of Salamis or some friendly
deck.

From the start the advantage lay with the Greeks. The narrowness of the
strait rendered the great numbers of the Persians of no avail. The
superior discipline of the Greeks gave them a further advantage. The
want of concert in the Persian allies was another aid to the Greeks.
They were ready to run one another down in the wild desire to escape.
Soon the Persian fleet became a disorderly mass of flying ships, the
Greek fleet a well-ordered array of furious pursuers. In panic the
Persians fled; in exultation the Greeks pursued. One trireme of Naxos
captured five Persian ships. A brother of Xerxes was slain by an
Athenian spear. Great numbers of distinguished Persians and Medes shared
his fate. Before the day was old the battle on the Persian side had
become a frantic effort to escape, while some of the choicest troops of
Persia, who had been landed before the battle on the island of
Psyttaleia, were attacked by Aristides at the head of an Athenian troop,
and put to death to a man.

The confident hope of victory with which Xerxes saw the battle begin
changed to wrath and terror when he saw his ships in disorderly flight
and the Greeks in hot pursuit. The gallant behavior of Queen Artemisia
alone gave him satisfaction, and when he saw her in the flight run into
and sink an opposing vessel, he cried out, "My men have become women;
and my women, men." He was not aware that the ship she had sunk, with
all on board, was one of his own fleet.

The mad flight of his ships utterly distracted the mind of the
faint-hearted king. His army still vastly outnumbered that of Greece.
With all its losses, his fleet was still much the stronger. An ounce of
courage in his soul would have left Greece at his mercy. But that was
wanting, and in panic fear that the Greeks would destroy the bridge over
the Hellespont, he ordered his fleet to hasten there to guard it, and
put his army in rapid retreat for the safe Asiatic shores.

He had some reason to fear the loss of his bridge. Themistocles and the
Athenians had it in view to hasten to the Hellespont and break it down.
But Eurybiades, the Spartan leader, opposed this, saying that it was
dangerous to keep Xerxes in Greece. They had best give him every chance
to fly.

Themistocles, who saw the wisdom of this advice, not only accepted it,
but sent a message to Xerxes--as to a friend--advising him to make all
haste, and saying that he would do his best to ho