That’s a little odd, as I find that the book I’ve written is more a fictional campaign history than a novel.
So I’d like to discuss the sources, some theories, and some of the evidence. And I’d like the reader – and I’m aware I have readers who read Ancient Greek and know these issues as well or better than I – I’d like all my readers to know that I did my due diligence, and if I didn’t agree with your favorite theory, I’ll bet I considered it.
First, a general caveat. When dealing with the dawn of the Classical era, we actually know very little. The lightest brush with the so-called ‘Hoplites and Heresies’ debate (and here a perusal of Josho Brouwers’ excellent synopsis in the bibliographical section of Henchmen of Ares will help you better than I can) will show every reader how contentious every aspect of warfare in this era really is. A perusal of the literature on ancient sexuality will get you the same confusion; ship construction is beginning to edge towards consensus as underwater archaeology disproves some theories, but there’s still lots of room for debate; dance and martial arts are both realms that appear open to the wildest speculation, and even as simple an (apparent) subject as the role of women in society is rent with quarrels whose real basis is in modern academia, not the ancient world. (But if you want to read my favourite book on the subject, which I regard as the best by far, try Portrait of a Priestess by Joan Breton Connelly.)
Second, a specific warning – I’m a novelist, and I really like to tell a good story. I’m pretty sure there really was an Arimnestos; I will bet he was at Artemisium, because the Plataeans were there. Quite frankly, it is unlikely he was at Salamis – more likely, he and the Plataeans, having evacuated their farms, were camped around Nemea or at the isthmus, or even at Troezen or Hermione. But I built him from the first to be one of those piratical captains that the Greeks had in plenty – Herodotus mentions several of them, and Miltiades as much as any – and those men had their own ships and crews. So in short – to make my story work, I have juggled some of my Plataean characters and sent them back to Salamis.
But that is all the juggling I have done a-purpose. Any other errors are errors, and I’ll apologize in advance, because I do make them. For example, until I wrote this book, I was unaware of the difference between the relatively open rowing frames in the latest trieres reconstructions and the slab-sided ships that I had seen in pictures and imagined. So in this book, rowers row in frames – and I ask readers to ‘edit’ their memories to include frames and so on in my other naval actions. Likewise, close attention to the appendix on mooring and anchoring in the magisterial Seagoing Ships and Seamanship in the Bronze Age Levant by Shelley Wachsmann has indicated to me that I didn’t know as much as I thought I did about anchors and their uses, and you’ll find that gets a little more detail this time.
Anyway, I’m sure I’ve made new errors. Be merciful.
On to the Battle of Salamis.
There are really only two primary sources on the battle – Herodotus, in the main, and the opening of Aeschylus’ play Persians. Of the two, Aeschylus was an eyewitness – he was there. He was, in fact, a hoplite, a veteran warrior who had fought at Marathon. As much as possible, I took his word as law. Of course, that wasn’t always easy. And Herodotus – frankly, this whole series is based on Herodotus, and next to the Iliad, Herodotus’ Histories is one of my favorite books. I love the humanity that shines through his work, and it is my belief that he never wittingly lied or shaded the truth. Rather, in a very Husserlian way, he gave us the truth as he experienced it, and it is we moderns who struggle with his endless tales of omens, the vengeance of gods and men, and the eternal turning of a wheel of fate. He sure knew how to help a novelist though. Look at Queen Gorgo of Sparta!
I also used two secondary sources that I enjoyed – for different reasons, but I liked both. One was Barry Strauss’s The Battle of Salamis which I read back in 2004 when it came out – when, in fact, I was writing the first draft of what became Tyrant. The other is John R. Hale’s wonderful Lords of the Sea, about the rise of Athenian sea power. Finally, I used the ‘Ancient Map Book’ as my bible on place names and distances, and I can promise you that I have been to most of the beaches on which Arimnestos lands – except Megalos. Never been there. It sounds wonderful, though.
The battle is a confusing welter from the first page – from the moment the Greek fleet leaves the beaches of Artemisium. Right away, the novelist is presented with a list of questions. Let me put one of them to you – because in it lies all the seeds of the confusion of the rest of the campaign.
