The Battle of Salamis

They were hopelessly outnumbered, but even then the Greeks knew it would be the battle that could change history.

The Asian invaders, had entered the Aegean. The "comeliest of boys" had been castrated; the throats of the "goodliest" soldiers ripped out.

Mounted on his marble throne Xerxes, Persia's formidable warrior king looked over the bay of Salamis, confident that he was about to enslave Europe. But instead of victory came defeat. As the Greeks' triremes trapped the Asian fleet, smashing it with their bronze rams, Xerxes watched incredulously. His soldiers, he said, were fighting like women.

That was 480 BC. Nearly 2,500 years later, a scientific team is searching for the lost fleets of the campaign in the northern Aegean.


Taipei Times