On the precious objects in Xerxes’ and Mardonius’s tents as well as on Xerxes’ throne at Salamis, see Dorothy Burr Thompson, “The Persian Spoils in Athens,” in Saul S. Weinberg, ed., The Aegean and the Near East: Studies Presented to Hetty Goldman on the Occasion of Her Seventy-Fifth Birthday (Locust Valley, N.Y.: J. J. Augustin, 1956), 281–291, and Miller, Athens and Persia, 29–41.
On situational awareness, see Mike Spick, The Ace Factor: Air Combat & the Role of Situational Awareness (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1988).
HERODOTUS. Roman portrait bust, second century A.D. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of George F. Baker, 91.8)
THEMISTOCLES. Roman portrait bust, possibly a copy of a Greek original. (Ostia Museum)
CYNOSURA PENINSULA. A view from the Salamis straits, looking southwest. Another part of the island of Salamis is in the background. (Barry Strauss)
ATHENIAN TRIREME. Olympias under oar at sea, a modern reconstruction of an Athenian trireme of the fourth century B.C. Note the ram. (Mary Pridgen by courtesy of the Trireme Trust)
XERXES. Relief sculpture of Crown Prince Xerxes standing behind King Darius on his throne, ca. 500 B.C. From the Treasury at Persepolis, Iran. (Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago)
CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS. Greek infantryman attacking a Persian soldier. Attic red-figure amphora, 480–470 B.C. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 06.1021.117)
PERSIAN ATTENDANT. Relief sculpture of a beardless attendant with a cosmetic bottle and towel, possibly a royal eunuch. From the Palace of Darius at Persepolis, Iran. (Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago)
SPARTAN WARRIOR. Note the helmet and its transverse crest, the braided long hair, and the thin cloak draped tightly around the body. Greek bronze, 510–500 B.C. (Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut. Gift of A. Pierpont Morgan)
CARIAN TREASURE. The skull and gold jewelry found in the tomb of an aristocratic lady of Halicarnassus of the fourth century B.C., the so-called Carian princess, indicating the kind of ornaments that Artemisia might have worn. (Don Frey)
CARIAN RINGS. Three gold rings from the Halicarnassian tomb of the fourth century B.C. Note in particular the chalcedony signet ring of a Persian soldier (bottom), suggesting the loyalty that Artemisia had to Xerxes. (Don Frey)
PHALERON BAY. A view of the harbor where the Persian fleet moored, looking southeast toward Mount Hymettus. (Barry Strauss)
SALAMIS STRAITS. A view from the island looking toward the mainland and the hills from which Xerxes watched the battle. These are the waters in which the battle was fought. (Barry Strauss)
AMBELAKI BAY. The ancient harbor of Salamis Town, where part of the Greek fleet was moored before the battle of Salamis. The mainland of Greece is on the right (east) in the background, and the hills of Salamis are on the left (west). (Barry Strauss)
AESCHYLUS. Roman portrait bust of the Athenian tragedian, possibly a copy of a Greek original. (Capitoline Museums, Rome)
PHOENICIAN TRIREME. Clay seal depicting a Sidonian warship and a palm tree. From the Treasury at Persepolis, Iran. (Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago)
ATHENIAN OARSMEN. Sculptured relief of the middle part of the starboard side of an oared ship, ca. 400 B.C., about eighty years after the battle of Salamis. Known as the Lenormant Relief, it is displayed in the Acropolis Museum in Athens. (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Athens)
PSYTALLEIA. A view northwest toward the islet, with its modern lighthouse and transmission tower visible. Note the rugged, windswept terrain. (Barry Strauss)
PHAYLLOS OF CROTON. Painting of the young athlete. Attic red-figure amphora, 515–510 B.C., painted by Euthymides. (J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California)
VICTORY AT SEA. The goddess Athena as patroness of the fleet, holding an ornament from a captured ship. Attic red-figure lekythos, 480–470 B.C., attributed to the Brygos Painter. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, funds from various donors, 25.189.1)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In writing this book I have gathered enormous debts, some to organizations and even more to people. Boris Rankov has been exceptionally generous with his time and expertise about Olympias, triremes, and rowing. Victor Davis Hanson has been kind enough to let me engage him in a long-running debate about the consequences of the battle of Salamis. Over the years, John Hale and Donald Kagan have each shared his considerable knowledge of ancient ships and naval warfare. Josiah Ober is an incomparable thinker on the subject of democracy and warfare. Adrienne Mayor combines an editor’s eye with a scholar’s learning. Mark Levine on a bad day knows more about storytelling than most of us do in a good year; he has been a generous and supportive friend from the earliest stages of this project.
