Invoking the sacred fire...

Scene 3The Catastrophe
The Messenger — Salamis
A courier arrives with the news the elders feared: the fleet is destroyed. In the greatest battle narrative of Greek drama — spoken by an eyewitness playwright who fought there — the messenger tells how a Greek trick lured a thousand Persian ships into the narrow strait of Salamis, where they crushed one another as the enemy closed in like fishermen spearing tunnies.