Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

56
HISTORY OF PERSIA.
great events that followed and which fill so many in-
teresting pages in the admirable histories of Thirlwall
and Grote. But it ought to be recollected, that even
the success of the great and glorious battle of Sala-
mis, was far more the result of a happy accident
than of a well-conceived or well-concerted plan.
It is certain that the Greek leaders as a body would
have preferred avoiding the conflict, and but for the
artifice of Themistocles, which induced the Persians
to hem them in, they would have fled, perhaps to Sicily.
In fact, the commanders were still angrily disputing
\vhen a Tenian ship, which had escaped the Persians,
came up and told them they had now no alternative but
to cut their way through as best they could. But when
the actual fight took place, the issue was not long
doubtful; the small but active force of the Greeks
being considerably aided by the Persian plan of
placing their vessels in lines one behind the other,
the immediate effect of which was that their fleet, as
at Artemisium, soon became a confused mass of
vessels, unable to make any separate or individual
effort. Thus five hundred vessels perished miserably,
the whole sea being covered with their wrecks.
Salamis was the turning point of the war and the
grave of the hopes of Xerxes. This conflict over,
he at once retraced his steps, but he was doomed
to further disappointment, as his great bridge over
the Hellespont had failed him and had been swept
away by the storms. The would-be conqueror of
Greece is said to have crossed doubtfully in a single
vessel, where but a short time before he had
led his tens of thousands. "Of all the mighty host