It makes little sense that the Greeks won, as a small number of them fought and they had fewer ships, but one theory is that they triumphed because they were fighting for their way of life. If Salamis had been lost, they knew they would never get it back, so they threw everything they had at the Persian invaders. In fact, there was even a saying after the victory: “How old were you when the Persians came?” It became a keystone for cultural identity even though a number of Greeks and Persians had been living side-by-side for years – the true importance of nationality and a sense of belonging overrode the previous collaboration.
In addition to this, Herodotus is the main source for the battles, but is Greek and so shows everything as either a real or a moral victory for the Greeks – and he doesn’t speak to any Persians. Who knows how far a sense of Greek identity has coloured what we know about the Battle?
Leading the Greeks was Themistocles who, it is believed, had to talk up the idea of fighting the Persians rather than retreating. The lines between Greeks and Persians were so blurred that Xerxes was being advised by a Greek woman, Artemisia, who warned him against rushing into the strait and whom he calamitously ignored.
Themistocles played on the sense of Greek nationality in a cunning fashion, and is thought to have erected huge billboards on the sides of cliffs telling Greeks in the Persian navy to turn coward and not fight against their fellow men. This tug of loyalty – often completely irrational – may have bolstered the Greek campaign.
This tug is something many of us can relate to. I find myself rooting for Greeks under any almost any circumstances and even when listening to the In Our Time podcast I was delighted to hear about a Greek victory. It doesn’t make much sense as I’m only a quarter Greek and this battle happened so long ago as to be irrelevant, but that doesn’t matter. The tug is still there. Even Edward Said’s analysis of the war in his 1978 book Orientalism shows that people today still have a stake in this ancient history – he argues that Aeschylus’s play about the battle contains representations of Eastern people as primitive, which academics on In Our Time disputed.
What does objectivity mean, and what does identity mean? How are we swayed in different directions, and how are our interpretations coloured?
The Battle of Salamis is a David and Goliath tale – the underdog is outnumbered but not outgunned – but it seems to me that it’s also a tale of identity. It makes me wonder: how much of our identity is shaped by where we’re from and how much is down to personal choice?
