The Battle of Salamis: The Victory That Saved Greece

 

Barry Strauss’s The Battle of Salamis is a well-written, readable account of one of the decisive battles of the ancient world. Drawing on Herodotus and other ancient sources while incorporating archaeological evidence and modern scholarship, Strauss reconstructs the naval battle of 480 B.C. with enough detail to make the confused and dangerous fighting vivid.

I was impressed by Strauss’s portrayal of the divisions within the leadership of both sides. We tend to look backward at famous victories and assume that the winning strategy must have been obvious. At Salamis, almost nothing was obvious. The Greek coalition was fragile, its commanders disagreed about where and even whether to fight, and individual city-states had different interests. The enormous Persian force under Xerxes suffered from its own divisions, conflicting advice, and difficulties of command.

At the center of Strauss’s account is Themistocles. Strauss gives him much of the credit for the Greek victory, and persuasively so. Themistocles understood that Athens could not defeat Persia on land and had spent years building the Athenian fleet. At Salamis he recognized that the narrow waters could neutralize the Persians’ numerical advantage. Perhaps most importantly, he possessed the political cunning necessary to hold the divided Greeks together and maneuver both allies and enemies into fighting the battle where he wanted it fought.

The result was a devastating Persian defeat. Salamis did not immediately end the Persian invasion, but it destroyed Xerxes’ hopes of conquering Greece by overwhelming force and helped preserve the independence of Athens and the other resisting Greek states.

Strauss is particularly good at reminding us that history is made amid uncertainty. The participants at Salamis did not know they were fighting one of history’s most consequential battles. They were frightened men making difficult decisions while their leaders argued about what to do next.

The Battle of Salamis succeeds as both military history and narrative history. It explains ships, tactics, geography, politics, and personalities without losing sight of the human drama. Above all, it restores Themistocles to the center of the story: a brilliant, difficult, sometimes manipulative leader whose preparation and judgment helped make an improbable Greek victory possible.