Xerxes still held to the idea of conquering Greece; but the chance was gone. Mardonius, it is true, remained in Thessaly with an army, but it was no longer an army of millions. The Greeks assembled an army of about 100,000 men and in the battle of Platæa the following year utterly defeated it. On the same day the Greeks destroyed what was left of the Persian fleet in the battle of Mycale, on the coast of Asia Minor. This, strictly speaking, was not a naval battle at all, for the Persians had drawn their ships up on shore and built a stockade around them. The Greeks landed their crews, took the stockade by storm and burnt the ships. These later victories were the direct consequences of the earlier victory of Salamis.
Another phase of the Persian plan of conquering the Greeks must not be overlooked. Xerxes had stirred up Carthage to undertake a naval and military expedition against the Greeks of Sicily, in order that all the independent Greek states might be crushed simultaneously. Again the weather came to the rescue, for the greater part of the Carthaginian fleet was wrecked by storms. The survivors of the expedition laid siege to the city of Himera, but were eventually driven back to their ships in rout with the loss of their general. Thus the Greek civilization of Sicily was saved at the same time as that of Athens.
East and west, therefore, the grandiose plan of the Persian despot fell in ruin, and with it fell the prestige and the power of the empire. The Ionians revolted and joined Athens as allies, and the control of the Ægean passed from Persia to Athens. With this loss of sea power began the decline of Persia as a world power.
The significance of this astounding defeat of the greatest military and naval power of the time lies in the fact that European, or more particularly Greek, civilization was spared to develop its own individuality. Had Xerxes succeeded, the paralyzing régime of an Asiatic despotism would have stifled the genius of the Greek people. Self-government would never have had its beginnings in Greece, and a subjugated Athens would never have produced the "Age of Pericles." In the two generations following Salamis, Athens made a greater original contribution to literature, philosophy, science, and art than any other nation in any two centuries of its existence.