16. A wily warrior who forced his reluctant allies to fight
As it became clear that the commitment of Athens’ Greek allies was shaky, Themistocles decided to force a battle as soon as possible. So he sent king Xerxes a secret message, claiming friendship, and informing him that the Greeks were demoralized. To bag them, Themistocles advised, the Persians should send a naval detachment to block the western exit of the strait, then attack from the east. The bottled-up Greeks would then either surrender, or put up a poor show. Either way, Xerxes would emerge victorious.
Xerxes followed Themistocles’ advice, and the Greeks went into a panic upon awaking the next day to discover that the Persians had bottled them up in the strait. Themistocles calmed them down, and devised a plan whereby the Greeks retreated far up into the narrows. The Persians fought a battle with their ships on an east-west line facing Salamis. That would have allowed them to attack the Greeks on a broad front, and take advantage of their numerical superiority to overlap and envelop their foes. Themistocles demonstrated his chops as a warrior with a counterplan that thwarted the Persians, then crushed them.
