Changing Memories and Places

Athenian Monuments for the Victory at Salamis

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The Greek victory over the Persian invaders in the naval battle of Salamis in 480 BCE, won under Spartan command, was to a large extent the victory of the Athenians who had provided the bulk of the fleet of the allied Greek poleis. The Athenians had also paid the highest price: they had evacuated their city and had seen it being burnt by the Persians. How did they commemorate the victory? This paper concentrates on tropaion monuments – structures that, contrary to the ephemeral display of armor looted from the enemy (called tropaion), were erected in order to remind of the victory permanently. The earliest preserved tropaion monument – an Ionic column, topped by a statue – was set up by the Athenians for their victory at Marathon (490 BCE), about a generation after the battle. I argue that, at about the same time, the Athenians built a tropaion monument for the naval battle on Psyttaleia, an islet between Salamis and Piraeus, as an anchor for collective memory and identity. This monument was regularly visited by the ephebes in Hellenistic times. Another tropaion monument on Salamis, remains of which were seen by early travelers, was built only in the beginning of Roman Imperial times in order to evoke Athens’ glory of the distant past.