Artemisia was a Greek queen who sided with Emperor Xerxes when he invaded Greece in the Persian Wars. She provided a few ships for his navy and captained one of them herself. Before the Battle of Salamis, she was the only one of Xerxes’ captains to argue against attacking the Greek fleet in the narrow waters between the island of Salamis and the Greek mainland. Xerxes appreciated her input, but he ordered the advance anyhow and it resulted in one of the most decisive battles in the history of Western Civilization as his fleet was trounced, effectively ending the threat to Greek civilization. Herodotus’ most famous tale from the battle involved Artemisia. Her ship was in danger and was being pursued by a Greek trireme. She got out of the predicament by ramming a Persian ship. The Greeks, thinking she must be on their side, backed off and she escaped the battle. Xerxes, who was watching the battle from a hillside, was getting increasingly aggravated by the performance of his fleet. When he saw Artemisia ramming a ship and assumed it was an enemy ship, he famously said “My men fight like women and my women fight like men.”
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