the kind of chief executive of the Persian Empire is Darius the Great,. So we should get on to, I suppose, the kind of chief executive of the Persian Empire is

Darius the Great, initially. He's the king, he's the big daddy, and his portfolio is vast. And there has been some trouble in Asia Minor, which is Greek speaking, they're called the Ionians, and they are rebellious against Darius. And Athens gets involved. And that's the germ of the start of this war, isn't it? Yeah, so we call it Asia Minor, but we're talking about so western asia so the modern day turkish coastline into the aegean sea and that kind of coastline there were lots of cities and settlements that were as you say ionian so they were originally greek colonies greek settlers so mostly greeks but they had about in the mid-6th century bce so about 40 years or so before we're getting into our period of the Persian Wars, been brought under

the control of the Persian Empire. So these were Greeks, but living under the Persian Empire. And they got a bit fed up of this. They're kind of little individual city rulers. So there was Persian king, satrap governor, then individual city rulers under him. And those individual city rulers got a bit uppity and started a bit of a rebellion. That's pretty normal. It happened a lot in the Persian Empire, not a big thing. But this time, Athens, cheeky little upstart Athens, who had only become a democracy just over a decade earlier, and really thought they were something special, decided to send some ships to help out the Ionians in their revolt against the enormous Persian Empire. I mean, it was so ridiculous. This tiny city, which had done nothing

really up to that point to merit any amazingness, thought it was a good idea to take on the might of the Persian Empire. And King Darius, who really hadn't been that much fussed about Greece up to that point, when he finally put down the Ionian Rebellion, thought, well, it's time to teach you guys a lesson and put you back in your place. But it doesn't go that well, because you then get the Battle of Marathon, where the Greeks win. And obviously, the Greek army is made up primarily of charity workers wearing rhino costumes. But it's a huge upset. The Greeks defeat defeat the persians we get the marathon which is phidippides running those 20 odd miles to sort of say we won and then falling over dead that's the basis of this later war that we're going to come to today that salamis is that actually the greeks

have won a really surprise victory and then darius dies and so it's xerxes is now going oh for god's sake dad couldn't finish him off better Better do it myself, I suppose. Yeah, I mean, Darius turns up at Marathon thinking it's going to be an easy victory, easy win. It wasn't quite the rhino costumes that did it. Apparently, it was the cunning fact that instead of walking at the enemy, they ran at them. Ha! They never expected that. And they also had a god on their side apparently the god pan who spread panic amongst the persians anyway whatever happened uh marathon turned out to be as you say utterly amazingly

an athenian victory and then darius dies and his son xerxes goes yeah as every new ruler has to do right he has to do something more amazing than his predecessor to show that he's an even more amazing ruler uh and he thought easy easy win. You know what? I'll go back and I'll finish what my dad started and I'll do it properly this time. Shappi, I'm putting you in charge of a huge TV show about Xerxes. I'm asking you to cast the lead role of Xerxes. What do you think he looks like? Xerxes, or Khashoggi, as he is called in Persian.

He is, I'd like to say he's a tall man, but I'll be honest with you, we're not at all people. Oh, he is a strapping five foot nine. I'm glad you're saying that's strapping because that's my height. So I'm taking it. He has eyes that look like they're painted on and curly, curly, curly, curly black hair

and pretty ripped I imagine as they all were according to Hollywood am I right? Shafi's spot on absolutely spot on tall stud like and frankly nothing like he was represented in the film 300. The Iranian government actually they made an official complaint about the representation of Xerxes in the movie 300 because it was so outrageously unlike any of the sources. irritate me and it's probably irrational but I get so frustrated at the wrong representation because I think the thing with Iranians is that we feel so misrepresented anyway like the way that we are you know most people see our culture is from the news and it's so far removed. So we get super sensitive in how our history and our people are portrayed. And when I heard a few Iranians saying, Shab, 300 is going to annoy you, I was like, do you know what?

I hear you. I'm not watching it. So I haven't seen it. Yeah, the Persians in that film are not even really human, are they? Some of them, they're sort of evil, pretty unprogressive, I think we could say. So he was tall, he was handsome, he was buff. What kind of physical and moral education had he had as a young man? You know, is it TED Talks and Duke of Edinburgh Award or is it, you know, out fighting?

