Herodotus, The Histories (English) (XML Header) [word count] [lemma count] [Hdt.].
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8.10.1 When Xerxes' men and their generals saw the Greeks bearing down on them with but a few ships, they thought that they were definitely mad and put out to sea themselves, thinking that they would win an easy victory; this expectation was very reasonable, since they saw that the Greek ships so few while their own were many times more numerous and more seaworthy. With this assurance, they hemmed in the Greeks in their midst. 8.10.2 Now all the Ionians who were friendly to the Greeks came unwillingly to the war and were distressed to see the Greeks surrounded. They supposed that not one of them would return home, so powerless did the Greeks seem to them to be. 8.10.3 Those who were glad about the business, however, vied each with each that he might be the first to take an Attic ship and receive gifts from the king, for it was the Athenians of whom there was most talk in the fleet.

ch. 11 8.11.1 But the Greeks, when the signal was given them, first drew the sterns of their ships together, their prows turned towards the foreigners; then at the second signal they put their hands to the work, despite the fact that they were hemmed in within a narrow space and were fighting face-to-face. 8.11.2 There they took thirty of the foreigners ships as well as the brother of Gorgus king of Salamis, Philaon son of Chersis, a man of note in the fleet. The first Greek to take an enemy ship was an Athenian, Lycomedes, son of Aeschraeus, and he it was who received the prize for valor. 8.11.3 They fought that sea-fight with doubtful issue, and nightfall ended the battle; the Greeks sailed back to Artemisium, and the barbarians to Aphetae, after faring far below their hopes in the fight. In that battle Antidorus of Lemnos, the only one of the Greeks siding with the Persian, deserted to the Greeks, and for that the Athenians gave him land in Salamis.

ch. 12 8.12.1 When darkness came on, the season being then midsummer, there was abundance of rain all through the night and violent thunderings from Pelion. The dead and the wrecks were driven towards Aphetae, where they were entangled with the ships' prows and jumbled the blades of the oars. 8.12.2 The ships crews who were there were dismayed by the noise of this, and considering their present bad state, expected utter destruction; for before they had recovered from the shipwreck and the storm off Pelion, they next endured a stubborn sea-fight, and after the sea-fight, rushing rain and mighty torrents pouring seaward and violent thunderings.

ch. 13 8.13.1 This is how the night dealt with them. To those who were appointed to sail round Euboea, however, that same night was still more cruel since it caught them on the open sea. Their end was a terrible one, for when the storm and the rain came on them in their course off the Hollows of Euboea, they were driven by the wind in an unknown direction and were driven onto the rocks. All this was done by the god so that the Persian power might be more equally matched with the Greek, and not much greater than it.

ch. 14 8.14.1 These men, then, perished at the Hollows of Euboea. As for the barbarians at Aphetae, when to their great comfort the day dawned, they kept their ships unmoved, being in their evil plight well content to do nothing for the moment. Now fifty-three Attic ships came to aid the Greeks, 8.14.2 who were encouraged both by the ships coming and by the news that the barbarians sailing round Euboea had all perished in the recent storm. They waited then for the same hour as before, and fell upon certain Cilician ships when they put to sea. After destroying these when night fell, they sailed back to Artemisium.



Herodotus, The Histories (English) (XML Header) [word count] [lemma count] [Hdt.].
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