What is left of Timotheus’s poem may be read in Greek and English in J. H. Hordern, ed. and trans., The Fragments of Timotheus of Miletus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). The few lines of Choerilus of Samos’s epic on Xerxes’ invasion may be read in Greek in A. Bernabé, Poet-arum epicorum graecorum: fragmenta et testimonia, part 1 (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1996). Simonides is available in Greek and English in Deborah Boedeker and David Sider, The New Simonides: Contexts of Praise and Desire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). See also Anthony J. Podlecki, “Simonides: 480,” Historia 17.3 (1968): 257–275.
There are many useful tidbits of information about Salamis, Artemisium, and trireme warfare in general in Polyaenus, Stratagems of War, ed. and trans. Peter Krentz and Everett L. Wheeler, 2 vols. (Chicago: Ares Publishers, 1994). Much can be gleaned about oared-ship warfare in Greece from the Byzantine naval manuals (in Greek), especially that of Syrianus Magister (ca. A.D. 400–600), in Alphonsus Dain, Naumachia (Paris: “Les Belles Lettres,” 1943).
Among the other ancient writers whom I have frequently consulted in the research for this book are Lysias, Xenophon, Justin 2.12.3, Onasander, Pausanias, and Strabo, all of whom are available in Greek-English or Latin-English versions in the Loeb Classical Library (Harvard University Press).
Modern Studies of Salamis
So much has been written about the battle of Salamis, and it is of such high quality, that one approaches the scholarly literature with respect, gratitude, and humility. The best book-length study, too often overlooked, is Constantin N. Rados, La Bataille de Salamine (Paris: Fontemoing & Cie., 1915). A scholar of ancient and medieval naval warfare, a Greek with a deep knowledge of the land, a wit, a skeptic, and a prose stylist, an officer of the French Légion d’Honneur, Rados writes with erudition and carries conviction. The most succinct and persuasive account of the battle is J. F. Lazenby, The Defence of Greece, 490–479 B.C. (Warminster, Eng.: Aris & Phillips, 1993), 151–197. My account of the battle is most in accord with Rados’s and Lazenby’s. It also depends heavily on the magisterial research of C. Hignett, Xerxes’ Invasion of Greece (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), esp. 193–239; and of W. K. Pritchett, “Towards a Restudy of the Battle of Salamis,” American Journal of Archaeology 63 (1959): 251–262 and “Salamis Revisited,” in Studies in Ancient Greek Topography, part 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), 94–102.
Although they offer rather different reconstructions of the battle from mine, Burn, Green, and Hammond, and the team of Morrison, Coates, and Rankov each make distinguished contributions to the scholarship of Salamis. See A. R. Burn, Persia and the Greeks: The Defense of the West, 546–478 B.C. , 2nd ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984), esp. 450–475. See Peter Green, The Greco-Persian Wars (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 60–64, 146–48, 162–63. See N.G.L. Hammond, “The Battle of Salamis,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 76 (1956): 32-54; “On Salamis,” American Journal of Archaeology 64 (1960): 367–368; “The Expedition of Xerxes,” in Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 4, 2nd ed.: Persia, Greece, and the Western Mediterranean c. 525 to 479 B.C. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 569–588. See J. S. Morrison, J. F. Coates, and N. B. Rankov, The Athenian Trireme: The History and Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Warship, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 55-61. I have also profited from discussions by Josiah Ober and Victor Davis Hanson in, respectively, Barry S. Strauss and Josiah Ober, “Xerxes of Persia and the Greek Wars: Why the Big Battalions Lost,” in The Anatomy of Error, Ancient Military Disasters and Their Lessons for Modern Strategists (New York: St. Martin’s, 1990), 17–43; Victor Hanson, “Freedom—‘Or to Live As You Please,’ ” in Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (New York: Anchor Books, 2001), 27–59.
Among older works, I have also profited from Giulio Giannelli, La spedizione di Serse da Terme a Salamina (Milan: Società Editrice “Vita e Pensiero,” 1924) and G. B. Grundy, The Great Persian War and Its Preliminaries; A Study of the Evidence, Literary and Topographical (New York: Scribner’s, 1901).
