Salamis

Divine Salamis, you will bring death to women's sons

These verses confounded the opinion of those who said that their ships were the wooden wall, for the readers of oracles took the verses to mean that they should offer battle by sea near Salamis and be there overthrown.

When Themistocles put forward this interpretation, the Athenians judged him to be a better counsellor than the readers of oracles, who would have had them prepare for no sea fight, and, in short, offer no resistance at all, but leave Attica and settle in some other country.

Having got it on these terms, he built a hundred triremes, each of the hundred building one, with which they fought at sea at Salamis against the barbarians.

They allot also an archon for Salamis, and a demarch for the Piraeus, who hold the Dionysia in each place and appoint the producers.

that, whereas Charidemus, dispatched to Salamis in command of the infantry, and Diotimus, commanding the cavalry, when in the battle at the river some of the soldiers had been disarmed by the enemy, did at their own expense arm the younger men with eight hundred shields, it be resolved by the Council and People to crown Charidemus and Diotimus with a golden crown, and to proclaim it at the great P …

I swear it by our forefathers who bore the brunt of warfare at Marathon, who stood in array of battle at Plataea, who fought in the sea-fights of Salamis and Artemisium, and by all the brave men who repose in our public sepulchres, buried there by a country that accounted them all to be alike worthy of the same honor —all, I say, Aeschines, not the successful and the victorious alone.

For instance, straightway about the Persian war, some say that the sea-fight at Salamis was later than the battle at Plataea, others that the last of the deeds was the one at Plataea;

For I do not heed Herodotus, but the tomb and Simonides, who inscribed upon the dead of the Corinthians buried in Salamis:

To him Solon came and shared in the common things — for friends' things are common — but nonetheless did not obtain a statue, not, doubtless, despising a statue, but making much even of standing in bronze in Salamis;

O Telamon, King of Salamis, the feeding-ground of bees, who have your home in a seagirt isle that lies near the holy hills where first Athena made the grey olive branch to appear, a crown for heavenly heads and a glory to happy Athens, you came, you came in knightly brotherhood with that great archer, Alcmena’s son, to sack our city Ilium, in days gone by,;

torn from your sight, the Achaeans bear me away from you to their dark ship to row me over the deep to sacred Salamis or to the hill on the Isthmus, that overlooks two seas, the seat that holds the gates of Pelops.

not content with erecting the trophy in Salamis, they fixed for the Persian the boundaries necessary for Greek freedom and prevented his overstepping them, making an agreement that he should not sail his warships between the Cyaneae and Phaselis and that the Greeks should be free not only if they lived in Europe but in Asia too.

Our ancestors, though they were being deserted by all the Greeks, forcibly liberated themselves and the others too by making them assist at Salamis in the naval battle against the Persians, and so triumphed unaided over both enemy and ally, in a way appropriate to each, conferring a favor upon one and defeating the other in battle.

Decree

and Themistocles as commander, who was chiefly instrumental of their fighting in the Strait, which most clearly saved their cause;

and that when he came the second time, though we were not able to defend ourselves by land, we went on board our ships with all our people, and joined in the sea-fight at Salamis;

But at day-break the Athenians went all in a body to Piraeus to resist the enemy;

You can therefore yourselves bear witness that in the statue that is set up in the Salaminian market-place Solon stands with his arm inside his cloak.

But the popular speakers arose and with one consent ignored the question of the safety of the state, but called on you to gaze at the Propylaea of the Acropolis, and remember the battle of, Salamis, and the tombs and trophies of our forefathers.

I urged that we should emulate the battle that we fought at Plataea, the struggles off the shores of Salamis, the battles of Marathon and Artemisium, and the generalship of Tolmides, who with a thousand picked men of the Athenians fearlessly marched straight through the Peloponnesus, the enemy’s country.

The men who built the Propylaea and the Parthenon, and decked our other temples with the spoils of Asia, trophies in which we take a natural pride,—you know of course from tradition that after they abandoned the city and shut themselves up in Salamis, it was because they had the war galleys that they won the sea-fight and saved the city and all their belongings, and made themselves the authors for …

They made as yet no division of the property, but, both having enough to live on, Meidylides continued to live in the city, and Archiades made his home in Salamis.

but since Archiades declared that he did not wish to marry, and for this reason allowed the property to remain undivided, and lived by himself in Salamis, Meidylides at length gave his daughter in marriage to Aristoteles of Pallenê, my grandfather.

People who live at Salamis, however, inform us that this statue was erected less than fifty years ago.

When Salamis had revolted, and the Athenian people had forbidden under penalty of death any proposal for its recovery, Solon, accepting the risk of death, composed and recited an elegiac poem, and so retrieved that country for Athens and removed a standing dishonor.

He was not disqualified for the other honors but left behind him a memorial of his courage in the trophy of victory over the Megarians, of his astuteness in the recovery of Salamis, and of general sagacity in the laws which the majority of the Greeks continue using to this day.

Teucer:

Salamis in honor of that fatherland over there.

My name is Teucer, my father is Telamon, and Salamis is the land that nurtured me.

the other Aias, son of Telamon, crown of glory to the men of Salamis;

Lastly, Aias, reared in Salamis, was joining his right wing to the left of those near whom he was posed, closing the line with his outermost ships, twelve barques obedient to the helm, as I heard and then saw the crews;

None shall overcome me, neither by force nor cunning, for I was born and bred in Salamis, and can hold my own in all things.

But you have heard also from my accuser that I have received many great presents from Nicocles, the king of the Salaminians.

After the city had been founded in this manner, the rule at first was held by Teucer’s descendants:

furthermore, he restored its ancestral honors to his family and established himself as ruler of the city.

but immediately, just as he was, on that very night he broke through a little gate in the wall, and leading his followers through this opening, attacked the palace.

Take, on the other hand, the case of Themistocles, who in the service of Hellas defeated them at Salamis:

for when they were not able to marshal themselves against both the land and the sea forces at once, they took with them the entire population, abandoned the city, and sailed to the neighboring island, in order that they might encounter each force in turn.

And now the city of Aias, Salamis, could testify that she was saved by her sailors in Ares’ confrontation in the destructive storm sent by Zeus, when slaughter poured like hail on countless men.

And certainly Salamis can raise a warrior.

but Aias holds ancestral Salamis, and Achilles holds the shining island in the Euxine sea.

And then, suppose that you had to make what show you could of your ancestors, and of Salamis as the native land of Eurysaces, or of Aegina as the home of the yet earlier Aeacus, to impress Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes, how you must expect to be laughed at!

and after the oligarchy was established, the Thirty sent for me with four others to come to the rotunda and ordered us to bring Leon the Salaminian from Salamis to be put to death.

O sacred soil of my own Salamis, firm seat of my father’s hearth!

Never again, my fellow Salaminians, will I be amazed if some nobody by birth does wrong, when those who are reputed to be born of noble blood employ such wrongful sentiments in their arguments.

To our own harm, it seems, we announced to the Greeks the contests for the arms of Achilles, if on all sides we are accounted corrupt because of Teucer, and if it will never satisfy you Salaminians, even when you are defeated, to accept the verdict which satisfied the majority of the judges.