Greece -- History -- To 146 B.C.; History, Ancient
94. As regards Adeimantos the commander of the Corinthians, the
Athenians say that forthwith at the beginning when the ships were
engaging in the fight, being struck with panic and terror he put up his
sails and fled away; and the Corinthians, when they saw the admiral's
ship fleeing, departed likewise: and after this, as the story goes, when
they came in their flight opposite to the temple of Athene Skiras in
the land of Salamis, there fell in with them by divine guidance a
light vessel, 58 which no one was ever found to have sent, and which
approached the Corinthians at a time when they knew nothing of that
which was happening with the fleet. And by this it is conjectured 59
that the matter was of the Deity; for when they came near to the ships,
the men in the light vessel said these words: "Adeimantos, thou hast
turned thy ships away and hast set forth to flee, deserting the cause of
the Hellenes, while they are in truth gaining a victory and getting
the better of their foes as much as they desired." When they said this,
since Adeimantos doubted of it, they spoke a second time and said that
they might be taken as hostages and slain, if the Hellenes should prove
not to be gaining the victory. Then he turned his ship back, he and the
others with him, and they reached the camp when the work was finished.
Such is the report spread by the Athenians against these: the
Corinthians however do not allow this to be so, but hold that they were
among the first in the sea-fight; and the rest of Hellas also bears
witness on their side.
95. Aristeides moreover the son of Lysimachos, the Athenian, of whom
I made mention also shortly before this as a very good man, he in this
tumult which had arisen about Salamis did as follows:—taking with him
a number of the hoplites of Athenian race who had been ranged along the
shore of the land of Salamis, with them he disembarked on the island of
Psyttaleia; and these slew all the Persians who were in this islet.
96. When the sea-fight had been broken off, the Hellenes towed in to
Salamis so many of the wrecks as chanced to be still about there, and
held themselves ready for another sea-fight, expecting that the king
would yet make use of the ships which remained unhurt; but many of the
wrecks were taken by the West Wind and borne to that strand in Attica
which is called Colias; so as to fulfil 60 not only all that other
oracle which was spoken about this sea-fight by Bakis and Musaios, but
also especially, with reference to the wrecks cast up here, that
which had been spoken in an oracle many years before these events by
Lysistratos, an Athenian who uttered oracles, and which had not been
observed by any of the Hellenes:
"Then shall the Colian women with firewood of oars roast barley." 61
This was destined to come to pass after the king had marched away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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