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Salamis 480 BC: The naval campaign that saved Greece (Campaign, 222) Paperback – Illustrated, June 22, 2010

by William Shepherd (Author), Peter Dennis (Illustrator)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 27 ratings
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Osprey's study of a crucial battle of the Grerco-Persian Wars (499-449 BC). Weeks after the glorious disaster at Thermopylae and heavy but inconclusive fighting at sea off Artemisium, with Athens now in barbarian hands and the Acropolis burned, the Greeks dramatically halted the Persian invasion of 480BC. They brought the 600-strong Persian fleet to battle with their 350 triremes in the confined waters of the straits of Salamis and, through a combination of superior tactics and fighting spirit, won a crushing victory. This drove the Persian navy out of the western Aegean and enabled the Hellenic Alliance to combine its manpower in sufficient force to destroy the massive occupying army in the following year. Victory over the Persians secured the 5th century flowering of Greek and, in particular, Athenian culture and institutions that so influenced the subsequent development of western civilisation.

This book draws extensively on the findings of archaeological, technological and naval research, as well as on the historical sources to vividly recreate one of the most important naval campaigns in world history.

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  1. Part of series
    Campaign
  2. Print length
    96 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Osprey Publishing
  5. Publication date
    June 22, 2010
  6. Dimensions
    7.25 x 0.65 x 9.75 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    1846036844
  8. ISBN-13
    978-1846036842
  9. See all details
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From the Publisher

military history;campaign;Osprey

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Full colour battlescenes

Beautifully illustrated battlescenes are included to bring the narrative of the conflict to life.

Three-dimensional ‘bird’s-eye-views'

Each three-dimensional 'bird's-eye view' is meticulously researched to recreate the actual battlefield at that point in history with accurate contour detail, scaling, landscaping and terrain features.

Maps

Detailed historical maps frame each battle or campaign, and provide the key historical context.

military history;campaign;Osprey

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

William Shepherd studied classics at Clare College, Cambridge, in the 1960s and then embarked on a career in publishing, which finally brought him to Osprey, retiring from the position of chief executive in 2007. He is author of The Persian War (Cambridge, 1982), translated from Herodotus. He has also written reading books for children and articles in the Osprey Military Journal, of which he was joint editor, and makes regular contributions to the Osprey blog. He lives in the Cherwell Valley, north of Oxford.

Peter Dennis was inspired by contemporary magazines such as Look and Learn, leading him to study Illustration at Liverpool Art College. Peter has since contributed to hundreds of books, predominantly on historical subjects, including many Osprey titles. A keen wargamer and modelmaker, he is based in Nottinghamshire, UK.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Osprey Publishing; Illustrated edition (June 22, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 96 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1846036844
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1846036842
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.9 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.25 x 0.65 x 9.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 27 ratings

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William Shepherd

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
27 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Cornell Carr
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent study!
Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2014
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A wonderfully researched study of the famous battle. The maps were very clear and made it so easy to follow the action.
One person found this helpful
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Mike Dillemuth
4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Overview of Ancient Naval Warfare
Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2010
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This book gives a great synopsis of the Battle of Salamis. Just as interesting, however, is its coverage of ancient naval warfare. The book is well organized and easy to read. The first half deals with the warship of the day, the Trireme. The second half focuses on the battle itself.

The author, William Shepherd, provides a comprehensive description of both ship design and tactics used by these ancient navies. The book includes a schematic of an ancient Trireme. It also has several photos of the "Olympias," an experimental Trireme with the Hellenic Navy. The author then included information on the weapons and tactics used by these fleets along with a comprehensive Order of Battle.

This book actually covers two battles. First, the author focuses on the Persian invasion and the Battle of Artemisium. This naval battle occurred at the same time as the Battle of Thermopylae. The Greeks fought the Persian fleet to a standstill and then withdrew south. This set the stage for the main battle at Salamis.

The book has several campaign maps and one 3D birds' eye view. These maps are uncluttered and provide the right amount of information. They do a great job of adding clarity to what was a chaotic clash of ships.

As with all Osprey books, there is a comprehensive chronology and the chapter on the opposing commanders is pretty good. The author does a nice job describing the relationship between the Greek commanders Eurybiades and Themistocles.

All in all, this is a well written book. The campaign is clearly laid out for the reader and the author does a great job of describing Trireme warfare. The reader will certainly come away with a good understanding of ancient naval combat.
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Nipper
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2015
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First rate writing and illustrations.
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Steven Peterson
4.0 out of 5 stars Fine account of the battle at Salamis--and what led up to it
Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2010
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Nice addition to the "Campaign" series, yet another of those Osprey series publications that provide a quick and dirty look at the subject. The focus here is the critical naval battle of Salamis, which turned back the Persian forces that had broken through the thin Spartan line at Thermopylae.

The book begins by describing the background to Xerxes' invasion of Greece. Then, the book traces the invasion route, culminating in the sacking of Athens. The Greek forces then turned to their fleet to protect them from the Persian host.

