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The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter that Saved Greece -and Western Civilization. By Barry Strauss. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. 294 pages. $25.00.
Barry Strauss, Professor of History and Classics at Cornell, has published the new standard work on the naval battle between the Greeks and Persians in the Straits of Salamis in 480 B.C. Strauss is modest about his achievement, saying, "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." Yet the only book-length account he mentions is a French work published in 1915. It was high time for a new in-depth study of Salamis, and this book admirably fills the bill.
Strauss uses individuals-some famous like Themistocles and Herodotus and some lesser known like Queen Artemisia of Halicarnassus and the Persian eunuch slave Hermontimus-to tell the story. These players add the human interest that turns a simple narrative into a great and engaging tale. The result is a manuscript based on the solid scholarship of good history with the readability of a good novel. One can almost smell the...