Xerxes, the self-styled “King of Kings,” had succeeded his father, Darius, as the ruler of Persia, inheriting a vast empire extending more than 2.1 million square miles. But Xerxes had also inherited an obligation. Darius had crossed the Aegean Sea to punish the Greeks for their revolt against Persian rule in 499 BC but was defeated at the Battle of Marathon and forced to abandon his intended conquest. Before he could rebuild his forces for a vowed return to Greece, Darius died, leaving his son to carry out his father’s wishes for vengeance.
Xerxes dutifully assembled a massive army that, according to the ancient historian Herodotus, consisted of two million men. Crossing the Aegean as his father had done was risky in those days of rowed galleys that could transport only a limited number of soldiers. So, Xerxes took his much larger army around the Aegean on foot but supported it with a navy of 4,000 ships that stayed close to the shore as it moved with the gargantuan army.
for Artemisia grew, and he continued to seek her counsel. National Museum of Iran
To get his army across the Hellespont—the narrow body of water that divides Europe and Asia—Xerxes moored a line of ships together to form a temporary bridge. He also dug a canal across the Isthmus of Athos, allowing his ships to avoid perilous exposure in the open sea by going around the peninsula.
With these engineering marvels completed, the great army marched and the great navy rowed as they headed southward, determined to defeat the various Greek city-states along the way and ultimately to capture Athens, the largest and richest of the so-called polises—the one that had played the key role in Xerxes’ father’s defeat.
Despite a heroic but futile stand at Thermopylae, the Greeks were unable to stop Xerxes’ advance, falling back until Athens itself fell to the Persians. Xerxes had avenged his father’s ignominious defeat, but he was troubled by the fact that even though he had seized Athens, many Athenians and their allies had escaped by sea.
The great king now pondered whether to return home in triumph or to complete his victory by pursuing and crushing the seagoing remnants of the defeated Greeks. Ordering his naval commanders to gather and confer on the subject, he sent his cousin and brother-in-law Mardonius to meet with them and receive their advice.
At the gathering, all the naval commanders advised engaging the Greeks in a final naval battle, all except one: Queen Artemisia of Halicarnassus, a Greek who had thrown her lot in with the Persians and, at the earlier Battle of Artemisium, had commanded the five ships she had contributed to Xerxes’ expedition. The queen-commander had earned Xerxes’ respect by showing more courage than her male counterparts, and now she alone told Mardonius to “tell the king to spare his ships and not do a naval battle,” warning that doing so unnecessarily risked losing to a force that would not last long if merely left alone without support from the land.
When Mardonius reported back to Xerxes, the king repeated his earlier praise of Artemisia but then decided to go with the male majority. The result was the Battle of Salamis, in which Xerxes’ fleet was soundly defeated. (See “Themistocles: Champion of Athenian Sea Power”)
During that battle, Artemisia again fought bravely and with cunning, carrying both Persian and Greek flags to confuse the enemy in the midst of the melee. The Athenians, thinking it intolerable that a woman should make an expedition against Athens, had offered a prize of 10,000 drachmas to anyone who took her alive. At one point, when her galley was being pursued by an Athenian ship hoping to make the lucrative capture, she was hemmed in by friendly ships in front of her. To escape, she rammed and sank a Calyndian ship, one of the Persian allies. Xerxes, who was watching the battle from the shore, was mistakenly told by one of his advisors, “Master, see Artemisia, how well she is fighting, and how she sank even now a ship of the enemy.” Xerxes responded: “My men have become women; and my women, men.” None of the crew of the Calyndian ship survived to be able to set the record straight.
Despite his defeat—and perhaps because of it—Xerxes’ assessment of Artemisia grew even more positive. In his Stratagems, Polyaenus records that Xerxes acknowledged her to have excelled above all the officers in the fleet, and he concluded that he should have taken her advice over that of his other naval commanders.
After the battle at Salamis, Xerxes again sought her counsel, asking her if he should lead troops into the Peloponnese to avenge the naval defeat or withdraw from Greece, leaving Mardonius in charge. According to Herodotus, she replied:
I think that you should retire and leave Mardonius behind. . . . If he succeeds, the honor will be yours. . . . If on the other hand, he fails, it would be no great matter as you would be safe and no danger threatens anything that concerns your house. . . . As for yourself, you will be going home with the object for your campaign accomplished, for you have burnt Athens.
This time Xerxes heeded her advice and returned home, leaving Mardonius to ultimately suffer a major defeat at Plataea, where he was killed.
Artemisia remained in Xerxes’ favor, securing her place in the pantheon of women warriors, albeit one of controversy. She is remembered as both “a cowardly pirate” (Thessalus, son of Hippocrates) and “fighting with the greatest gallantry among the foremost leaders” (Justin’s History of the World).