The book then turns to describing the naval battle, in which the Persian fleet was wrecked and Greece saved. The book finishes by noting some of the key leaders on both sides (including the female admiral on Xerxes' side--Artemesia.

Nice brief description of a major battle. . . .
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William Hazlett
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2014
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nice book
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R. Forczyk
4.0 out of 5 stars Connecting the missing dots on Herodotus
Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2010
Salamis 480 BC is another Osprey take on an ancient classic, in this case Herodotus. The epic clash at Thermopylae has already been covered in Campaign 188, so this volume adds in the equally important naval dimension of the Greco-Persian War. If you've already read Herodotus, the main value is the maps and artwork, along with some of the author's insight on how the battle played out. Herodotus did not provide modern, detailed descriptions of events but employed a literary style that leaves many military issues vague. The author seeks to connect these missing dots with the best available logic. If you haven't read Herodotus, this volume is either a useful introduction (now go and read Herodotus) or your one-stop-shopping event for knowledge about this campaign. Most of the volume really focuses on the nature of the Greek trireme and is actually similar to a New Vanguard series approach. The author has numerous photos of the modern Greek reconstructed trireme, the Olympias, which is more interesting than the photos of bottle stoppers and pottery fragments that grace the pages of many Ancient era titles. Overall, this an erudite, well-thought out narrative on the campaign, although the style is plodding at times and the actual battle of Salamis is covered in just six pages of text. I found that when I put this volume down that it became harder to pick up each time - it's a very attractive volume, just not that engaging. The author is writing on a scholarly level but that is the audience that has likely already read Herodotus, while general audiences are likely to fret that they have to wade through half a volume discussing the intricacies of Greek boat construction before any action occurs.

The volume begins with an introduction that explains how the revolt of the Ionian Greeks against the Persians, led to war between the major Greek states (led by Athens, Sparta and Corinth) against the expanding Persian Empire. A short section then discusses opposing commanders, which mainly serves as an introduction for the Greek Themistocles. The 15-page opposing forces section discusses the Greek and Persian fleets, including tactics, in some detail. One thing that would have been useful here is a color plate depicting the various ramming maneuvers. Opposing plans are covered in a brief 4-page section. An intermediary section, `the Campaign to Salamis,' discussing the Persian invasion, the indecisive naval battle at Artesium (and how it related to the simultaneous Battle of Thermopylae) and the Persian capture of Athens.

The actual battle of Salamis is covered in the final one-third of the volume. On the one hand, there is not exactly a lot new here on the battle but on the other hand, the author makes a valiant effort to connect the dots on events that Herodotus left vague. In essence, this is an effort to transform an ancient literary account of the battle into a coherent narrative that explains the actual course of the battle. It is a very good effort, although the human drama element - the fact that Greece was fighting for survival - seems covered up with wooden beams at times. The volume has three impressive battle scenes by Peter Dennis, along with one 3-D BEV map (less than the normal two or three) and five 2-D maps. I was surprised that there was no mention of modern underwater archaeological surveys of the Salamis battlefield, which have been going on for several decades.
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Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 16, 2017
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Great book on the important of the Battle of Salamis.Ideal if you are a newcomer to the Greco-Persian wars.
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JPS
4.0 out of 5 stars Good summary, but a few surprising glitches
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 23, 2012
Verified Purchase
This is a good, and, at times, an excellent introduction that delivers much more than just the battle of Salamis "the naval campaign that saved Greece". It is, in fact, more of a summary of the "Greco-Persian Wars" up to and including Salamis, to paraphrase the title of Peter Green's book, which started out as "the Year of Salamis" when it was first published in 1971. Surprisingly, this major book on the subject is not even referenced in the bibliography, although Tom Holland's bestseller ("Persian Fire"), which happens to be largely a rework of Peter Green's book, is listed, alongside Barry Strauss' must more serious book on Salamis.

The first part, called "Origins of the Campaign", describes in fact the origins of the war, going back to the conquest of Lydia and the Ionian Greeks by Cyrus in 546 BC. This turns out to be one of the book's strengths because it allows the author to provide a lot of context. It also allows him to paint a much more realistic portrait of the Persians and their Empire and present what has, since the early 1990s, become the modern view. Contrary to all of the propaganda developed by the Greeks and relayed by at least some historians in the past, the Persian Empire was the superpower of the time. It was certainly not decadent, neither were the Persians and their subjects effeminate and soft. Moreover, as the book also explains very well despite its limited size, the Ionian Greeks, supposedly groaning under the Persian oppression and presented as "slaves" by Herodotus, seem to have been rather prosperous before their revolt. On the other hand, and following in the footsteps of Peter Green who was one of the first to emphasize this point some 40 years ago, the book also makes clear that about 30 cities in Greece out of at least several hundred actually fought against the invaders. The Macedonians, the Thessalians and the Thebans (and many others) sided with the invaders whereas the Argives remained "neutral" and were ready to join the Persians if only because Sparta was on the other side. So William Shepherd is perfectly correct to emphasize that Greek cities, despite their shared identity, spent more times warring against each other, and may even have preferred siding with third parties against their hated neighbour city.

