Today in Western Civilization we continued to watch
the video on the Greeks and their leaders. Today we learned about Themistocles
and how he both tricked the Athenians and gave them their greatest victory by
defeating the Persians in the Strait of Salamis. Here’s what happened in
summary. Themistocles, who was originally a serf, got to power and proposed to
the Athenians that make lots of ships, in particular, triremes, which could ram
enemy ships to sink them, or just flip them over. After finding a silver vein
in Athenian territory, he proposed that the Athenians should use it to build a
navy to fight back another city-state. Little did they know, he was
anticipating an attack from the Persians and built a total of two hundred
ships. After the death of King Darius, a Persian King who tried to invade
Greece once before, his son Xerxes took over and built up an army of two
million men! After Themistocles lured the Persians into the Strait of Salamis,
he ambushed them with the newly made two hundred triremes and destroyed their
ships. Then Athens was on the road to becoming a new world super power.
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