page_title: Artemisia I of Caria
section_title: Preparations
hierarchical_section_title: Artemisia I of Caria / Battle of Salamis / Preparations
caption_attribution_description: English: CARIA Circa 480-460 BC
context_page_description: Artemisia I of Caria was a queen of the ancient Greek city-state of Halicarnassus and of the nearby islands of Kos, Nisyros and Kalymnos, within the Achaemenid satrapy of Caria, in about 480 BC. She was of Carian-Greek ethnicity by her father Lygdamis I, and half-Cretan by her mother. She fought as an ally of Xerxes I, King of Persia against the independent Greek city states during the second Persian invasion of Greece. She personally commanded her contribution of five ships at the naval battle of Artemisium and in the naval Battle of Salamis in 480 BC. She is mostly known through the writings of Herodotus, himself a native of Halicarnassus, who praises her courage and the respect in which Xerxes held her.
  Another Artemisia also is well-known, Artemisia II of Caria, satrap of Caria and builder of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus in the 4th century BC.
context_section_description: Before the battle of Salamis, Xerxes gathered all his naval commanders and sent Mardonios to ask whether or not he should fight a naval battle.
  All the commanders advised him to fight a naval battle except Artemisia.
  As Herodotus tells it, she told Mardonios:
  Tell the King to spare his ships and not do a naval battle because our enemies are  much stronger than us in the sea, as men are to women. And why does he need to risk a naval battle? Athens for which he did undertake this expedition is his and the rest of Greece too. No man can stand against him and they who once resisted, were destroyed.
  If Xerxes chose not to rush into a naval encounter, but instead kept his ships close to the shore and either stayed there or moved them towards the Peloponnese, victory would be his. The Greeks can't hold out against him for very long. They will leave for their cities, because they don't have food in store on this island, as I have learned, and when our army will march against the Peloponnese they who have come from there will become worried and they will not stay here to fight to defend Athens.
  But if he hurries to engage I am afraid that the navy will be defeated and the land-forces will be weakened as well. In addition, he should also consider that he has certain untrustworthy allies, like the Egyptians, the Cyprians, the Kilikians and the Pamphylians, who are completely useless.
  Xerxes was pleased with her advice and while he already held her in great esteem he now praised her further. Despite this, he gave orders to follow the advice of the rest of his commanders. Xerxes thought that at the naval battle of Artemisium his men acted like cowards because he was not there to watch them. But this time he would watch the battle himself to ensure they would act bravely.
  Plutarch, in On the Malice of Herodotus, believe that Herodotus wrote that because he just wanted verses in order to make Artemisia look like a Sibyl, who was prophesying of things to come.
caption: Coinage of Caria at the time of Artemisia (c.480-460 BC).
exif: {}