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Aegina

Dorian island in the Saronic Gulf, rival of Athens and best ships at Salamis, 491-480 BCE

Aegina is an island in the Saronic Gulf between Attica and the Peloponnese. It was a great trading state with its own silver coins, the turtles. In 491 it gave earth and water to Darius, which set Athens and Sparta against it, but in 480 its ships were judged the best of the Greek fleet at Salamis.

In the game: Aegina is named in the Thermopylae level, where the Black Sea grain ships sail past the King toward it, and in Greek tooltips and articles.

Earth and water

Ancient account

Herodotus says the islanders gave Darius's heralds earth and water, and among them the Aeginetans. The Athenians accused them before Sparta of meaning to join the Persians against Athens, and King Cleomenes went to Aegina to seize the men responsible.

Herodotus 6.49-50, 6.73

The grain ships

Ancient account

At Abydos Xerxes saw ships carrying grain from the Black Sea through the Hellespont to Aegina and the Peloponnese. He let them pass, saying they were carrying grain to where he was going himself.

Herodotus 7.147

Best at Salamis

Ancient account

Aegina sent its thirty best ships to Salamis and kept others at home to guard the island. Herodotus says that in the battle the Aeginetans were the best reported of all the Greeks, with the Athenians next, and the Aeginetan Polycritus was named among the bravest men.

Herodotus 8.46, 8.91-93

The turtle coins

In the record

Aegina struck some of the earliest silver coins of mainland Greece, staters stamped with a sea turtle, from about 550. Its weight standard was used across much of Greece. The coins survive in large numbers.

Head, Historia Numorum, Aegina; C. M. Kraay, Archaic and Classical Greek Coins, 1976