Other important works in English on the battle of Salamis in recent decades includes Jack Martin Balcer, The Persian Conquest of the Greeks, 545–450 B.C. (Xenia 38) (Konstanz: Univ.-Verl. Konstanz, 1995), 257–270; C. W. Fornara, “The Hoplite Achievement at Psytalleia,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 86 (1966): 51-55; P. W. Wallace, “Psytalleia and the Trophies of the Battle of Salamis,” American Journal of Archaeology 73 (1969): 293–303; K.R. Walters, “Four Hundred Athenian Ships at Salamis?” Rheinisches Museum 124 (1981): 199–203; A. J. Holladay, “The Forethought of Themistocles,” JHS 107 (1987): 182–187; J. F. Lazenby, “Aischylos and Salamis,” Hermes 116 (1988): 168–185. For war-gaming the battle of Salamis, see Richard B. Nelson, The Battle of Salamis (London: Luscombe, 1975).
In a forthcoming book, I argue that Athens would have eventually recovered its power even had it lost at Salamis. See “The Resilient West: Salamis Without Themistocles, Classical Greece Without Salamis, and the West Without Greece,” in P. E. Tetlock, R. N. Lebow, and G. Parker, eds., Unmaking the West: Counterfactual Thought Experiments in History (forthcoming).
Ancient Ships and Naval Battles
The fundamental introduction to ancient seafaring is Lionel Casson, Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995). Another good introduction is Robert Gardiner, ed., The Age of the Galley: Mediterranean Oared Vessels Since Pre-Classical Times, Conway’s History of the Ship (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1995). An important recent study is Jamie Morton, The Role of the Physical Environment in Ancient Greek Seafaring (Leiden: Brill, 2001).
For an introduction to the ancient trireme in the context of ancient oared ships, see J. S. Morrison and R. T. Williams, Greek Oared Ships, 900–322 B.C. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968); Lucien Basch, Le Musée imaginaire de la marine antique (Athens: Institut héllenique pour la préservation de la tradition nautique, 1987); H. T. Wallinga, Ships and Sea Power Before the Great Persian War: The Ancestry of the Ancient Trireme (Leiden: Brill, 1993). J. S. Morrison and J. F. Coates, Greek and Roman Oared Warships, 399–31 B.C. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), focuses on the Hellenistic period but offers some important insights on classical trireme warfare. Outdated in large part but still useful in some respects is Cecil Torr, Ancient Ships, ed. Anthony J. Podlecki (Chicago: Argonaut, 1964). W. L. Rogers, Greek and Roman Naval Warfare: A Study of Strategy, Tactics, and Ship Design from Salamis (480 B.C.) to Actium (31B.C.) (Annapolis, Md.: United States Naval Institute, 1937). For classical Athenian triremes and their crews, see M. Amit, Athens and the Sea: A Study in Athenian Sea Power (Brussels: Latomus, Revue d’Études Latines, 1965) and Borimir Jordan, The Athenian Navy in the Classical Period, Classical Studies 13 (Berkeley: University of California, 1975).
The study of Olympias begins with J. S. Morrison, J. F. Coates, and N. B. Rankov, The Athenian Trireme: The History and Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Warship, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Morrison and Coates designed Olympias, the hypothetical trireme reconstruction. Although in some ways flawed (as its designers acknowledge, to their credit), Olympias is of the first order of importance for historians. See Morrison and Williams, Greek Oared Ships. Reports on Olympias’s trials can be found in J. S. Morrison and J. F. Coates, eds., An Athenian Trireme Reconstructed: The British Sea Trials of Olympias , 1987, BAR International Series 486 (Oxford: B.A.R., 1989) and in J. T. Shaw, ed., The Trireme Project: Operational Experience 1987–90: Lessons Learnt, Oxbow Monograph No. 31 (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 1993). Some useful anecdotal insights from Olympias can be found in Frank Welsh, Building the Trireme (London: Constable, 1988). For critiques of Olympias, see John Hale, “The Lost Technology of Ancient Greek Rowing,” Scientific American, May 1996, 66–71; A. F. Tilley, “Warships of the Ancient Mediterranean,” The American Neptune 50 (1990): 192–200.
On slaves as rowers see Peter Hunt. Slaves, Warfare
, and Ideology in the Greek Historians: (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Donald R. Laing, “A New Interpretation of the Athenian Naval Catalogue, IG II2 1951,” Ph.D. diss. Cincinnati, 1960.
On trireme tactics see J. F. Lazenby, “The Diekplous,” Greece & Rome 34.2 (1987): 169–178; Ian Whitehead, “The Periplous,” G & R 34.2 (1987): 178–185; A. J. Holladay, “Further Thoughts on Trireme Tactics,” G & R 35.3 (1988): 149–151; J. S. Morrison. “The Greek Ships at Salamis and the Diekplous,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 111 (1991): 196–200; and my “Democracy, Kimon, and the Evolution of Athenian Naval Tactics in the Fifth Century B.C.,” in Pernille Flensted-Jensen, Thomas Heine Neilsen, and Lene Rubinstein, eds., Polis & Politics: Studies in Ancient Greek History Presented to Mogens Herman Hansen on His 60th Birthday (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen, 2000), 315–326.
