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Seeing the Persians too densely massed
together on a narrow front the Greek commander, Themistocles, attacked
with equal skill and fury, rolled up the Persian front in confusion on
the mass behind, and won the battle that saved the Western World. The
Persians lost two hundred vessels against only forty Greek. But it was
not the mere loss of vessels, or even of this battle of Salamis itself,
that forced Xerxes to give up all hopes of conquest. The real reason
was his having lost the command of the sea. He knew that the
victorious Greeks could now beat the fighting ships escorting his
supply vessels coming overseas from Asia Minor, and that, without the
constant supplies of men, arms, food, and everything else an army
needs, his army itself must wither away.
Two hundred and twenty years later the sea-power of the Roman West beat
both the land- and sea-power of the Carthaginian East; and for the very
same reason. Carthage was an independent colony of Phoenicians which
had won an empire in the western Mediterranean by its sea-power.


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