Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/124

 100 ~ mSTOUY OP GREECE. who were serving them as unwilling auxiliaries : to both it seemed that the victory of the Persian fleet, which was speedily brought forth to battle, and was numerous enough to encompass the Greeks, would be certain as well as complete. The Greek ships were at first marshalled in a circle, with the stems in the interior, and presenting their prows in front at all points of the circumference ;i in this position, compressed into a narrow space, they seemed to be awaiting the attack of the enemy, who fox-med a larger circle around them : but on a second signal given, their ships assumed the aggressive, rowed out from the inner circle in direct impact against the hostile ships around, and took or dis- abled no less than thirty of them : in one of which Philaon, brother of Gorgus, despot of Salamis in Cyprus, was made pris- oner. Such unexpected forwardness at first disconcerted the Persians, who however rallied and inflicted considerable damage and loss on the Greeks : but the near approach of night put an end to the combat, and each fleet retired to its former station, — the Persians to Aphetse, the Greeks to Artemisium.2 The result of this first day's combat, though indecisive in itself, surprised both parties and did much to exalt the confidence of the Greeks. But the events of the ensuing night did yet more. Another tremendous storm was sent by the gods to aid them. Though it was the middle of summer, — a season when rain rarely falls in the climate of Greece, — the most violent wind, rain, and thunder, prevailed during the whole night, blowing right on shore against the Persians at Aphetoe, and thus but little troublesome to the Greeks on the opposite side of the strait. The seamen of the Persian fleet, scarcely recovered from the former storm at Sepias Akte, were almost driven to despair by this repetition of the same peril : the more so when they found the prows of their ships surrounded, and the play of their oars impeded, by the dead bodies and the spars from the recent battle, which the current drove towards their shore. If this storm was ' Compare the description in Thucyd. ii, 84, of the naval battle between the Athenian fleet under Phonnio and the Lacedaemonian fleet, where the ships of the latter are marshalled in this same array. ayuvi^ouevovg, etc.
 * Herodot. viii, 11. ttoXTlov iraou do^av ayuviaafieva . — krepdKKeut