John Lee, Meredith Small, and the late Aaron Strauss generously read chapters in draft version, and they each dispensed superb editorial advice. Paul Cartledge was kind enough to take part in a stimulating seminar on the Persian Wars. Elizabeth Greene and Simon Hornblower shared unpublished material with me.
Pierre Briant, Burke Carson, Judith Dupré, Laurel Freas, Timothy Gregory, John Hyland, Fred Kagan, Michelle Moyd, Bill Patterson, Hayden Pelliccia, Ingrid Rowland, Philip Sabin, Elizabeth Shepherd, and Erla Zwingle each shared his or her expertise at various stages of my research. I would also like to thank Sandra Bernstein and the late Alvin Bernstein, Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Giovanni Giorgini, Dede Hatch, Ned Lebow, Johanna Li, Deirdre Martin, Tim Merrick, Nat and Marcia Ober, Katerina Papoulia, David Rakowski, Daniel Schwarz, Tiffany Stansfield, and Gail Holst Warhaft.
In Greece, I received invaluable help in regard to triremes and naval history from Rear Admiral A. Dimitsas of the Hellenic Navy and from Rosie Randolph. For information about fishermen on Salamis today I would like to thank Antiopi Argyriou and Marisa Koch. For information about winds and weather in and around Salamis I am grateful to Dr. Michael Petrakis, Director of the Institute for Environmental Research & Sustainable Development, National Observatory of Athens. I would also like to thank Zafira Haïdou and the staff of the Nautical Museum of Greece, Piraeus.
In Turkey, I received generous assistance from Oguz Alpozen of the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology, from archaeologist Poul Pedersen, from naval archaeologist Harun Özdas, from Carian scholar Koray Konuk, and from George Bass, Don Frey, Elizabeth Greene, and the staff of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology in Bodrum.
Howard Morhaim is as sage and supportive a literary agent and friend as any author could ever ask for. He has helped me every step of the way. Robert Bender is an insightful and dedicated editor whose guidance has improved this manuscript immeasurably. Paul Sidey is as wise and discerning an editor as he is witty and patient.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge the various institutions that have helped me. The Department of History of Cornell University has been a stimulating and supportive academic home for many years and was kind enough to grant me leave from teaching to work on this book. Cornell’s Department of Classics and its Peace Studies Program each also provide intellectual nourishment. With its superb collection and its supportive staff, the Cornell University Library has proven indispensable for my research. I am delighted to thank a generation of Cornell students for their questioning and encouragement.
The American School of Classical Studies in Athens is one of the world’s greatest centers of knowledge about ancient Greece. I was lucky enough to spend two years there. The MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, awarded me a month’s residency in winter 2003, where I was able to write in an ideal setting. Without the Cascadilla Boat Club in Ithaca, New York, I would know very little about oars and boats.
I will always be grateful to the people of Greece and Turkey for their generosity and hospitality.
My greatest debt is to my family. I can never thank my parents enough. My wife and children patiently bore both my absences to do research and my distracted and inattentive presence while I was home writing. For that, and for much more than I can say,
I am grateful to my wife, Marcia, and to my children, Sylvie and Michael. Without Marcia’s support, encouragement, and advice, this book could not have been written. Michael’s intense and agile manipulation of video games recalls the skill of the ancient pilot. Sylvie is a constant reminder that there is more to life than war, and so I dedicate this book to her.
