The Persian War

The victory of a few Greek city-states over the world's first superpower was an extraordinary military feat that secured the future of western civilization. All modern accounts of the war as a whole, and of Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis, the best-known battles, depend on the ancient sources, foremost amongst them Herodotus, but generally quote very little from them. This is the first book to bring together Herodotus' entire narrative and interweave it with other ancient voices to present the original texts that comprise almost all that is known about this immense clash of arms.