Battle of Artemisium
event · 4 works · 4 mentions · 5 anchored passages
Artemisium · the Persian Wars · the battle of Artemisium
in the texts
Lysistrata
Naval battle in which the Greeks under Leonidas charged and conquered the Persians, recalled in the Spartan war song.
CHORUS OF SPARTANS Stir up the youths, Mnemosyne, and my Muse, who knows us and the Athenians, when at Artemisium they charged like gods against the ships and conquered the Medes, while Leonidas led us like boars whetting their tusks, I think;
Panegyricus
The naval engagement fought by the Athenian fleet against the Persian armada in coordination with the defense of Thermopylae.
while our ancestors sailed to Artemisium with sixty triremes which they had manned to oppose the whole armada of the enemy.
Our ancestors, on the other hand, met and conquered the advance squadron of the Persians and when they heard that the enemy were masters of the pass, they sailed back home and adopted such measures for what remained to be done that, however many and however glorious had been their previous achievements, they outdid themselves still more in the final hazards of that war.
Menexenus
Naval engagement grouped with Salamis among the Athenians' celebrated sea-fights.
To them, therefore, we award in this our speech the first prize for valor, and the second to those who fought and won the sea-fights off Salamis and at Artemisium.
Themistocles
The naval engagement in the narrows at Artemisium preceding Salamis, giving the Hellenes valuable combat experience.
Of this Pindar seems to have been well aware when he said of the battle of Artemisium:
The battles which were fought at that time with the ships of the Barbarians in the narrows were not decisive of the main issue, it is true, but they were of the greatest service to the Hellenes in giving them experience, since they were thus taught by actual achievements in the face of danger that neither multitudes of ships nor brilliantly decorated figure-heads nor boastful shouts or barbarous b …
— Nations of all sorts of men from Asia’s boundaries coming, Sons of the Athenians once, here on this arm of the sea, Whelmed in a battle of ships, and the host of the Medes was destroyed;