fact the barbarians to the west and the east had been sharing intelligence and were
working together to attack the Greek world from either side simultaneously.^9 But
even without trying to force the two battles to be part of what Aristotle might have
seen as a linked chain of events, one can readily see why the potential symbolic
significance of this synchronism was enormous, and virtually irresistible: “It is a
small step from the synchronisation of battles to a sense of ‘common cause ’, and
indeed of a common enemy: it seems fair to see here the roots of the generalized
Greek/barbarian dichotomy in its developed form.”^10 Indeed, the ideological
point is even stronger if the synchronization is the product of the sense of common
cause, rather than the other way around.^11
This sense of “common cause” is exactly what we see Pindar working so hard to
construct in his First Pythian,written in 470 b.c.e., only ten years after the two bat-
tles, to celebrate Hieron of Syracuse, who with his brother Gelon had been joint
victor in the battle of Himera. Pindar does not mention the synchronization of
Himera and Salamis, and there is every reason to think that it had not yet been
established;^12 his main focus of attention (72 – 75) is the more recent battle of Cumae
(474 b.c.e.), in which Hieron defeated a combined naval force of Carthaginians
and Etruscans. Pindar does, however, mention Salamis, Plataea, and Himera as the
crowning glory of, respectively, the Athenians, Spartans, and Syracusans (75 – 80),
and it is clear that the whole project of the poem is to claim that the Sicilian victo-
ries over theirbarbarians are as important and significant as the mainland Greeks’
victory over theirbarbarians, part of a universal Hellenism defended by both West
and East Greeks. Saying that two of these great victories were fought on the same
day, an extra flourish that almost certainly entered the tradition after Pindar, is an
extremely powerful way of reinforcing this claim to a share in the burden of
Hellenism against barbarism.
The synchronization of the victories over barbarians is one of the many strate-
gies adopted by Sicily, and especially by Syracuse, as they try to elbow their way
into the top league of Hellenism. Herodotus’s extremely subtle narrative in book
7 of the buildup to the crucial battles allows us to get a glimpse of what was at
stake. Herodotus’s report of the synchronism of Himera and Salamis is part of a
complex narrative about the rivalry between West and East Greece, and the key to
his story is the argument over who should lead Hellas against the barbarians.
When ambassadors from Athens and Sparta arrive in Syracuse to ask Gelon,
tyrant of Syracuse, to join the alliance against the Persians, Gelon replies that he
will contribute large forces and provision the Greek army so long as he is the
supreme commander of all the Greek forces (7.157 – 59). As Gelon himself points
Sicily and Mainland Greece: “Common Cause”?. 45