Spinning Salamis

Seated on narrow benches, fingers flexing on the polished handles of long oars, adrenaline already coursing through their veins as they awaited the command to put to sea, crews of the allied Greek triremes knew that the next few hours were make or break. For days, their admirals had been at one another’s throats as old rivals – southerners from Sparta and Corinth, islanders from Aegina, tough wheeler-dealer democrats from Athens – tried to broker an accepted strategy. Yet every meeting had descended into acrimony, as leaders bickered about how to face the huge invasion force, its numbers swollen not just by crack royal Persian regiments and tribesmen mustered from ancestral lands in fa