You trained hard. This was no sitting around being fanned throughout his youth while being fed grapes or other Iranian delicacies. This was up at the crack of dawn, intense physical, moral, intellectual training, because the ruler, his dad, Darius, realised that there was no other way that you could possibly rule such a vast empire unless you were at the top of your game, and unless you looked like a really muscular, fit, healthy, authority figure. He's the best of both worlds, probably in his late 20s, 30s. Yeah, and the difficulty with all of this, particularly with the Battle of Salamis and the story of Xerxes,

is that we hear about it through almost entirely Greek sources. And as you can imagine, they are not particularly kind to Xerxes. While they don't deny that, you know, he's a good looking lad and he's gone through all this training, they pick up on other characteristics like he's a bit arrogant. And it's that arrogance, as in all great Greek narratives, right? It's the arrogance, your internal self-arrogance that brings you down. Your hubris. Your hubris, yeah. Well, he turned up with a pretty large army and he has to get it across the Hairless Pond, which we now call the Dardanelles.

It's a narrow strait of water. Shappi, do you want to have a guess about how he gets this enormous army across that body of water? I don't know how you can mobilise an army that big. Just sort of charge. Just like Wile E. Coyote momentum just like run as fast as possible I hope to cross the water. I mean I can't get my head around how they do their

manoeuvres with that vast amount of people. Well according to ancient sources he built a bridge of ships which is pretty clever so he tied all his ships together to create a very long multi-kilometometer length bridge of ships and then had people walk across them but this is where the first kind of big story of xerxes's hubris his arrogance comes in right because they built the first bridge of ships and it fell apart he got destroyed and so what the sources say is that he not only beheaded the builders of that first bridge like you failed me, I kill you, but he also then punished the water

because he felt the water of the sea was also very much at fault. He had the water whipped. He threw chains into the water to symbolically put the water in chains. And he also, and this is the real stinker, he had it branded with hot irons just to really teach the water a lesson. Amazingly, when they built the second bridge of ships, it didn't fall apart

and he was able to cross with all his troops. Well, that's proof, isn't it, that if you've got an unruly bit of water, you need to punish it. Just give it a good whipping. I gave my bath hell last night. It wasn't bubbly enough. I thrashed it to within an inch.

I mean, it was messy, but it'll never do that again. You know, my army of rubber ducks. I mobilised my army. I mean, he builds a bridge, it falls apart. He then punishes the water, he builds another bridge. This is a man with great ambition, I think it's fair to say, isn't it? I think that's the sort of thing you'd write in a school report, isn't it, Greg? When you want to be kind about someone in class. Great ambition. Read subtext. Arrogant little arse.

But fair play to him. It does work second time out. So well done. And his army is enormous. The ancient sources say two and a quarter million men, which is mad, mad big. We don't think it's that big, do we? But we do think it's very large. Yes, I mean, the sources say that it took seven days and seven nights for his entire army to cross the bridge. I guess, I mean, modern figures, something like quarter of a million men, 250,000, which was a massive army in ancient standards. Yeah. Not quite the millions, you you know but certainly the biggest army that greece had ever seen bearing down on it by far what did they eat i mean a lot of the people

in the army wouldn't that just be troops it would also be the baggage train so this was the sort of massive tail that followed the army everywhere with food supplies animals all their belongings and they would either have stuff with them or they would simply take and ravage from wherever they pass through. So it's effectively like a massive swarm of locusts moving through a community in a countryside. That's not great. I was thinking of lovely little patties that they pre-made. I didn't want to think about pillaging.

Sorry. You thought they brought a little lunchbox with them. A cute little lunchbox with pickled gherkins. But anyway, I'm sorry to any villagers who had to endure my people looting their sandwich shops. As standard across all war throughout history, Napoleon did the same. So that's just how wars are fought. Not just us. Good.

I'm getting very defensive about the Persian army. You are not here as their sole representative, don't worry. The army is about a quarter of a million strong and in 480 BCE, they've got across and then they obviously turn up and meet the Spartans. That's the thing we talked about in the Spartans episode with Joel. This battle where supposedly the 300 Spartans, although we know it's actually several thousand, stand off against this mighty Persian army and hold them up for three, four days,

and then are betrayed and the Spartans are wiped out and the Persians advance through. Actually, it's the same invasion. Yeah, I mean, they're only about a month or so apart from one another, battles of Thermopylae and Battle of Salamis. Thermopylae is north of Athens, north of where Salamis is. The Persians have crossed over the water. They're arcing round the top of the Aegean. Both a land army and a fleet are sailing, so simultaneously one's marching, one's sailing, coming round Greece, charging down without much opposition, it has to be said, at all. Indeed, possibly even quite some welcome from some Greek city-states as they march on down

