Read about trireme warfare in this selection.

Buy the book from

The Wine-Dark Sea | Appearances and Interviews | Reviews and Notices

Barry Strauss is one of the best ancient naval historians alive, and in The Battle of Salamis he combines his classical expertise with his natural gifts as a storyteller to make the inexplicable Greek victory not just explicable -- but captivating as well. The ensuing drama is as riveting as it is historically accurate.

Victor Davis Hanson
Senior Fellow, the Hoover Institute, author of Carnage and Culture. Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power

Barry Strauss is the Patrick O'Brian of the Persian-Greek war that set the course of western history. He builds a cast-of-thousands classical drama as exciting as any modern epic on a base of astounding detail.

Dava Sobel
author of Longitude and Galileo's Daughter

Led by a shrewd and bold commander, the sailors of the world's first democracy -- badly outnumbered, their capital destroyed -- drew strength from their freedom and crushed the forces of the massive Persian Empire to save the dawning of Western Civilization. Superbly told, and as dramatic as history gets.

R. James Woolsey
Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton,
and former Director of Central Intelligence

A ripping yarn of a world at the brink of annihilation and of the heroes (and fools) who brought it back from the edge. Strauss's deep scholarship and clear prose bring the men and the era alive. We can see the ships and smell the action, but more importantly, we understand what it meant -- for the Greeks then and for all of us now. This is the indispensable work on Salamis.

Steven Pressfield
author of Gates of Fire : An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae