They were hopelessly outnumbered, but even then the Greeks knew it would be the battle that could change history.
The Asian invaders, had entered the Aegean. The "comeliest of boys" had been castrated; the throats of the "goodliest" soldiers ripped out.
Mounted on his marble throne Xerxes, Persia's formidable warrior king looked over the bay of Salamis, confident that he was about to enslave Europe. But instead of victory came defeat.
As the Greeks' triremes trapped the Asian fleet, smashing it with their bronze rams, Xerxes watched incredulously. His soldiers, he said, were fighting like women.
That was 480 BC. Nearly 2,500 years later, the quest to better understand the battles that the victorious Greeks would see as a defining point in their history has reached new heights, as experts Sunday began searching for the lost fleets of the campaign in the northern Aegean.
In the world of underwater archaeology the hunt for the legendary armadas is the expedition that might, just, scoop all others.
Topping the international team's wish-list is the remains of a trireme, the pre-eminent warship of the classical age.
"This is high-risk archaeology," says Shelly Wachsmann of Texas A&M University, the team's co-leader. "Discovering a trireme is one of the holy grails. Not one has ever been found."
The Persians' defeat at Salamis is seen as one of the first victories of democracy over tyranny, a crucial moment in Western history.
Without it, say academics, there would have been no Golden Age and the world would have been a very different place.
All of which makes this week-long mission more poignant as experts try to find out how the Greeks managed to defeat a much bigger and better-equipped enemy.
Although archaeologists have discovered ancient Greek and Persian ships, they have always been cargo vessels.
For their guide around three of the five sites where Persian and Greek vessels are believed to have sunk -- the Magnesian coast of Thessaly, Artemision in northern Euboea and the "hollows of Euboea" -- the scholars have Herodotus.
Known as the father of history, the 5th century BC historian chronicled the wars in his masterpiece, The Histories. However, although his story is a good read, few artifacts have emerged to support it.
"This is a reversal of how we usually work, in that we know the history but lack the physical evidence," says Katerina Delaporta who heads Greece's Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities and is also co-leading the project.
Previously, she said, the search would have been impossible because of the technical requirements involved. With the passage of time and the Aegean's unpredictable weather conditions, maritime experts believe the wrecks will be buried under mud and silt. That means surveying the seabed at depths of up to 600m where visibility is limited. Among the team's state-of-the art equipment are sonar scans, a two-man submersible and a remote-operated vehicle capable of sending video messages to the surface.
"This is the first time such sophisticated technology is being employed," Delaporta said.
More than 1,000 of the three-tiered triremes participated in the second Persian war.
But while ship sheds and dry docks have been unearthed, scholars have had to make do with images of the galley on pottery. The discovery of a trireme, either Greek or Persian, would not only unravel the mysteries of antiquity's greatest fighting vessel but shed light on the civilization.
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