Plop, the Persians couldn’t swim. When their ships were rammed by the Greeks, they fell into the water in the strait near the island of Salamis, close to Athens and the port of Piraeus. “Never before have so many people died in a single day,” says the playwright and contemporary witness Aeschylus in his tragedy “The Persians”which premiered eight years later. This tearful theater of contemporary history took place at the foot of the acropolis, which was still destroyed at the time, because the Persians had burned down the ancient temples of Athens before the great naval battle. Soon they were rebuilt, more magnificent than ever: the Parthenon, winning architecture.
That was 2500 years ago, a world historical anniversary. The Greek city-states, above all Athens thanks to an unprecedented armaments program for its navy, surprisingly defeated the multiethnic armada of the Persian Empire, the greatest superpower the world had seen until then. They lured them into the narrowness of the local waters and made the proud majority of the opponents a fatal tactical disadvantage. The Persian leader Xerxes, known as “King of kings” or “King of every country and language”, is said to have watched from the golden throne on land as his fleet went under. Thump.
It used to be said: Otherwise the West would have become barbaric. This is seen more tolerantly today, and the empire that was ruled in the palaces of Susa and Persepolis in today’s Iran was not barbaric at all, but an even if autocratic, yet impressive and integrative high culture. Nevertheless, one can still say that without this victory – ten years after Xerxes’ father Dareios had already tried it in the Battle of Marathon – “classical” Athens would not have existed like this.
The Amazons suddenly wore Persian trouser suits, dead chic
The Greeks of today, who do not take everything so terribly precisely and like to trust appearances, have that Salamis anniversary therefore already celebrated in the autumn of last year. Because 2020 minus 2500, that is 480 BC. But the thorough Germans do the math again and find out that there is no year zero in our era, which is why the archaeological commemorative exhibition in Munich will take place now, in autumn 2021. That’s okay too.
This is how the painter Wilhelm von Kaulbach imagined the sea battle at Salamis. The monumental painting from 1863 hangs in the Senate Hall of the Bavarian State Parliament, a copy in the exhibition.
(Photo: Maximilianeum Foundation)
There is practically no direct material evidence of the Battle of Salamis. In the museum in Athens you can see at most small remains of the previous buildings on the Acropolis with traces of fire, i.e. evidence of how the Persian army devastated the city shortly before the sea battle, which had already been completely evacuated in a bold maneuver. Otherwise archeology has hardly anything tangible from September 480, so the struggle with the great power from the East has to be made visible from literature, from reconstructions and, indirectly, from the visual worlds of the epoch. The compact Munich exhibition, skilfully narrative curated by Vice Antique Head Christian Gliwitzky, really makes a virtue out of necessity.
For example, the artists waged proxy battles in vase pictures from mythology, of which Munich has gems. the Amazons For example, legendary fighting women from the Greek male fantasy were suddenly dressed in fancy Persian trouser suits in the course of orientalism. Well-tended prejudices and cultural exchange at the same time, that’s an old story.
“A close-quarters battle works to our advantage.”
Another vase image pays homage to the god of the north wind, who had previously smashed parts of the Persian fleet without fighting. Images of war adorned everyday life: the city goddess Athena as a champion; a gun cult that also had a democratizing effect on society; or the popular motif of a young soldier’s farewell to his family, elegiac and proud at the same time; and a display case further the most blatant war crimes and mutilations, also relocated to mythology. This also reminds us that soon after the triumph over the Persians the Greek cities were busy again tearing each other to pieces.
The Athenian Churchill: General and statesman Themistocles (524-459 BC), Roman portrait from Ostia based on a Greek model, can be seen in the exhibition as a plaster cast.
(Photo: Renate Kühling / Staatliche Antikensammlungen and Glyptothek Munich)
But first of all, the masterpiece of the naval movements in the Saronic Gulf had to be put down first, and so fans of military tactics will also get their money’s worth in the exhibition. After all, it is about the greatest sea battle of the ancient world. You can see the portrait of the beefy Themistocles in a cast: This is the Athenian Churchill, who was incredibly far-sighted and who carried out the naval building program, who held the shaky alliance together and, according to the historian Herodotus, understood early on: “A battle in cramped conditions works to our advantage . ” But there was also luck, favorable circumstances, divine interventions, as you saw at the time. The excellent catalog explains all the details.
There are smaller wooden replicas of the combat ships, in which one developed muscle strength and civic spirit by rowing on three floors one above the other when the existence of the homeland was threatened. And last but not least, a wonderfully staged new model of the theater of war – something like this is called “theater of war” in English, and one again understands very physically why great moments in military history are terrible slaughter when viewed from close up, but exciting sandpit games when viewed from above . The ancient Greeks themselves – despite all the proud imperialism that followed the great victory of Salamis over the Persians – wavered between a hedonistic and a tragic worldview. And that’s how you go out of this exhibition: everything can always turn out differently.
Salamis 480. State collections of antiquities, Munich. Until March 13, 2022. Catalog 28 euros.