Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/160

 136 HISTORY OF GREECE. his pursuit elsewhere, and suffered her to escape. At the same time, it so happened that the destruction of the ship of Damasi- thymus happened under the eyes of Xerxes and of the persons around him on shore, who recognized the ship of Artemisia, but supposed the ship destroyed to be a Greek. Accordingly they remarked to him, " Master, seest thou not how well Artemisia fights, and how she has just sunk an enemy's ship ? " Assured that it was really her deed, Xerxes is said to have replied, " My men have become women ; my women, men." Thus was Arte- misia not only preserved, but exalted to a higher place in the esteem of Xerxes by the destruction of one of his own ships, — among the crew of which not a man survived to tell the true story.i Of the total loss of either fleet, Herodotus gives us no esti- mate ; but Diodorus states the number of ships destroyed on the Grecian side as forty, on the Persian side as two hundred ; independent of those which were made prisoners with all their crews. To the Persian loss is to be added, the destruction of all those troops whom they had landed before the battle in the island of Psyttaleia: as soon as the Persian fleet was put to flight, Aristeides carried over some Grecian hoplites to that island, overpowered the enemy, and put them to death to a man. This ' Herodot. viii, 87, 88, 93. The stoiy given here by Herodotus respecting the stratagem whereby Artemisia escaped, seems sufficiently probable ; and he may have heard it from fellow-citizens of his own who were aboard her vessel. Though Plutarch accuses him of extravagant disposition to com- pliment this queen, it is evident that he does not himself like the story, nor consider it to be a compliment ; for he himself insinuates a doubt : " I do not know whether she ran down the Kahmdian ship intentionally, or came accidentally into collision with it." Since the shock was so destructive that the Kalyndian ship was completely run do^vn and sunk, so that every man of her crew perished, we may be pretty sure that it was intentional ; and the historian merely suggests a possible hypothesis to palliate an act of great treachery. Though the story of the sinking of the Kalyndian ship has the air of truth, however, we cannot say the same about the obsen-a- tion of Xerxes, and the notice which he is reported to have taken of the act : all this reads like nothing but romance. "We have to regret (as Plutarch observes, T)e Malign. Herodot. p. 873) that Herodotus tells us so much less about others than about Artemisia ; but he doubtless heard more about her than about the rest, and perhaps his own relatives may have been among her contingent.