south towards Athens, which is of course their main target. The particularly exciting bodyguard are called the Immortals. They are 10,000 in number. How do they get the name Immortals? What's their secret? Is it moisturiser? Is it Botox? What are they doing to live forever? Shappi's quite right not to have gone and watched the movie 300 because i think this would have really annoyed you shabby as well that the immortals are represented as some kind of beasts of the underworld effectively that have some kind of you know ever-living elixir but damned all at the same time and it was nothing really to do with that they seem to have picked up that nickname because basically their strategy as a unit was that if one person fell because they were injured or dead, another person stepped forward

immediately to take their place. So it seemed like they'd never surrendered and never got lesser, as it were, in number on the battlefield. So they were the so-called immortals. And it's a great term, right? I mean, you mentioned Napoleon, Greg, a moment ago napoleon absolutely laps up his his ancient history and and he picked up that term immortal and named one of his own sections of his own army the immortals uh directly after the immortals of the persian empire 1 000 of them who serve xerxes personally and then you've got 9 000 of them who are part of the wider bodyguard there's a certain fruit design that goes on in uh decorating their spears do you want to guess what it is i would guess it's either an apple or a pomegranate.

Oh, bang on. Nice job. It's a golden apple for the thousand closest bodyguards, and then it's a silver apple for the other 9,000. Presumably the rest of the army just have sort of granny smiths from Tesco. I just know that apples and pomegranates, but particularly apples, feature it so much in persian art they symbolize health vitality fertility everything it's not about one apple a day keeps the doctor away

it's an apple a day keeps like the empire steady i just made that up no one's ever said that before no i'm surprised like granny smith doesn't adopt that yeah as its main marketing strategy from now on and apple a day keeps the empire steady i was gonna say keeps the greeks away but that didn't happen so i went for a slightly clunkier version and how would you decorate your bodyguard chappy if you you know if you ended up as a empress of the uk which seems very plausible right now. Oh, I think it's got to be French fancies. I think they would be my apple equivalent. Would you have the paper wrapping too or just the desserts themselves? Just the cakes.

Just the cakes. The next time I get married, I'm going to have a cake made entirely out of French fancies. I hope I get to come to that wedding. Find me a husband and you shall be there. And I want him to look just like Xerxes, please. All right. Well, you know, if anyone's listening to the podcast and thinks they fit the bill,

could you submit a CD, a picture and a short abstract for why you think you could play the role of Shappi's husband? If they send a photograph, could it please be in profile and with them holding an apple so i can see how close they are to xerxes this could be the new tinder picture of choice right like kind of a side profile with apple feel like we've moved into a dating show i think i've been in lockdown on my own for too long let's uh let's move on so the persians have wiped out the spartan army they make their way towards athens it's all very intimidating the gians have wiped out the Spartan army. They make their way towards Athens. It's all very intimidating.

The Greeks send out spies to go and find out what's going on, to see how big the army is. And Xerxes captures the spies. What do you think he does to the spies, Shappi? I'd like to think he just sort of feeds them to death. But I've got a horrible feeling he does something like pluck their eyes out or something, does he? No, actually what he does is he gives them a guided tour. Oh, right. Fabulous fabulous that's much more iranian okay yeah he's very welcoming he's like on my left massive army on my right same massive army over there massive army

through there that's the toilet he's basically saying to the spies this is what i've got you should be scared go home to your masters and tell them that we're coming and michael does this instill terror in the athenians yeah i mean the the report they get something like 1.56 million troops is what they're claiming they've seen uh they count 1207 warships precisely it's a big big number there you have principally the Athenians who know that the Persians are definitely gunning for them because of what they've done in the Ionian revolt a little bit beforehand. Any Greek in any Greek city-state turns to when you really are at a bit of a loss, they turn to the Oracle of Delphi and they turn to the gods and go,

what should we do? Yeah, because there's no Reddit forums back then. You can't get advice from the internet. So you go to the one place where you can get advice and that is the Oracle of Delphi. Why Delphi? Is that the best of the oracles? Because there's a few oracles, aren't there? Yeah, I mean, there's tons of oracles. Everyone from the oracle peddler on the street who sort of would sell you an oracle pronouncement from a dodgy parchment of paper for a fiver all the way through up to the kind of creme de la creme premier league of oracles the the Delphic Oracle. And the priestess there says what? I mean is it good news? It's not good it's not classic it's not classic I mean the Delphic Oracle was was famous in antiquity for never