Also by Barry Strauss
What If?: The World’s Foremost Military Historians Imagine
What Might Have Been
(contributor)
Western Civilization: The Continuing Experiment
(with Thomas F. X. Noble and others)
War and Democracy: A Comparative Study of the Korean War
and the Peloponnesian War
(with David McCann, co-editor)
Rowing Against the Current: On Learning to Scull at Forty
Fathers and Sons in Athens: Ideology and Society
in the Era of the Peloponnesian War
Hegemonic Rivalry: From Thucydides to the Nuclear Age
(with Richard Ned Lebow, co-editor)
The Anatomy of Error: Ancient Military Disasters
and Their Lessons for Modern Strategists
(with Josiah Ober)
Athens After the Peloponnesian War: Class, Faction and Policy, 403–386B.C.
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NOTES
In citing ancient authors, I follow the abbreviations of the standard reference work, The Oxford Classical Dictionary 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). I cite the titles of ancient works, however, in English translation.
TIMETABLE OF EVENTS RELATING TO THE BATTLE OF SALAMIS, 480 B.C.
All dates approximate: This chronology is based on ancient sources and modern scholarship. It aims to follow Herodotus’s narrative, which is a coherent and credible story but unfortunately vague or contradictory in regard to a few dates. In those cases, I follow scholars who offer the fewest changes to Herodotus.
AN IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT THE SHIPS
Triremes were sleek ships: Most of the technical data cited in this section comes from the experience of Olympias, a hypothetical reconstruction of a fourth century B.C. Athenian trireme, built and rowed in the 1980s and 1990s. I have also taken into account criticism and revisions since then.
“speed and wheeling about”: Plutarch, Life of Cimon 12.2.
O opop, O opop and ryppapai . . . “Bre-ke-ke-kex, ko-ax, ko-ax”: Aristophanes, Frogs 208–209, 1073.
PROLOGUE: PIRAEUS
summer morning in 430 B.C.: It is plausible that Herodotus was in Athens at that date, as discussed by J. L. Myres, Herodotus, Father of History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), 14–16. I have imagined his journey aboard ship but not the view.
a man in his fifties: Herodotus’s traditional birth date is 484 B.C. For a discussion of the biographical tradition, see J. Gould, Herodotus (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), 4–18.
he had a long beard: See, for example, the marble portrait bust in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
cloak draped over a tunic: I imagine Herodotus in the typical garb of a Greek adult male.
“divine Salamis”: Herodotus 7.141.4.
victors erected two trophies: Hdt. 8.121.
huge demographic fact: The estimated human population of the earth in 500 B.C. was about 100 million. See Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones, Atlas of World Population History (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1978), 343. Today, the human population is about 6 billion. The figure of 300,000 represents 0.3 percent of 100 million, while 0.3 percent of 6 billion is 18 million.
“What follows is an exhibition”: Hdt. 1.1.1.
CHAPTER ONE: ARTEMISIUM
“I may not know how to tune the lyre”: Plutarch, Life of Themistocles 2.3.
“When the Athenians lived under a tyranny”: Herodotus 5.78.
“monster storm”: Hdt. 7.188.3.
“When the Phoenicians are lined up opposite”: Sosylus of Lacedaemon, Felix Jacoby, Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker, Zweiter Teil, Zeitgeschichte, B. Spezialgeschichten, Autobiographien und Memoiren. Zeittafeln (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1929), no. 176, frg. 1.2, pp. 904–905
“Corpses and the wreckage of the ships”: Hdt. 8.12.1–2.
“Destroy the Greek fleet”: Hdt. 8.15.2.
“The barbarians shall not pass”: Hdt. 8.15.2.
“it was all done by the god”: Hdt. 8.13.1.
“With numerous tribes”: Plutarch, Life of Themistocles 8.3. Trans. John Dryden.
“There the sons of Athens set”: Plutarch, Life of Themistocles 8.2. Trans. John Dryden = Pindar frg. 93, Alexander Turyn, Pindari Carmina, cum fragmentis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952), 302.
“Men of Ionia”: Hdt. 8.22.1–2.
subtle serpent: Plutarch, Life of Themistocles 29.1.
CHAPTER TWO: THERMOPYLAE
“many people but few men”: Herodotus 7.210.2.
“ruler of heroes”: R. Schmitt, “Achaemenid Dynasty,” Encyclopedia Iranica, vol. 1 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), 417.
