sourced story
480 BCEReputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Xerxes Invades Greece: Thermopylae and Salamis

The largest army the ancient Mediterranean had seen is held for three days at a mountain pass and then loses its fleet in a strait Xerxes could watch from a hillside

On the timeline · around 480 BCE · Xerxes, the Greco-Persian Wars, and the Later AchaemenidsDarius I and the Achaemenid Imperial SystemXerxes, the Greco-Persian Wars, and the Later AchaemenidsXerxes Invades Greece: Thermopylae and Salamis490 BCE480 BCE470 BCE460 BCE450 BCE440 BCE430 BCE

Quick facts

Persian king
Xerxes I
Thermopylae commander
Leonidas of Sparta
Salamis commander
Themistocles of Athens
Salamis date
29 September 480 BCE

What happened

Xerxes I, who succeeded Darius in 486 BCE, spent years assembling a massive invasion force, building a canal at Chalkidike and pontoon bridges across the Hellespont to move his army into Greece. At Thermopylae, a narrow coastal pass, a small allied Greek force under the Spartan king Leonidas, roughly 300 Spartans with helots plus contingents from Thespiae, Thebes, and other cities, held the pass for three days before Xerxes's elite Immortals found a mountain path around the position, betrayed by a local named Ephialtes. Leonidas and his remaining troops died fighting a rearguard action while most of the Greek force withdrew. With the pass open, Xerxes advanced and burned Athens, whose population had already evacuated. But at Salamis on 29 September 480 BCE, the Athenian commander Themistocles lured the larger Persian fleet into the narrow strait between the island and the mainland, where the Greek triremes' maneuverability overcame Persian numbers. Xerxes reportedly watched the destruction of his navy from a hillside throne and, with his fleet broken and his supply lines exposed, withdrew most of his army back toward Asia, leaving his general Mardonius in Greece with a reduced force to continue the campaign.

Why it matters

Salamis reversed the momentum of the entire invasion in a single afternoon and forced Xerxes into a personal retreat that Persian sources never had to acknowledge but Greek sources celebrated for centuries. It left Mardonius to fight a final land battle the following year with a smaller, weaker force than the one that had burned Athens.

How we know

Herodotus is the primary narrative source for both battles, supplemented for Salamis by the eyewitness playwright Aeschylus, who fought in the campaign and wrote the tragedy The Persians only eight years later.

Sources

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Related timelines

  • Ancient Greece → · The Greek side of Thermopylae and Salamis, the battles that broke Xerxes's invasion
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