As soon as the sun rose, the Greek fleet moved forward to the attack, the crews joining, as they advanced, in the _pæan_ or shout of battle. They met no reluctant foe. So confident, indeed, was the bearing of the Persians, that the Greeks were checked. Some of the crews even began to back water. The issues of great battles are often decided by examples of courage. So it was at Salamis, for one of the Greek ships advanced and led the way for the rest. To whom this credit is due cannot be said for certain. The Athenians declared that this brave captain was Ameinias, a brother of the poet Æschylus; the Æginetans claimed the honour for a ship of their own, which had brought over, on the eve of the battle, the heroes worshipped in their city as auxiliaries of the Greek people.[3] Herodotus had also heard a legend how the form of a woman, doubtless the goddess Athené, had been seen in the air and heard to cry, in a voice which reached from one end of the fleet to another, "Friends, how much further are ye going to back?" Æschylus gives his authority in favour of his countryman, not expressly but by saying that the ship which led the attack broke off the stern of a Phœnician ship, for we know that the Phœnician squadron was posted over against the Athenian contingent. The Æginetan was second if not first, and Simonides gives the third place to a ship that came from Naxos. By common consent Athens and Ægina shared the chief distinction of the day between them. The Athenian ships busied themselves with such of the enemy's fleet as offered resistance or were beached by their captains; the Æginetans attacked those that attempted to escape by the southern channel (their way to the open sea).