The sailors of Ameinias charged behind the hoplites with crowbars and axes and started to destroy the enemy’ s prow emblem. The Phoenicians tried to surrender but the angered Athenians slew them without second thought. No mercy for the sacrilegious manslayers! The Phoenician ship’ s prow emblem fell into the sea, with a splashing sound as if breaking the grip of fear that held tight the hearts of Greeks, demonstrating in this way that the enemy could not break them psychologically.
The Athenians who had suffered the anguish of their initial inability to prevent the enemy from ravaging their land gave way to their indignation by rowing as ever before. Each ship with its ram had become an instrument of vengeance. The Athenians taking advantage of the enemy’ s overcrowding, the favorable currents and the vindictive ferocity of their marines began to have the upper hand against their Phoenician opponents. Many ships of the second and third Phoenician battle line after seeing the Athenian marines killing the enemy crews without taking prisoners, panicked and wrecked their vessels on shore of Perama in order to avoid engaging them.
The Persian Admiral seeing the Phoenicians collapsing ordered his reserves to advance. This resulted in more confusion as the ships, due to overcrowding mixed up their oars, thereby giving opportunities to the Greek shipmasters to ram them. Infuriated with anger, Ariabignis tried to bring order into the chaos but as he had no maritime experience, like most Persians, he made the situation worse. Ariabignis suddenly spotted the trireme of Themistocles and ordered his navigator to ram it. He thought that if he killed the Athenian Admiral he would reverse the situation in favor of the Persians.
But Araibignes planned without thinking of the ubiquitous Ameinias, who attacked and rammed the Persian flagship first. Undaunted the Persian Prince ordered his men to seize the ship of Ameinias. He personally led the attack holding in his arms his rich gilded weapons, true to the Persian martial traditions but Ameinias and his sub commander Lykomidis succeeded in stabbing him at a place not covered by his armor and killed him. The death of their leader broke the morale of the Asians and was a key factor to victory.
The next morning the Greeks prepared to fight again. This time Psyttalia island was guarded by the Athenians. The fleet was sailing in a sea covered with corpses and broken wood. But there was no enemy on the horizon. They arrived until the moored cargo ships to be used in the assault which Xerxes was preparing against Salamis but they did not find anyone. Only then realized the size of their victory. The ships were shaken from the joyful cries of a relieved people.
On a trireme from the Attic demos of Elefsina, one marine from the ancient Royal Codridae clan lifted his helmet and looked around. His name was Aeschylus and in his play‘ The Persians‘ he left us the most shocking testimony of that terrible day. These people looked at the future with hope and simply wanted only to rebuild their lives. Today we know that with their blood they gave Western Civilization its right to exist!
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