When the Greeks knew that Leonidas was dead and the League Army at Thermopylae had failed – did they think they would fight again? Or did they only sail to Salamis together in a sort of route, preparatory to the fleet breaking up?
I realize this seems obvious, but if Herodotus is to be believed, the Corinthians and the Peloponnesians – and perhaps even the Spartans – were for going to the isthmus immediately, while the Athenians, at least, thought that a fight would be made in the plains of Boeotia and that the fleet should remain together. Why didn’t the allied fleet break up immediately?
Asking this question gave me one hint about the campaign that I play throughout – that Eurybiades really was in command, and not just a shadow-puppet for Themistocles to keep the Aeginians and the Corinthians happy. If you accept that Leonidas and the Spartans had the foresight to want an alliance to save Greece, Eurybiades seems likely to have been a member of their party. And that means that the Greeks left Artemisium with their high command still willing to fight. I can’t actually imagine that the Greek fleet that Aeschylus portrays on the morning of Salamis – a united fleet signing the paean and striking fear in the hearts of the Persians – was still wrangling the night before.
And yet – just to keep you in the picture of how this book developed – I was pretty deep in the book when I read Maurizio Arfaioli’s book on The Black Bands of Giovanni, a book about the early 16th-century wars in Italy that included an appendix on a pivotal naval fight between galleys (Capo D’Orso in 1528). I enjoyed it, but I also noted that the winning side was nonetheless rent with dissension almost to the moment of action. And that the winning commander betrayed his ‘side’ later. After some soul-searching, I decided to accept that both Herodotus and Aeschylus were right, or at least, that they probably described a situation that was very complex, as real life all too often is. The upshot was that I changed the book, and chose to follow both. And that led to the rather careful examination of the personalities and arguments of the leaders as portrayed. And to the making of Themistocles as a more ‘nuanced’ character.
As to the day of battle, I am relatively confident that Strauss et al are correct, and that Xerxes’ fleet intended to surround the Greek beaches to prevent flight – and to allow themselves to form a long line with a friendly coast at their backs, instead of being caught in a fight in the narrows by Psyttaleia. I am still unsure whether the Greek attack on Psyttaleia was pivotal to the battle, or merely made exciting by Herodotus to inflate hoplite vanities in the aftermath of a naval battle, and to make Aristides look good. But I chose the former, because, looking at the ‘terrain’ of the battle and the width of the channels, as I think they were in 480 BCE, possession of that island with archers would have been pivotal to the battle. And a brilliant commander might well have seen that if his left flank struck hard, he could turn the battle from a long-line fight to a choked fight in the narrows. That would, after all, have been sound strategy on land, and it is my perception that before the era of Phormio and true Athenian maritime greatness, fleet actions were viewed much as land battles where the losers drowned.
The aftermath of the battle is almost all my speculation, but again based firmly on Herodotus. Clearly the Greeks, who’d probably won at least one of the days at Artemisium, were not immediately aware that they’d finished Xerxes’ fleet. And likewise, lest we exaggerate, it is also very possible that Xerxes finis
hed the day at Salamis with more battle-ready ships than the whole league fleet had possessed before the fight. But they were at the very end of the sailing season, and I suspect there are several untold stories – the Egyptians, for example, didn’t want to be there to start with and had the longest trip home; the Ionians might have been brave on the day of battle, but when they realized that they were the only fleet the Great King had left, it must have occurred to many of them, even the sailors of the Persian-backed tyrannies, that the day of judgment was at hand. To me, the steady defections recorded in Herodotus suggest deep fissures in the Persian fleet. Salamis was not a one-shot victory – it was the knock-out blow of a tough campaign, or so I see it.
And finally, as my brave Arimnestos runs across the sea to rescue his girl, let me remind you that contrary to Herodotus, many Athenians knew how to cross the sea to the coast of Asia. They’d been there in the Ionian revolt, and many of them had been to Egypt. While I love and trust Herodotus, in this I can only note that Greeks are great or terrible navigators as it seems to suit his story. I’m sure they had their share of both. Possibly Themistocles had a lot of trierarchs who had never been outside the harbours of Piraeus and Phaleron – but let’s give Arimnestos and his friends the benefit of some practice. I hope you have enjoyed that Arimnestos was not born a good navigator, and in fact has taken nineteen years at sea to develop the confidence and skill to do something as daring as what I’ve written.
