581 
SOME SITES OE BATTLE. 
I 
CAPTAIN C. B. CALLWELL, E.A. 
To the mere soldier, Athens, in the heats of summer, has little to re¬ 
commend it. The archaeologist may roam entranced through its dusty, 
glaring streets in search of some memorial of the past; its graven 
images and crumbling columns have a meaning to him; even the lan¬ 
guage of the urchins at their play appeals to him. But we, when we 
have done the Parthenon and have sat awhile on Mars Hill to rest and 
look around, are glad to train it down to the evil-smelling Pira3us and 
skim out over the blue waters of the Attic Gulf, where, in the evening, 
a cool, fresh breeze is always to be found. Then it is but an hour's 
sail to Salamis. 
How seldom it is that episodes of naval war leave behind them a last¬ 
ing trace. Deep down, where none can pry, the hulks may rest for 
centuries; for a time debris may strew some neighbouring shore; but 
then all melts into oblivion, the spot where the great epoch-making 
battle on the seas took place is soon forgotten, there remains but a 
date, a name or two perhaps, and nothing more. 
Hot so at Salamis. Ho sea-fight has had a grander sight than this. 
The amphitheatre of rugged hills, the fringe of ruins where the ancient 
city stood, nay, the very shores itself, all serve to mark the scene of 
conflict. Each reef must have its history. Each island is a monument. 
Before you reach the actual site of battle, you pass the lofty ridge of 
rock, now crowned with batteries, called Lipso Island, which was the 
scene of one of the most stirring incidents of the fight. The night 
before, some of Xerxes' men seized the island, which, to a certain 
extent, bars the approaches from the Aegaean to the bay of Salamis, as 
part of the plan for closing in the great flotilla in the cramped channel 
where it lay. Picked men they were, the flower of the Persian troops. 
But when the fortunes of battle decided against the Asiatic array, 
Aristides, the great rival of Themistokles, somehow got across with a 
party of Athenians, and at nightfall not a Persian was left to tell the 
tale of how they fared upon the island. 
There was something very fitting in this episode. It was but right 
and proper that Aristides should undertake this bit of work, and that 
he should be the man to control the one noteworthy land operation of 
the day. For he had to the utmost of his power thwarted Themistokles 
in his great project of changing Athens from a Land into a Sea Power, 
a project which the man of action and resource had pressed upon his 
countrymen, and forced upon them by his importunity almost before 
the blood upon the plains of Marethen was dry. 
12. VOL. XXI. 
77 