giving you a straight answer it always gave you some kind of riddle answer that you had to go away and think about. But the first time the Athenian ambassadors ask the Delphic Oracle, what should they do? Actually, the answer comes back pretty clear, and it can be pretty much summed up as give up, go home, you ain't got a chance. And the Athenian ambassadors go, well, we can't really go home with that. That doesn't qualify as good news. I know what we'll do. We'll ask again. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. So they say, well, thanks very much, Delphic Oracle. If we were to ask you that again, do you think you could potentially improve on your answer? And the Delphic Oracle comes back with an absolute classic mystery riddle, which effectively boils down to trust in your wooden walls and the athenae

ambassadors go back to athens and they announce this back in athens and everyone goes what does that mean and so they spend quite a bit of time debating what trust in your wooden walls really means as a piece of advice so what does debate look like in athens at this point have you got thousands of people gathering around all going well well, I think it means fences. Well, I think it means cupboards. That is pretty much Athenian democracy summed up in a nutshell. Yeah, everyone had the right to put their voice forward and stand forward and go, well, I think it means this. Through that debate, it basically boiled down to two main opinions.

One was led by a guy called Themistocles. One was led by a guy called Themistocles, and he said that the wooden walls meant the wooden walls of ships, of the warships. So what Athens should do, leave the city entirely and get into our ships. And now Themistocles would say that because he, for the past four or five years, had been advocating that the Athenians spent this massive windfall of silver that they'd found they discovered silver mines in their land when they didn't know what to do with it and themisicles had been telling them that they should funnel it all into building a big fleet of ships which they had done right so then now they had this big fleet of ships and there was this other guy called aristides who went nah it means the wooden walls of our city. Because Athens didn't have stone city walls at that point, really. It had wooden walls, and particularly a wooden wall

around the very heart of Athens, around the Acropolis, which was the central major religious focus of the city. We should just trust in that and the gods will sort us out. I love the names. Themistically, it sounds to me like one of the cats from the musical Cats, although he's not, obviously. But Aristides is known as Aristides the Just, isn't he? Because he was really honest. And you can see why he lost this debate, because he was just too honest. Aristides the Just. Supposedly, the Athenians had this process called ostracism. And we still use the term today, because if they couldn't decide what to do, and there were two main proponents of the two different

views, they stopped debating kind of the issue at hand. And instead, they had an ostracism where everyone picked up a small shard of pottery that in Greek is known as an ostracon, ostraca, the plural, thus we get a vote of ostraca and ostracism. And they wrote on the name of this piece of pottery, the person who they wanted to have exiled from Athens for 10 years. And supposedly Aristides was so honest that one chap turned up, ostracon in his hand, and he didn't know who Aristides was. He didn't recognise him in the flesh. He said, look, mate, I can't write. Would you be able to write down the name of the person I want ostracised?

And Aristides goes, of course I can. Of course I can, young man. Who would that be? And the guy goes, Aristides is a complete idiot. And Aristides honestly, dependably writes his name, his own name on the ostracon. And as a result, he gets ostracised and has to leave Athens for 10 years. Shappi, would you be so honest

if you were in a contest for, say, UK's best stand-up comedian, and it was you versus Michael McIntyre, and someone came up to you and went, oh, I don't know how to vote, my phone's not working, but I really want to vote for Michael McIntyre. Would you do it? I think my ego's more in check. What we're learning here is you're just a, you know, you're a nice person. You'd let that person vote for someone else.

I think so. And also, I'm scared of success, So I would just have left it there. The idea of ostracism, we don't really have it in modern political culture, but we have it in game shows. When you did I'm a Celebrity, I guess the nation votes for people to get exiled from a show. I mean, obviously, I know you enjoyed your luxury holiday afterwards. We do. Actually, in I'm a Celebrity, you vote for who you want to stay. Yes. So the person with least votes to stay is the one that goes. So, Michael, the army of Xerxes arrives at the gates of Athens

and Themistocles has said we should put our faith in ships. So what does that mean for the city of Athens? I mean, it's pretty dramatic. When they agree with Themistocles in the end, he says, right, OK, we're going to put our faith in our ships. And they do an emergency evacuation of the entire city. And we actually have a surviving copy of the decree that the Athenian assembly put forward saying, starting tomorrow, everyone get out. Right. Old men go to one place. Women and children go to another place outside the city.

Everyone of fighting age report to your stations to get put on a trireme. Everyone, it's go, go, go, go, go. So the only people that they leave behind in Athens, and I feel incredibly sorry for this group, are the priests and priestesses of the different temples on the Acropolis that is defended by this little wooden palisade wall. So they sort of tried to play both sides of it. They both evacuated Athens and got into their ships, but also just in case it was all about the wall around the Acropolis that the gods would protect, they left a few people there as well. Persians turned up at the city gates to find it empty. They absolutely burnt and bashed the city to the ground. They climbed up the

Acropolis. The priests and princesses, according to the Greek sources, took refuge inside the temples and the Persians showed them no mercy. They killed them all and burnt all of the temples on the ground. So the Athenians, who were either sitting in their ships or they were on the island of Salamis or at a place further away called Troisen, depending on whether they were women, children or old men, could literally see their home, their city, go up in flames. Shappi, are you feeling at this stage the Persians are pretty much going to win this one?