Ah, and in the end, we have a wedding. Hermione is a beautiful, magical place, and the temple of Poseidon (probably) sits on a magnificent promontory that instantly evokes the late Archaic, and smells of pines and the sea to this day. My wife and I stayed in a wonderful house there, and I confess it had a fig tree. And our daughter, and some cats. We stayed there in the days after we re-enacted the Battle of Marathon in 2011, and I will not soon forget the sights and sounds of that trip, many of which are in this book, and a few of which will be in the next. In the meantime, on to Marathon 2015!
If you’d like to see a few of these places for yourself, look at the Pen and Sword tour website at https://1phokion.wordpress.com/or just visit my author page on Facebook or my author site at www.hippeis.com and look in the ‘agora’. I enjoy answering reader questions and I usually respond, and I almost never bite. And if you’ve always wanted to be a hoplite – or a Persian, or a Scythian, or a slave, or almost any ancient person – well, try re-enacting. Contact me, or visit our http://www.boarstooth.net/ website, and we’ll find you a group. Maybe even ours!
Acknowledgements
Each year, since I was married in 2004, my wife and I have gone to Greece. It is from all these trips – and my oft-quoted brush with Greece and Troy and Smyrna and Ephesus from the back seat of an S-3 Viking in 1990 – that my love, even passion, for Greece, ancient and modern, was born. In this, the fifth book of my ‘Long War’ series, I tackle perhaps the best known battle in the whole of the Persian Wars – indeed, one of the best known battles of the ancient world. What I have written is heavily influenced by my trips to Greece; by days in Piraeus and by many views out the window of an airplane taking off from Athens or landing there. My wife Sarah is always kind enough to let me have the window seat if we’re passing over the Bay of Salamis. My daughter Beatrice is not always so forgiving!
Salamis is a different book and I am perhaps a humbler man than when I wrote the first books of this series. First and foremost, I have to acknowledge the contribution of my friends and compatriots like Nicolas Cioran, who cheerfully discussed Plataea’s odd status, made kit, and continues to debate issues of leadership and character. My good friend Aurora Simmons, an expert martial artist and a superb craftsperson with almost any media (but a jeweler by profession) has quite possibly had more input on my understanding of Ancient Greece than any other person besides Giannis Kadoglou, whose nearly encyclopedic knowledge of the Ancient Greek world of hoplites and oarsmen continued to support me to the last page, with vase paintings of wedding scenes produced on short notice! My trainer and constant sparring partner John Beck deserves my thanks – both for a vastly improved physique, and for helping give me a sense of what real training for a life of violence might have been like in the ancient world; as does my massage therapist Susan Bessonette, because at age fifty-two, it is not always easy to pretend to be twenty-six in a fight. And while we’re talking about fighting – Chris Duffy, perhaps the best modern martial artist I know, deserves thanks for many sparring bouts whose more exciting bits find their way into these pages, while a number of instructors – Guy Windsor, Sean Hayes, Greg Mele, Jason Smith and Sensei Robert Zimmermann have helped shape my appreciation of the combat techniques, armed and unarmed, that were available in the ancient world.
Among professional historians, I was assisted by Paul McDonnell-Staff and Paul Bardunias, by the entire brother and sisterhood of ‘Roman Army talk’ and the web community there, and by the staff of the Royal Ontario Museum (who possess and cheerfully shared the only surviving helmet attributable to the Battle of Marathon) as well as the staff of the Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig who possess the best preserved ancient aspis and provided me with superb photos to use in recreating it. I also received help from the library staff of the University of Toronto, where, when I’m rich enough, I’m a student, and from Toronto’s superb Metro Reference Library. I must add to that the University of Rochester Library (my alma mater) and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Every novelist needs to live in a city where universal access to JSTOR is free and on his library card. Finally, the staff of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland – just across the street from my mother’s former apartment, conveniently – were cheerful and helpful, even when I came back to look at the same helmet for the sixth time. A helmet which I now own a faithful copy of, thanks to Manning Imperial!
