in the air gave the word to charge loud enough for the whole fleet to hear, exclaiming reproachfully, “How long for shame will ye yet back your vessels?” The event, however, seems not to have been very long doubtful. The Persians came to the attack without order, so that when the first line was routed, fresh ships crowding up from the rear, and eager to distinguish themselves under the eyes of their sovereign, ran foul of their comrades, and thus completing their wreck, were themselves thrown into confusion, and rendered unable to attack in concert, and with any probability of success. Numbers of ships were driven ashore on Salamis and destroyed, and while the action was going on Aristides landed with a body of troops upon the island Psyttaleia, and put to the sword all the Persians who were there, under the very eye of their monarch. When the Persians began to fall into confusion, the ship of Artemisia was hard pressed by an Athenian galley commanded by Ameinias, who had commenced the action, and was one of the three who were considered to have acquitted themselves best in the conflict. Being unable to retreat for the press of friendly vessels, she steered against the ship of Damasithymus, prince of Calynda in Lycia, and sunk him outright. Whether chance directed her against his vessel, or whether she selected it on account of any previous ill will, the historian professes his inability to inform us; the stratagem at least succeeded, for the Athenian took it for granted that he was pursuing one of his own side by mistake, and turned to seek some other enemy. On seeing this feat, Xerxes, who was eager to inquire by whom each action worthy of observation was performed, expressed his admiration, supposing that it was a foe that had perished, and said that his men had turned women, and his women men. No historian has attempted to give a detailed account of such a scene of confusion as the battle must have presented, nor has any statement of the respective losses of the combatants been preserved. We may presume that of the Persians to have been immense, not only from the strong expression of Æschylus,[55] that the sea was scarce visible for the wrecks and gore which overspread it, and that the shores were covered with corpses, but from knowing that, when collected the next spring at Samos, their fleet numbered only 300 vessels. Immediately after the battle the remnant of the armament returned to the Hellespont, so broken in spirit, that upon the sight of a few rocks lying near the promontory Zoster, the most projecting point on the western coast of Attica, they mistook them for the enemy, and dispersed in dismay.