Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/158

 134 fflSTORY OF GREECE. Medes serving as soldiers on shipboard, in trying to satisfy the exigent monarch who sat on shore watching their behavior. Their signal defeat was not owing to any want of courage, — but, first, to the narrow space which rendered their superior number a hindrance rather than a benefit : next, to their want of orderly line and discipline as compared with the Greeks : thirdly, to the fact that, when once fortune seemed to turn against them, they had no fidelity or reciprocal attachment, and each ally was willing to sacrifice or even to run down others, in order to effect his own escape. Their numbers and absence of concert threw them into confusion, and caused them to run foul of each other : those in the front could not recede, nor could those in the rear advance : ^ the oar-blades were broken by collision, — the steersmen lost control of their ships, and could no longer adjust the ship's course so as to strike that direct blow with the beak which was essential in ancient warfare. After some time of combat, the whole Persian fleet was driven back and became thoroughly unmanageable, so that the issue was no longer doubt- ful, and nothing remained except the efforts of individual bravery to protract the struggle. "While the Athenian squadron on the left, which had the greatest resistance to surmount, broke up and drove before them the Persian right, the -^ginetans on the right intercepted the flight of the fugitives to Phalerum :~ Demokritus, the jSiaxian captain, was said to have captured five ships of the Persians with his own single trireme. The chief admiral, Ari- abignes, brother of Xerxes, attacked at once by two Athenian triremes, fell, gallantly trying to board one of them, and the num- ber of distinguished Persians and Medes who shared his fate was great : 3 the more so, as few of them knew how to swim, while among the Greek seamen who were cast into the sea, the greater number were swimmers, and had the friendly shore of ' Herodot. viii, 86 ; Diodor. xi, 17. The testimony of the former, both to the courage manifested by the Persian fleet, and to their entire want of order and system, is decisive, as well as to the effect of the personal over- looking of Xei-xes. ' The many names of Persian chiefs whom ^schylus reports as having been slain, are probably for the most part inventions of his own, to please the ears of his audience. See Blomfield, Praefat. ad JSschyl Pers. p. xii.
 * Simonides, Epigr. 138, Bergk.