loud and clear from island rocks.

Fear churned in every Persian.

We’d been led off the mark:

the Greeks

weren’t running, no,

but sang that eerie triumph-chant

as men

racing toward a fight

and sure of winning.

Then the trumpet-shriek blazed

through everything over there.

A signal:

instantly

their oars struck salt.

We heard

that rhythmic rattle-slap.

It seemed no time till they

all stood in sight.

We saw them sharp.

First the right wing,

close-drawn, strictly ordered,

led out, and next we saw

the whole fleet bearing down, we heard

a huge voice

Sons of Greece, go!

Free fatherland,

free children, wives,

shrines of our fathers’ gods,

tombs where our forefathers lie.

Fight for all we have!

Now!

Then on our side shouts in Persian

rose to a crest.

We didn’t hold back.

That instant, ship rammed

bronzeclad beak on ship.

It was

a Greek ship started the attack

shearing off a whole Phoenician

stern. Each captain steered his craft

straight on one other.

At first the wave of Persia’s fleet

rolled firm, but next, as our ships

jammed into the narrows and

no one could help any other and

our own bronze teeth bit into

our own strakes,

whole oarbanks shattered.

Then the Greek ships, seizing their chance,

swept in circling and struck and overturned

our hulls,

and saltwater vanished before our eyes—

shipwrecks filled it, and drifting corpses.

Shores and reefs filled up with our dead

and every able ship under Persia’s command

broke order,

scrambling to escape.

We might have been tuna or netted fish,

for they kept on, spearing and gutting us

with splintered oars and bits of wreckage,

while moaning and screams drowned out

the sea noise till

Night’s black face closed it all in.

Losses by thousands!

Even if I told

the catalogue for ten full days I

could not complete it for you.

But this is sure:

never before in one day

have so many thousands died.

In the second half of the play, Darius’ spirit is summoned from his tomb. His wife tells him that Persia is ruined. Darius considers Xerxes a fool for bridging the Hellespont and bringing ruin on the Persian army. He recommends that the Persians never march against the Greeks again.

THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL

Various Histories, XII

Aelian

Translated by Thomas Stanley, 1665

Aelian was an historian of the second century AD who lived in Rome but wrote in Greek. Here he describes a beautiful woman named Aspasia, from Phocis in Greece, who entered the court of Cyrus the Younger of Persia in the fifth century BC and captivated all those who saw her with her beauty. She is not to be confused with the more famous Aspasia who became the common-law wife of Pericles. In this seventeenth-century translation, by the poet and classical scholar Thomas Stanley, the first part of her story reads like a fairy tale.

Chap I: Of Aspasia