Well, absolutely. How could they not? Do they? Tell me they do. I need a win here. It's been a tough few weeks. It's not been great for any of us is it this is where the story sort of pivots in a really surprising way i suppose is that the city of athens is on fire and all the athenians are either running away hiding or they've got onto warships but the persian army is enormous and the navy's enormous this story now

becomes an underdog story again as with the battle marathon where the greeks are going to try and resist this huge onslaught and that doesn't strike me as necessarily a bad idea but it seems like a really difficult thing to do i mean i think themistocles was a genius and he gets called by the by the ancient greek sources who who are writing later about the war they call him a genius because he gets called by the ancient Greek sources who are writing later about the war, they call him a genius because he saw there was no other option, right? When you talk about it as an underdog story, it's not just that it's a massive Persian army coming against the combined might of the Greeks. It's actually the massive, massive Persian army coming up against a very small number of Greek city-states

led by Athens and Sparta who are willing to resist them. We think in total there were probably 30, 31 Greek city-states out of the thousand possible Greek city-states that there were who actually stood up to the Persians. The rest were at best neutral, at worst actively siding with the Persians. I mean, there's one guy in Syracuse over in Sicily. He actually sent gifts for the Persian king in advance of the Battle of Salamis to Delphi for the Persian king to congratulate him on his victory for the subjugation of Greece.

So there were lots of Greeks who were actively thinking that it was game over. And we've got this small number of city-states, 30 or so, led by Athens and Sparta, who are willing to make a stand. This is where Themistocles, his genius comes in, because he realised there was absolutely no way the Greeks could possibly stand up to the Persians in open battle on land or at sea. Even the Athenian fleet with all the triremes they've been building, we're talking about somewhere between 200 and 300 triremes. We're not talking the 1,207 that supposedly the Persians had with them. So the only way they can possibly win is to invent some kind of battle or force a battle where numbers don't count for anything. And so we've talked about Themistocles, but he's not the guy in charge of the ships

because he's an Athenian and everyone goes, oh, we don't like the Athenians. Yeah, the actual guy technically in charge was a Spartan because the other 30 or so city-states who were willing to resist the Persians didn't really like or trust the Athenians, thought they were a bit uppity, frankly were really pissed off that they brought the Persians down on them in the first place by being so cocky as to go and help in the Ionian revolt, you know, the decade or so before. It was actually technically a Spartan called Eurybides who was in charge of the navy. But I mean, you know, Spartans are not sailors. These guys are soldiers, that they are not sailors. Athenians are the the sailors so urabiades really comes across as a bit of an idiot who makes all the wrong decisions for mystically

he's behind him like some kind of evil puppet master pulling the strings right so he's like whispering to him going no not that way no the other way no no that's a sail that that's an oar exactly what's interesting i suppose is that at this stage the persians have a fleet that's probably five times the size of the Greek fleet. Their ships are state-of-the-art triremes. The Greeks have state-of-the-art triremes. But the Greek commander is an idiot. The Greek numbers are smaller.

So everyone is probably thinking, well, clearly, Persian walkover, this will be easy. Apart from one of Xerxes chief commanders an advisor who is a woman she's got a sort of Han Solo bad feeling about this but she's called Artemisia of Caria isn't she she is a legend she's the queen of a city called Halicarnassus which is actually modern day Bodrum in Turkey and Halicarnassus is part of the satrapy, the Persian satrapy of Caria. There's a small footnote here. We hear she's so awesome, principally in the ancient Greek history written by Herodotus. Now, I'll give you one guess where Herodotus was from.

Yes, exactly. Halicarnassus. Halicarnassus. Yes. So Artemisia was from his own hometown. So it's not really a surprise that she gets such a good write-up. But apparently she was there and in the meeting of all the Persian generals and Xerxes is going, so shall we attack Bicycle?

