You're Dead to Me - The Battle of Salamis (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: May 29, 2021

Greg Jenner is joined by historian Prof Michael Scott and comedian Shappi Khorsandi in 480 BCE for one of history’s most notorious naval battles - The Battle of Salamis. On their journey through the events leading up to the battle and beyond, they hear about one of the most unusual methods used to cross a body of water and discover 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, the history podcast for everyone. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and I'm the chief nerd on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories. And you may have heard my other Radio 4 show, Homeschool History, although that one's mostly for the kids. In this show, well, we do things a bit differently.

This podcast is all about mushing together top-quality history and top-drawer bants for a frivolously factual good time. Today we are climbing aboard our triremes, that's ancient warships, more on that later, setting our watches to 480 BCE, and setting sail for the Mediterranean to get to grips with one of the most notorious naval battles in history, the Battle of Salamis. And to help me do that, I'm joined by some seriously special guests. In History Corner, he's a classicist

from the University of Warwick, an author and a returning star of this show. You may know him, of course, from his fantastic BBC documentary series Invisible Cities, where he scanned things with lasers like some sort of Bond villain. It's the marvellous Professor Michael Scott. Hi, Michael. Hey, Greg, sending virtual hugs. And in Comedy Corner, she's a stand-up comedian and a writer. You'll have seen her on all the teleshows, including Live at the Apollo, 8 Out of 10 Cats, Have a Good News for You. And of course, I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. And of course, she's also been a star of our show before. It's the marvellous Shappi Korsandi. Hi Shappi how are you? I'm really well how are you? I too send you virtual

hugs. Were you growing up very aware of the Persian empire you know were you up on your Darius's 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 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.

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. 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 the Battle of Salamis is just one of many rounds in the wars between the Greeks and Persians. We call them the Persian Wars because we have a Western bias. Broadly speaking, the Greeks aren't really a single people, are they, Michael? we have a 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, or 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, 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. 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, religions, 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. Zoroastrianism was the 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. So we should get on to, I suppose, the chief executive of the Persian Empire is Darius the Great initially. He's the king, he's the big daddy. 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 they had about in the mid sixth 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, decided to send some ships to help out the Ionians in their revolt against the enormous Persian Empire. And King Darius, who really hadn't been that much fussed about Greece up to that point, 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 it's a huge upset the greeks 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's sake, dad couldn't finish him off. Better do it myself, I suppose. 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 Hashayar, as he is called. Yeah. 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. 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. Can I tell you something? I can admit this now. I didn't watch 300 because I knew that that representation would really irritate me. When I heard a few iranians saying

chap 300 is going to annoy you i was like do you know what i hear you not watching it so i haven't seen it the persians in that film are not even really human are they some of them they're kind 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 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. 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, just like run as fast as possible, 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. So he tied all his ships together to create a very long, multi-kilometre 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. It got destroyed. And so what the sources say is that he not only beheaded the builders of that first bridge,

but he also then punished the water. He had the water whipped. He threw chains into the water to symbolically put the water in chains. And he also, 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. I gave my bath hell last night. It wasn't bubbly enough. I thrashed it to within an inch. You know, my army of rubber ducks. I mobilised my army. The army is about a quarter of a million strong. And in 480 BCE, they've got across and then they meet the Spartans.

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 Sanamis. The particularly exciting bodyguard are called the Immortals. They are 10,000 in number. How did 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, Shappi's quite right not to have gone and watched the movie 300, because I think this would have really annoyed you, Shappi, as well, that 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. 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 decorating their spears. Do you want to guess what it is? I would guess it's either an apple or a pomegranate. Spot on. 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.

I just know that apples and pomegranates, but particularly apples, feature it so much in Persian art. They symbolise health, vitality, fertility, everything. It's not about one apple a day keeps the doctor away, it's an apple a day keeps the empire steady. I just made that up. No one's ever said that before. So the Persians 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. 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 report they get, something like 1.56 million troops is what they're claiming

they've seen. They count 1,207 warships, precisely the place that, well, 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 creme de la creme Premier League of Oracles, the Delphic Oracle. And the priestess there says what? mystery riddle which effectively boils down to trust in your wooden walls 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 i think it means fences well i think it means cupboards that is pretty much athenian democracy summed up in a nutshell, Greg. 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. And he said that the wooden walls meant the wooden walls of ships, right, of the warships. So what Athens should do 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 and themistocles had been telling them that they should funnel it all into building a big fleet of ships which they had done right so 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. 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. The Athenians had this process called ostracism. And we still use the term today, because if they couldn't decide what to do, they stopped debating 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, 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 recognize 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 ostracized? And Aristides goes, of course I can. Of course I can, young man. Who would that be? And the guy goes, ostracized. 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 own name on the ostracon. And as a result, he gets ostracized and has to leave Athens for 10 years. 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. Actually, in I'm a Celebrity, you vote for who you want to stay. 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? When they agree with Themistocles in the end, he says, right, okay, 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, 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. It's go, go, go. So the only people that they leave behind in Athens are the priests and priestesses of the different temples on the Acropolis that is defended by this little wooden palisade wall. 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 priestesses, 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 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? 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. 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 is enormous. This story now becomes an underdog story, again, as with the Battle of the Marathon, where the Greeks are going to try and resist this huge onslaught. 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. 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.

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? Now, Salamis is an island, right? But it's an island just off the coast of mainland Greece. So between the island of Salamis and the mainland coast of Greece is a narrow strip of water. And that's where the Athenian fleet lies in wait and 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 there's a couple of other things that really helped 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, Shappi. Oh, that's all right. I'm not a very competitive person. No, but it's an interesting one. It's proving that you can break down a bully

with small agility, I suppose. David and Goliath, eh? Exactly. It is a bit, isn't it? Obviously have some sort of residue of irritation. Why did they not handle that better? 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 kings, 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.

The nuance window! The Nuance Window! 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 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. Well, thank you so much. I'm afraid that brings us to the end of today's episode. So allow me to say a huge Persian Empire-sized thank you to our guests. In History

Corner, we've had Professor Michael Scott from the University of Warwick, and in Comedy Corner, the legendary Shappi Korsandi. And to you listeners, join me next time for another chat about something completely different from the murky depths of history. In the meantime, I'm off to go and trust in the wooden walls, which I think means going to have a sit down in the shed. Yeah, probably that. Bye! The System.

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