On the esprit de corps of the crew of an Athenian trireme, see my “The Athenian Trireme, School of Democracy,” in Josiah Ober and Charles Hedrick, eds., DEMOKRATIA: A Conversation on Democracies, Ancient and Modern (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 313–325. On how men died in ancient naval battles, see my “Perspectives on the Death of Fifth-Century Athenian Seamen,” in Hans Van Wees, ed., War and Violence in Ancient Greece (London: Duckworth, 2000), 261–283. For thoughts on ancient boats and modern rowing, see my Rowing Against the Current: On Learning to Scull at Forty (New York: Scribner, 1999).
On ships’ eyes, see Troy J. Nowak, “A Preliminary Report on Ophthalmoi from the Tektas Burnu Shipwreck,” International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 30.1 (2001): 86–94.
Ancient Warfare
The five volumes of W. Kendrick Pritchett’s Greek State at War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971–1991), are required reading for the nuts and bolts of classical Greek warfare, with an emphasis on fighting on land.
On hoplite warfare, see Victor Davis Hanson, The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). On fire arrows and other unconventional weapons, see Adrienne Mayor, Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World (New York: Overlook Press, 2003).
On the rate of march by ancient armies, see Donald W. Engels, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 153–156. On the supply of Persia’s forces at Phaleron, see T. Cuyler Young, “480/479 B.C.—A Persian Perspective,” Iranica Antica 15 (1980): 213–239. On military cuisine, see Nick Sekunda, “Food and Drink—Greek Military Cuisine,” http: www.hoplitesco.uk/pdf /hoplite_food_and_drink.pdf, taken from Osprey Military Journal 4.1. (Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd., 2002), 3–6. On pre-battle sacrifice, see Michael Jameson, “Sacrifice Before Battle,” in Victor Davis Hanson, ed., Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience (London: Routledge, 1991), 197–227. On the trumpet, see Peter Krentz, “The Salpinx in Greek Battle,” in ibid., 110–120.
People and Places
Excellent photos, maps, and commentary (in German) commentary about the sites mentioned by Herodotus can be found in Dietram Müller, Topographischer Bildkommentar zu den Historien Herodotos. Griechenland im Umfang des heutigen griechischen Staatsgebiets (Tübingen: Ernst Wachsmuth Verlag, 1987).
For a thoughtful, scholarly introduction to the Greek world before and during the Persian invasion, see Robin Osborne, Greece in the Making, 1200–479 B.C. (London: Routledge, 1996), esp. 243–350.
On Themistocles, see A. Podlecki, The Life of Themistocles: A Critical Survey of the Literary and Archaeological Evidence (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1975); Robert Lenardon, The Saga of Themistocles (London: Thames & Hudson, 1978).
For an introduction to the Themistocles Decree and the debate among scholars, see Russell Meiggs and David M. Lewis, eds., A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century, B.C., rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), no. 23, 48–52; M. Crawford and D. Whitehead, Archaic and Classical Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) no. 112, 224–224.
On the Athenian empire, see Russell Meiggs. The Athenian Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971). For the Persianization of Athens after 479 B.C., see Margaret C. Miller, Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century B.C.: A Study in Cultural Receptivity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
On Athenian energy as a result of democracy, see Brook Manville and Josiah Ober, A Company of Citizens: What the World’s First Democracy Teaches Leaders About Creating Great Organizations (Boston, Harvard Business School Press, 2003).
On the debate on democracy as the great legacy of classical Athens, see Josiah Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).
On the topography of Salamis, see Yannos G. Lolos, “Notes on Salaminian Harbors,” in Tropis III: 3rd International Symposium on Ship Construction in Antiquity, proceedings ed. Harry Tzalas (Delphi: Hellenic Institute for the Preservation of Nautical Tradition, 1995), 291–297. See also Martha C. Taylor, Salamis and the Salaminioi: The History of an Unofficial Athenian Demos (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1997).
A very good introduction to Sparta by a distinguished scholar is Paul Cartledge, The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece. (Woodstock and New York: Overlook Press, 2003).
