From “The Persians” of Aeschylus
[Except for inscriptions, this contemporary narrative of the Battle of Salamis is the earliest piece of written Greek history extant. The splendour and force of the original make it one of the greatest pieces of battle-narrative in the world, and defy adequate rendering. But it is noticeable that not only is the description ablaze with the passion of war, but the plan and tactics of the fight, which was probably even a more decisive event in world-history than that of Marathon, are given with a map-like precision and clearness.
The narrative is placed in the mouth of a messenger sent by Xerxes to his mother, Atossa, to tell her of the catastrophe. I have followed the text of Paley.]
Atossa
And is Athena’s city yet unsacked?
Messenger
Men were her city-wall—unbroken yet.
Atossa
Then tell me of the fight at Salamis.
Who first began the onslaught—was’t the Greeks?
Or made his swollen fleet my son too bold?
Messenger
Began? Some Power malign began it all!
Some God that hated Persia. First, there came
A Greek deserter from the Athenian host.
“Keep watch,” he said, “for at the dead of night
Our benches shall be manned, our fleet dispersed;
They will escape you in the narrow seas.”
This Xerxes heard, O Queen, and never saw
The Greek man’s guile, nor knew the Gods his foe.
To all the captains of the fleet he sent
This order: “When the sun his fiery beams
Hath hidden from the earth, and night holds all
The empire of the air, then set your ships,
Some ranged in threefold line to guard the friths
And close up all the roaring waterways,
Some to patrol the Isle of Salamis.
And mark ye, should the Greeks escape their doom
By one unguarded outlet, ’tis decreed
Your heads shall fall for it.” So spake the King,
Haughty, infatuate, knowing not the end.
And dutifully they obeyed his word.
Supper was first prepared; each oarsman then
Looked to his tholepin and bound fast the oar.
Then, as the sunlight faded from the earth,
And night came on, the rowers went on board,
And with them every well-trained fighting man;
And soon from squadron unto squadron rolled
Down the vast lines the cheering of the fleet,
As each one rowed to his appointed place.
So all night long the captains made us cruise
Hither and thither, every ship we had;
And now the night was spent, yet never once
The Greeks had tried our watch in secret flight.
But when the white steeds of the God of Day
Mounted the sky, and light possessed the land,
Then from the Greeks a mighty chant was borne,
Triumphant, to our ears, and every cliff
Of sea-girt Salamis pealed back the strain.
And fear possessed us every one, O Queen,
And staggering doubt; for not as if in flight
Rose the great pæan then among the Greeks,
But as when brave men cheer themselves for fight.
Then the heart-kindling trumpet spake, and then
We heard the thunder of a thousand oars
That swung together at the steersman’s cry,
And all at once the sounding furrows smote.
Then soon full clear their charging line we saw,
The right wing leading, and the main array
A little after; and ere long we heard
Such cries as these: “On, children of the Greek!
Now for your fatherland, for freedom now!
For wife and child, and for your fathers’ homes!
Now for the temples of your fathers’ Gods!
To-day we fight for all!” So cried they still,
Nor were we Persians dumb, but sent them back
Shouting for shouting. Little time there was
To range our lines, until the brazen beaks
Crash’d in among us. First, a ship of Greece,
Leading the onset, rent off all the prow
From a Phœnician. Each then sought a foe;
And first we stemm’d the torrent of their charge,
But soon our multitudes in the narrow seas
Were thronged and hampered, nor could any now
Bear help to other—yea, and many a time
Friend hurtled upon friend, or rent away
With shearing prow her whole array of oars.
Meanwhile the Greeks around us fiercely charged
From every side at once; the lighter barques
Were soon o’erset; the very seas were hid,
So strewn with wreck and slaughter; every strand
And jutting rock-ledge was with corpses piled.
We pressed in ruinous disordered flight,
All that was left of Persia’s mighty fleet;
While they, like fishers when the tunnies swarm
Within some narrow inlet, slew amain
With aught that hand could seize—with shivered oars,
Fragments of wreck, they stabb’d, they stunn’d, they clove;
And out beyond the channel shrieks and wails
And panic fear possessed the open sea.
Gods! could I speak, nor cease for ten full days,
I had not told how thick disasters came!
Know this, that never since the world began
Perished in one day such a host of men!