And everyone's going, yes, yes, yes. There's no way that you can't possibly be victorious, my lord. She's the one person who steps up and goes, no. And she makes a brilliant case. She says, you don't need it. You don't need to fight a big battle. You just need to wait. The Greeks will fall apart and start fighting each other, or they'll run out of supplies, or they'll get a bit bored, or they'll get tempted to come

out and fight you in open battle when you're clearly going to win. You don't need to commit to battle now. Just wait. Brilliant advice. I'll give you one guess what the Persian king does. It's not like a man to ignore a woman's advice, is it? So he ignores what she says and it's game on for the battle. So Shappi, who are you putting your money on? Massive Persian fleet or small Greek fleet? Well, I've got a horrible feeling that the Persians are going to be the Hillary Clinton of this particular battle, right? You might be right. Yeah, big is not normally best. You are correct. Unfortunately, in terms of Persian pride, it's going to be a bad day at the office. Michael, can you explain what goes wrong or rather what goes so right for the Greeks, given that they have such a disadvantage? where they manage to entice the Persian fleet to enter that narrow strip of water, where, of course, they're not going to be able to enter with the full force of 1,207 triremes all at once.

And so the kind of numbers won't count for anything. So that's the brilliant setup. And we hear this great story that Themistocles, that cunning, clever Athenian general, cunning, clever Athenian general, actually sends his own slave into the Persian camp to the Persian king in the nights before the battle to go, hey, Persian king, Themistocles is really on your side. And he sends you a message to say you should commit to battle now, now, now, because the Greeks are going to fall apart and it will be over in seconds. So he actually does a double bluff and convinces the Persian king to send in the ships into the narrow straits of Salamis. There's a couple of other things that really help, though. The Persian

ships, they were state-of-the-art triremes, but they were big triremes because they'd been built to be able to sail all the way from the Hellespont, all the way across the Aegean, all the way down the Aegean towards Athens and around Greece. So they were ocean-going triremes, whereas the Greek ones had been built specifically as short-range warships, so they were smaller and lighter. Also, they were all made of wood, and the longer a wood ship is at sea in this era, the more water gets soaked up into the wood, and so these ships become heavier. The Persian ships had been at sea for a long time, whereas the Greek ships, they'd actually beached them on the beaches around Salamis in the days before the battle to dry them out. So they were faster. So you had a situation in this narrow strip of sea whereby you had bigger,

heavier, less manoeuvrable Persian ships fighting smaller, lighter, more manoeuvrable, nifty Greek ships in a sea lane that the Greeks knew really well, obviously, because it was in their backyard, the Persians didn't know at all. And as a result, the Greeks were able to inflict incredible damage on the Persian fleet and basically send it running with their tail between their legs sorry chappy oh that's all right i'm not very competitive person no but it's it's an interesting one it's proving that you can bring down a bully with small agility i suppose yeah and with cunning don't forget your masterminding public stringing kind of you know hands rubbing together cunning david and and Goliath, eh?

Exactly. It is a bit, isn't it? Obviously have some sort of residue of irritation. Like, why did they not handle that better? Like, what did the Persians learn from that? Did they try and conquer the Greeks again after that? The Persian king Xerxes actually sat on a hilltop overlooking the Straits of Salamis to watch the battle, because he thought that if he was watching, all his troops and his commanders would fight

with more courage and bravery and determination. That is champion egoism, isn't it? I know. So he sat there watching this, but it actually meant that what he watched personally was his enormous fleet being torn to shreds by this puny, tiny, mosquito-like, ragtag Greek army, navy rather. He was pretty embarrassed. I mean, this is the guy who's supposed to be the king of things, divine, no one can stand opposed to him, etc. He basically made the pretty snappy decision to leave Greece almost immediately afterwards. He left his army and he left his generals there to carry on fighting the war. But I'm leaving. And of course, that meant that he was no longer personally in command. And if it all went wrong in the future, he could just blame his generals and have them beheaded instead.

Well, who knew that leaders were all cowards at heart? He's disappointed, I guess. I understand. You've had a bad day and you want to go, ugh, fine, let someone else do it. Even then, he leaves his army in the field to mop up what is again still a very small Greek army, but they lose again at the next land battle, Plataea, don't they? Yeah, the next year. So they defeated them at sea.