The fundamental work on Achaemenid Persia is Pierre Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander : A History of the Persian Empire, trans. Peter B. Daniels (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2002). A sample of his thoughts on the Achaemenid army can be found in “The Achaemenid Empire,” in Kurt Raaflaub and Nathan Rosenstein, eds., War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: Asia, The Mediterranean, Europe, and Mesoamerica (Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies, Trustees for Harvard University; distributed by Harvard University Press, 1999), 105–128. An excellent brief introduction to Achaemenid Persia is available in Josef Wiesehöfer, Ancient Persia from 550 B.C. to 650 A.D., trans. by Azizeh Azodi (London: I. B. Tauris Publishers, 1996), pp. 1–101. See also the clear and succinct article by R. Schmitt, “Achaemenid Dynasty,” in Encyclopedia Iranica, vol. 1 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), 414–426. Although superseded in some ways, still worth reading is A.T. Olmstead, History of the Persian Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959 [1948]). For an introduction to the evidence on Achaemenid Persia, see Maria Brosius, ed. and trans., The Persian Empire from Cyrus II to Artaxerxes I. Lactor 16. (London: London Association of Classical Teachers, 2000). An important reinterpretation of Xerxes is H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg, “The Personality of Xerxes, King of Kings,” in L. de Meyer and E. Haerinck, eds., Archaeologica iranica et orientalis: Miscellanea in honorem Louis Vanden Berghe, vol. 1 (Gent: Peeters Presse, 1989), 549–561.
On Phoenicia in the Persian period, see, Sabatino Moscati, ed., The Phoenicians. (New York: Rizzoli, 2000); M. Gras, P. Rouillard, and J. Teixidor, L’univers phénicien, rev. ed. (Paris: Hachette, 1995).
On sixth and fifth century B.C. Egypt and its navy, see A. B. Lloyd, “Triremes and the Saïte Navy,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 58 (1972): 268–279; and “Were Necho’s Triremes Phoenician?” Journal of Hellenic Studies 95 (1975): 45–61.
On the Halicarnassus of Artemisia and Herodotus, see Simon Hornblower, Mausolus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 1–33. On Artemisia, see R. Munson, “Artemisia in Herodotus,” Classical Antiquity 7.1 (1988): 91–106.
On Hermotimus the eunuch, see Simon Hornblower, “Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8.104–6),” in Peter Derow and Robert Parker, eds., Herodotus and His World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 37–57.
Reference
There is a wealth of useful and concise information in Simon Hornblower and Anthony Spawforth, eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). The standard and voluminous classical encyclopedia (in German) is A. Pauly, G. Wissowa, and W. Kroll, eds., Real-Encyclopädi
e der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart: A. Druckenmüller Verlag, 1958–[1893–]). Scholarly essays on a variety of historical topics in the late sixth and early fifth centuries B.C. can be found in John Boardman, N.G.L. Hammond, D. M. Lewis, and M. Ostwald, eds., The Cambridge Ancient History., 2nd ed., vol. 4: Persia, Greece and the Western Mediterranean c. 525 to 479 B.C. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
Miscellaneous
Most of the clothing described herein, from Herodotus’s cloak to Xerxes’ gold torque, represents educated guesses based on common practices in ancient dress. For ancient Greek clothing, see M. M. Evans and E. B. Abrahams, Ancient Greek Dress, ed. Dorothy M. Johnson (Chicago: Argonaut, 1964). For Persian clothing, see Pierre Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, trans. Peter B. Daniels (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 187, 217, 299–300, 523–524; Margaret C. Miller, Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century B.C.: A Study in Cultural Receptivity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 153–187. I imagine Artemisia wearing the jewelry found in the fourth century B.C. tomb of an elite woman of Halicarnassus, the so-called Carian Princess. The finds are now in the Bodrum Museum, Turkey. See http://www.bodrum-museum.com/depts/carian.htm. On perfume and cosmetics, see Mikhal Dayagi-Mendels, Perfumes and Cosmetics in the Ancient World (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1989). On the arms and armor of Spartan and other Greek warriors, see Anthony Snodgrass, Arms and Armour of the Greeks (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967); Nicholas Sekunda, Warriors of Ancient Greece (Botley, Eng.: Osprey Publishing Ltd., 1986) and The Spartans (Botley, Eng.: Osprey Publishing Ltd., 1998).
On eunuchs, see Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, “Eunuchs and the Royal Harem in Achaemenid Persia,” in Shaun Tougher, ed., Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond (London: Duckworth, 2002), pp. 19–49.
The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece -- and Western Civilization Page 29