The Dawson Ledger
Event

Battle of Salamis (480 BCE)

Decisive trireme battle in confined waters; standard example for naval warfare and for Athenian sea power (concept-naval-warfare).

Greco-Roman

Event Details

  • Date: 26 or 27 September 480 BCE
  • Type: naval-battle
  • Civilizations: greco-roman, persian-iranian

Description

Decisive trireme battle in confined waters; standard example for naval warfare and for Athenian sea power (Naval Warfare and Sea Power).

Quantitative facts and their sourcing

  • Date 26 or 27 September 480 BCE; outcome: Greek victory.
  • Wikipedia-compiled (stub): Greek fleet 371-378 ships; Greek losses ~40 ships, Persian losses ~300 ships. Ship counts derive from Herodotus/Aeschylus traditions and are contested.
  • PRIMARY-SOURCE figures: Herodotus (Rawlinson transl., vol. 4, read 2026-10-12): 7.89 Persian triremes "in all twelve hundred and seven" at the muster (before storm losses); 8.48 Greek fleet "without counting the penteconters, three hundred and seventy-eight"; 8.89 Ariabignes, a Persian fleet commander, killed, "of the Greeks there died only a few", most barbarian dead drowned. Ancient claims, not measurements; Rawlinson's own note flags the 378 vs 366 problem.

Confidence

low-medium (ship counts contested). Numbers marked "Wikipedia-compiled (stub)" come from a secondary aggregator and must be upgraded to page-level scholarly citations before any Official use.

Citations

  • herodotus-rawlinson-v4-ia [PRIMARY-READ] Herodotus, George Rawlinson (transl.) (1862). Herodotus, Histories 7.89, 8.48, 8.89, in G. Rawlinson (transl.), The History of Herodotus, vol. 4 (John Murray, 1862); archive.org scan, read. John Murray (scan: Internet Archive). https://archive.org/details/historyofherodot04hero. Read 2026-10-12.
  • morrison2000-athenian-trireme [formal] J. S. Morrison, J. F. Coates, N. B. Rankov (2000). The Athenian Trireme: The History and Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Warship (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL119125W. Verified 2026-10-11 (Open Library record found; edition exists, page-level not checked).
  • wp-battle-of-salamis [STUB (secondary aggregator)] Wikipedia contributors (2026). Battle of Salamis (Wikipedia; secondary aggregator, stub-grade). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Salamis. Verified 2026-10-11 (resolves).

Review status

SOFT draft. Not Official. Needs editor review of CAD tags (estimated) and page-level citation upgrade.

About this entry

A draft entry preserved from civilization.study. Evidence grade: low. 2 of 3 listed sources are fully documented; the rest are names only. Method and sources

Conflict card

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naval battle · 26 or 27 September 480 BCE

Battle of Salamis (480 BCE)

Decisive trireme battle in confined waters; standard example for naval warfare and for Athenian sea power.

Evidence: Primary text read Draft estimate

What the record says

  • Note Date 26 or 27 September 480 BCE; outcome: Greek victory.
  • Unverified (Wikipedia-compiled) Wikipedia-compiled (stub): Greek fleet 371-378 ships; Greek losses ~40 ships, Persian losses ~300 ships. Ship counts derive from Herodotus/Aeschylus traditions and are contested.
  • Primary text PRIMARY-SOURCE figures: Herodotus (Rawlinson transl., vol. 4, read 2026-10-12): 7.89 Persian triremes "in all twelve hundred and seven" at the muster (before storm losses); 8.48 Greek fleet "without counting the penteconters, three hundred and seventy-eight"; 8.89 Ariabignes, a Persian fleet commander, killed, "of the Greeks there died only a few", most barbarian dead drowned. Ancient claims, not measurements; Rawlinson's own note flags the 378 vs 366 problem.

Confidence. low-medium (ship counts contested).

Where it sits

Sources and evidence

No page-level citation is claimed for any source. Figures marked unverified come from a Wikipedia aggregator and are not for Official use.

Link to this conflict

Art: Patterns of Civilization chronicle art, made with AI: illustrations, not historical evidence. Entries are drafts preserved from civilization.study. Method and sources.