The Bassalamus was definitely the turning of the tide of the war. Xerxes leaves, leaves a Persian army to be defeated now on land. Funny this, isn't it? That sort of more Greeks turn up at Plataea, a few more, because they've sort of seen the turning of the tide and Plataea turns out to be a massive land victory for the Greeks. And after that, pretty much the rest of the Persian army are hot foot at home as well. So that's it. Underdogs to massive dogs nil. Overdogs? I thought massive dogs felt better. So that's the end of the Persian Wars. And how do we know this stuff? You've already mentioned Herodotus. Who are our sources, Michael? It is a bit one-sided because you can imagine that Xerxes himself was not particularly keen to write up about this short episode in his reign. So we hear mostly about it from the Greek sources, who of course saying how

amazing they were. And it's Herodotus, that Halicarnassian, who does like Artemisia of Halicarnassus, gives her a good showing. And then we also hear about it from a Tragedian, a Greek tragedy writer called Aeschylus, who was probably present at Salamis, definitely was present at the Battle of Marathon in 490. And he wrote a play about the Persians, particularly focused on the receipt of the news of Xerxes' defeat back at the Persian court that was played out in Athens in the late 470s. And you can imagine how the Athenians watching this play in the theatre at Athens absolutely lapped it up as this very weepy, now effeminately characterised Persian court received the news of this upstart defeat. It's very smart, isn't it? You're writing plays about how you've won this huge victory. It's very two world wars and one world cup. Oh, times a thousand with French fancies on it.

Yeah. One thing as Iranian kids we used to dine out on was apparently Herodotus described the Persians as chameleons. And we all took that to mean about how amazing we were at blending in and being really open-minded and assimilating to wherever we were. Is that the case? Do you know anything about how Herodotus actually described the Persians as a people or as he experienced their culture? I mean, Herodotus is renowned as father of history, father of ethnography, and he loves spending time talking about the different peoples

and what they're like as characters. So we hear the egyptians we hear about the persians uh we hear about the greeks obviously and a lot of different people i'm trying to think of a particular story that sets them up as chameleons i can't think about it off the top of my head but it wouldn't surprise me at all because it's just the kind of thing that herodotus liked to report and he could be slightly unreliable sometimes as well i mean don't well i mean i'm not dissing but he does tell a story about a giant race of ants that mine gold out of the ground as big as wolves they're in india yeah everyone knows about them yeah ants the size of a dog and if you get near them they like attack you and like rip your guts out

and they love spot on digging up gold from the floor so he's not entirely accurate is he oh come on what's history what's history without a little bit of embellishment and storytelling here or there shappy do you want to guess how isculus the the playwright michael was talking about how he died it's quite a famous death did he fall into a vat of fondue and drown in cheese amazing that'd be amazing way to die death by cheddar was it death by any kind of food i'll give you a clue he was bald and he went for a walk that's a awful clue greg that's the most awful clue in the world wait a minute did a vulture mistake his bald head for the dead carcass of a round bald animal and eat him was he eaten by a vulture i think that is so close she gets the marks 10 points 10 points that is really close to them michael do you want to tell

us what actually the story tells us supposedly happened so not on a vulture, but an eagle. You were almost there, right? An eagle had a tortoise in its mouth and supposedly mistook Aeschylus' bald head for a rock. And a sort of eagle, if you want to crack open a tortoise, you drop him from a height on a rock. And so said eagle dropped said tortoise on Aeschylus' head and killed him. Killed by tortoise. It really deserves a place in the Darwinian Awards. That's a stupid death, right? I can't. It is a stupid death. Yeah. I mean, obviously,

with my bountiful curls, I'd be fine. I think you'd be fine. Yeah. Wear a hat when you're out in the sunshine of Greece. Exactly. It's not just sunstroke. You've got to watch out for dive bombing eagles. So we have Herodotus and Aeschylus who tell us about this great heroic victory. Salamis, the triumph that should not have been. Following on from Marathon, the triumph that should not have been. Just before Plataea, the triumph that should not have been. The Greeks have had a really whopping ten years of successes. The nuance window!

No! That means, Michael, that we now come on to the nuance window, where we give you two minutes to explain how this story gets interpreted through the ages, or what it means to us. So, without much further ado, three, two, one, the nuance window. Well, let's divide it into three. So first, what was the impact for Athens? One of the things that really changed in Athens as a result of the Battle of Salamis was the strength and power of its democracy. Now, democracy had been invented in Athens. It had been around by 480 for about 20

years, but it's still in its infancy. This was the first battle where it hadn't been fought by soldiers. And you had to have a certain amount of money to be a hoplite soldier because you had to afford the armour. And if you wanted to be a cavalry member, you had to be able to afford your horse. So it really mattered whether you were an elite, an aristocrat, a rich person or a poor person. But in this battle, all you had to do was row and you didn't need anything or need to buy anything to row. Everyone equally contributed to the Athenian victory at Salamis. And so that idea, that symbolism supercharged the idea of democracy at Athens and sent it forward, spinning forward for over the next hundred years. At the