Excellent as professional historians are – and my version of the Persian Wars owes a great deal to many of them, not least Hans Van Wees and Victor Davis Hanson and Josho Brouwers – my greatest praise and thanks have to go to the amateur historians we call reenactors. Giannis Kadoglou of Alexandroupolis has now spent many, many hours with me, tramping about Greece, visiting ruins from the Archaic to as recent as the Great War, from Plataea to Thrace, charming my daughter and my wife while translating everything in sight and being as delighted with the ancient town of Plataea as I was myself. I met him on ‘Roman Army talk’, and this would be a very different book without his passion for the subject and relentless desire to correct my errors, and that of his wife Smaro, whose interest in all these things and whose willingness to wear ancient Greek clothes and debate them in the New Acropolis Museum kept me focused on the details that make for good writing. We are all now fast friends and I suspect my views on much of the Greek world reflect theirs more than any other. Alongside Giannis go my other Greek friends, especially Giorgos Kafetsis and his partner Xsenia, who have theorized over wine, beer and ouzo, paced battlefields and shot bows.
But Giorgos and Xsenia, Giannis and Smaro are hardly alone, and there is – literally – a phalanx of Greek re-enactors who continue to help me. (We are recreating the world around the Battle of Marathon with about 100 re-enactors this year in Marathon – that’s late October 2015, if you want to book tickets.) Here in my part of North America, we have a group called the Plataeans – this is, trust me, not a coincidence – and we work hard on recreating the very time period and city-state so prominent in these books, from weapons, armor, and combat to cooking, crafts, and dance. If the reader feels that these books put flesh and blood on the bare bones of history – in as much as I’ve succeeded in doing that – it is due to the efforts of the men and women who re-enact with me and show me every time we’re together all the things I haven’t thought of – who do their own research, their own kit-building, and their own training. Thanks to all of you, Plataeans. And to all the other Ancient Greek re-enactors who helped me find things, make things, or build things. I’d like to mention (especially) Cra
ig and his partner Cherilyn at Manning Imperial in Australia, and Jeffrey Hildebrandt here in Ontario, who just made me a superb new thorax for Marathon 2015.
Thanks are also due to the people of Lesvos and Athens and Plataea and Marathonas – I can’t name all of you, but I was entertained, informed, and supported constantly in three trips to Greece, and the person who I can name is Aliki Hamosfakidou of Dolphin Hellas Travel for her care, interest, and support through many hundreds of e-mails and some meetings. Alexandros Somoglou of Marathonas deserves special thanks, and if you ever find yourself in Molyvos (Ancient Mythemna) on Lesvos, please visit the Sea Horse Hotel, where Dmitri and Stela run my favorite hotel in the world. Also in Greece I’ve received support and help from professional archaeologists and academics, and I wish particularly to thank Pauline Marneri and her son John Zervas for his translation support.
Bill Massey, my editor at Orion, has done his usual excellent job and it is a better book for his work. Oh, and he found a lot of other errors, too, but let’s not mention them. I have had a few editors. Working with Bill is wonderful. Come on, authors – how many of you get to say that?
My agent, Shelley Power, contributed more directly to this book than to any other – first, as an agent, in all the usual ways, and then later, coming to Greece and taking part in all of the excitement of seeing Lesvos and Athens and taking us to Archaeon Gefsis, a restaurant that attempts to take the customer back to the ancient world. And then helping to plan and run the 2500th Battle of Marathon, and continuing as a re-enactor of Ancient Greece. Thanks for everything, Shelley, and the agenting not the least!
Christine Szego and the staff and management of my local bookstore, Bakka-Phoenix of Toronto also deserve my thanks, as I tend to walk in a spout fifteen minutes’ worth of plot, character, dialogue, or just news – writing can be lonely work, and it is good to have people to talk to. And they throw a great book launch.
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