Quiz: Who Am I?

[D-Day_Dodger]

A good guess, Red Devil, but the correct answer is Artemsia.

A remarkable women, she succeeded her husband to rule over the Ionian city state of Hallicanarsus during the time of the Greco-Persian Wars in the 5th century BCE. This was an unusual accomplishment for a woman at that time. Even more unusual, when Xerxes assembled his army and fleet for the invasion of Greece in 480 BCE she contributed and led 5 triremes into battle; making her probably the first women admiral in history.
She also had the ear of King Xerxes and supposedly warned him against attacking the Greek fleet at Salamis. He would hear none of it and ordered the attack while he watched from his throne set up on a hillside. He expected his numerically superior fleet to crush the Greeks but in the narrow confines off of Salamis it was the Greeks who inflicted a devastating defeat on Xerxes, sinking 200 triremes and killing 40,000 of the enemy.
During the rout that followed, Artemisia's trireme was being pursued by a Greek trireme. Just as the Greek ship was about to overtake her, Artemisia abrubtly turned her ship towards another Persian ship and rammed it amidships. The pursuing Greek ship assumed she was a fellow Greek and turned away looking for other prey. Xerxes saw this action and asked to know who the captain of the ship was that rammed what he thought was a Greek trireme. On being told that is was Artemesia he was said to exclaim, "My women have become men and my men women". Her quick thinking and cunning would see her safely through the battle.
The world's first historian was Herodotus who was born in Hallicarnasus. He documentated the events leading up to war and the important battles of Thermopylae, Salamis and Platea in his work "The Histories". Herodotus is also known as the world's first liar, as he definitely had a pro-Greek bias and was guilty of grossly over estimating the size of the Persian army among other things. Still, Herodotus gets most of his facts straight and his "Histories" makes for great reading