same time, it made Athens really the top dog in Greece. Athens had been this upstart little town that had brought the Persians to Greece's gates, but now had been absolutely instrumental in turning the Persian tide and sending them running away again. And it was in the aftermath of the Battle of Salamis, Battle of Bataille, that Athens really came to the fore as the premier city-state in Greece. And it would be Athens that would take on the mantle of leading Greece to now have revenge on the Persians and take the war to the Persians over the next 50 years. And it would be that that would create Athens's empire. So really, the Battle of Salamis is a moment that both supercharges Athenian democracy and supercharges Athens's drive towards stardom

in Greece and towards the creation of its empire, which will, though, ultimately also lead to the Greek world tearing itself in half in about 50 years' time, when all the other Greek city-states get really fed up of Athens being far too big for its boots, and as a result start a civil war, the Peloponnesian War, that will rip Greece apart and reduce Athens once again to a smoking ruin. Thank you very much. That's quite a downbeat note at the end, isn't it? You might have won the battle, but you haven't won the war. So what do you know now? We probably now need to see how much Shappi can remember. It's time for the quiz.

Shappi, you are, so far, averaging 8 out of 10 across the series. Oh, I really hope I get all these right. It's so embarrassing. Well, come on. She's already got 10 points for guessing the vulture and the apple, right? I mean, you've already won this. Yeah, that is true, actually. Very strong episode before we even get into the quiz.

OK, let's go. Let's see how you do. All right, I've got 60 seconds on the clock. I'm starting my stopwatch now. Question one. Who was the ruler of the Persian Empire before King Xerxes, his father? It was Darius. Darius. It was Darius the Great. Question two. What year did the Battle of Salamis take place? Oh, gosh. Was it 480 BCE?

Bang on. Hello. Question three. Which battle of the Persian Wars featured a very brave bunch of Spartans came just before Salamis, a month before? Was it... It means the hot gates in Greek. I don't know. Thermopylae. Thermopylae, yes, as in thermometer. As in thermometer, yeah. Yes, that's from the same word, right? It is thermo, hot. Question four. Athens had invested its silver windfall in building a navy after Themistocles had won which ancient voting contest? Oh, I don't know.

Were you right on the pots? Engraving pot contest? Nearly. Ostracism. Ostracism! How could I not get that? Ostracism, yes. Question five. What did I not get that? Ostracism. Yes. Question five.

What did Xerxes do when Greek spies were found in the Persian camp? He showed them around. He showed them around. He gave them a lovely guided tour. Question six. What type of cutting-edge warship were both sides using during the Battle of Salamis? I'll give you a clue. It begins with T.

Oh, I can't pronounce this. It's the ships. Trireme. Trireme. Did you mean trireme, Sh pronounce this. It's the ships. Trireme. Trireme. Did you mean trireme, Shafi? Trireme, yeah. Trireme is absolutely right, correct. Question seven.

Which two Greek states were in charge of resisting the Persians, the Battle of Salamis? Athens and the other state was? Sparta. Sparta is correct. Sparta. Question eight. Xerxes' Persian army crossed over the Hellespont using a bridge made out of what? Boats. Yes, it was. Question eight. Xerxes' Persian army crossed over the Hellespont using a bridge made

out of what? Boats. Yes, it was. Question nine. A lot of what we know about the Battle of Salamis comes from the father of history, a Greek historian from Halicarnassus. What was his name? Herodotus. Herodotus. Final question. How did Aeschylus, the playwright, supposedly die? An eagle dropped a flipping turtle on his head. Absolutely. It was a tortoise. Landon on his head, dead. So, Shappi, you got eight out of ten, which is fantastic. I think you've done yourself proud. I think you've done the Persians proud. I've righted some wrongs. Thank you.

Well, that brings us to the end of today's episode. I hope you all feel suitably engorged with ancient history facts. If you at home have listened to today's podcast, please do share it with your friends or leave a review online. Make sure to subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode. Finally, of course, let me say a huge Persian Empire-sized thank you to our guests. Professor Michael Scott from University of Warwick. Thank you, Michael. It's a pleasure. I'm off to find a Persian rubber duck.

Please, let me know where you get it from. And in Comedy Corner, thank you also to the legendary Shappi Korsandi. Thank you, Shappi. My pleasure, as always. And to you listeners at home, join me next time for something else from the murky depths of history.

And if you simply can't wait until then, have a trawl back through our back catalogue. You can find, well, there's the Spartans episode with Michael, or there's the Michael episode with Shappi. There's ancient Olympics. I mean, basically, we've got everything, haven't we? What do you need? Just have a little rummage. It's great. In the meantime, I'm off to go and buy a tortoise-proof helmet. Bye! You're Dead to Me was a Muddy Knees media production for BBC Radio 4.

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