“I am skilled both in hands and in feet”: XPlOP (Xerxes Persepolis Inscription letter “l,” in Old Persian), trans. Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions Project (Chicago: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, 1998), http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/aritextbrowse.pl?text=xpl&lan guage=op&banner=yes&translation=yes.
“interwoven with white”: Curtius 3.3.17. Trans. John Yardley, Quintus Curtius Rufus, The History of Alexander (Penguin: New York, 1984), 31. The reference is to King Darius III in 331 B.C. as he led his army out to march against Alexander the Great.
“This is indeed my capability”: XPlOP, trans. Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions Project.
“make the land of Persia border only on the sky”: Hdt. 8γ1–2.
“I give much to loyal men”: XPlOP, trans. Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions Project.
“suggests that Xerxes built the canal”: See a summary of excavations at http://www.gein.noa.gr/xerxes_canal/ENG_XERX/ENGWEB.htm.
“When Xerxes was campaigning against Greece”: Polyaenus, Stratagems 7.15.1.
“those who wear the belt (banda) of vassalage”: after Schmitt, “Achaemenid Dynasty,” 419.
“to find the eldest son of Pythius”: Hdt. 7.39.3. Xerxes may have had his father in mind, as usual, since Darius had ordered that all of Oeobazus’s sons be killed when that Persian tried to keep the boys out of the Scythian expedition in 513 B.C. (Hdt. 4.84). Xerxes’ punishment was both more lenient and more grisly than his father’s.
“household and tyrannical rule”: Hdt. 7.52.2.
“if you spring from this island”: Hdt. 7.235.3.
CHAPTER THREE: ATHENS
The distance between Thermopylae and Athens: See C. Hignett, Xerxes’ Invasion of Greece (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 195–196.
about ten miles a day: Alexander the Great’s army averaged a marching rate of thirteen miles a day, including one day’s halt per week to rest the animals. At that rate, Xerxes’ army would have reached Athens within eleven days of leaving Thermopylae. But Alexander’s small and efficient army had no camp followers. On his retreat from Greece in the autumn of 480 B.C., Xerxes traveled ca. 550 miles from Athens to the Hellespont in forty-five days, that is, at a rate of about twelve miles per day (see p. 224). But the retreating army did not have to stop to make conquests, and they represented only a part of the summer’s invasion force, since the rest had remained in Thessaly (Herodotus 8.115.1).
Tithraustes: Diodorus Siculus 11.60.5; Plutarch, Life of Cimon 12.5.
Salganeus of Boeotia: Strabo, Geography 9.2.9, cf. 1.1.17.
“a nothing”: Hdt. 8.106.3.
only a hole for
urination: a brutal but well-attested form of castration. See Vern Bullough, “Eunuchs in History and Society,” in Shaun Tougher, ed., Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond (London: Duckworth, 2002), 1–2.
“O wretches”: Hdt. 7.140.2.
“Far-seeing Zeus”: Hdt. 7.141.3–4.
“they stayed behind”: Hdt. 7.139.6.
“May Zeus who dwells in the sky”: Theognis 757–764.
“fraught with grief, sorrow, and lamentation”: Archaeological Museum of Kerameikos, Athens, Inventory I.318.
a bronze statue of Apollo: Consider the Piraeus Apollo, a bronze statue discovered beneath the modern city, and dated either 530–520 or 500–480 B.C. Piraeus Museum, Inv. 4645.
Iranian cylinder seal: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Inv. L.1992.23.8.
“a long time”: Hdt. 8.52.2.
“they opened the gates and murdered the suppliants”: Hdt. 8.52.5.
CHAPTER FOUR: SALAMIS
He is dressed: See the sixth century B.C. bronze statuette of a Spartan in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut.
Salamis’s population: The current population of Salamis is ca. 34,000. See http://salamina.gr/english/information.htm.
every last Greek on Salamis was at odds with all the others: This is informed speculation based on the whispers among the commanders (and perhaps the crews) over Eurybiades’ plans (Herodotus 8.74.2) as well as on the well-known reputation of ancient Greek sailors for unruliness.
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