One point which he did not perhaps emphasize is that there were political rivalries and power plays between various factions, all of which were headed by aristocrats, even the ones that were backed by the less wealthy citizens. This included both Athens and Sparta and, in both cases, some of the "losers" could and did seek refuge within the Persian Empire. Although he does not insist on this particular point (the cities were divided within and between themselves), the author does, however, a good job in showing that Marathon was, from the Persians viewpoint, a minor setback and Thermopylae a costly victory, but a victory all the same. The parallel drawn with more recent events when mentioning the storming of the Athens' acropolis ("Mission accomplished") is somewhat superficial. While Xerxes certainly did send a triumphant despatch back to Susa announcing that Athens was duly chastised and punished, he knew perfectly well that this was not "game over" on sea or on land. As the author clearly shows, the Persian King of Kings was well aware of the need to defeat the allied fleet before assaulting the Isthmus and refused a plan suggesting to bypass it. Contrary to what the author claims (page 41) in a rather sweeping statement, the decision not to pursue this course was not "a fatal failure of vision and nerve". It was tactically and strategically a sound and prudent decision, especially after Artemission. The chronology also contains a little typo. As the text makes clear twice throughout the book, Xerxes was assassinated in 465 BC, the year after the defeat of the Eurymedon and not, as indicated by mistake in the chronology, in 455 BC.

The initial size of the Persian fleet, its losses during the two-year campaign and its size at Salamis have been discussed by historians for decades. In this book, the author has chosen to dismiss the huge losses mentioned by Herodotus because of bad weather (some 600 triremes) as a wild exaggeration and reduce by about the third the initial number of 1207 that is mentioned, considering that this is more probably the grand total for the whole of the Persian Empire. While the first point is very probably correct - it is somewhat rare for a fleet to be entirely destroyed in a storm and even rarer for this to happen twice in a few months - the second point is no more than a guess. It also does not account for the two bridges across the Hellespont that the Persians built. If these were pontoon bridges made with ships tied together, several hundred ships would have been needed for each of them.
The description of the battle itself is great.

The plates, maps and diagrams are very helpful in understanding what happened, especially since both Herodotus and Aeschyle, our two main sources and the ones closest to the event, tend to describe the battle from the viewpoint of individual participants rather than providing us with the "full picture". The explanation regarding to role of the Corinthians and what was probably a feigned flight is particularly interesting, since they came back to attack the Phoenician squadron either in the flank or in the rear. A minor omission is the absence of any discussion of two episodes, one before and one at the end at the battle, that Herodotus reports at length and uses to emphasize the role of Aristides, one of the leaders of the aristocratic and conservative faction and the faction from which Herodotus seems to have obtained most of his (somewhat slanted and anti-Themistocles) information.

Then there are a couple of technical points which are somewhat questionable. The author mentions at one point when describing a "Greek" trireme, based on the reconstruction of the Olympias, that he is essentially describing an Athenian trireme as it was around the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, some fifty years later. He mentions that both the ships and their hoplite complement may have been somewhat different at the time of Salamis, with more than what became the standard complement of 10 hoplites and 4 archers in the heydays of the Athenian navy. Despite this, when describing the battle itself further on in the book, he essentially assumes that this was the complement on all the Greek ships at Salamis, which is rather implausible. The battle was to be fought in the narrow straits where swift manoeuvring was less important than boarding. The Persians had at least 40 fighting men per ship and the Allies had several thousand hoplites in addition to the complement of 10. It is somewhat difficult to believe that they would have chosen to be deliberately outnumbered three to one when fighting each boarding action when they had the means to at least minimize this disadvantage.

A related point is the author's statement, backed by the plates that the hoplites on board were unarmoured in order to avoid hindering their movements and drowning if they fell overboard. This is also implausible. While they would be unlikely to wear metal armour for the reasons mentioned above, they would still very much need some protection against the superior archery of the Persians. They could therefore very well have worn leather cuirasses which would have offered the most logical compromise between these various constraints.

Because of the glitches, this book is worth four stars, but not five. It is, however, an excellent introduction to the battle of Salamis and to the Greco-Persian wars, more generally, although it is a pity that the author did not see fit to include Peter Green in his sources, something that would have completed his bibliography.
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Eric le rouge
4.0 out of 5 stars ...or the history of the greco-persian war up to Salamis
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 5, 2012
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I was expecting quite a lot from this title and overall was not dissapointed.

The writing style, plates and sketches are all of a very high quality.

My only concern was that at least two third of the book is actually not dealing directly with the battle itself. The author probably makes a point by wanting to setup the context which is important to understand battles such as Salamis but he does probably too much.
There is a right balance between contextual information and information on the battle or campaign itself but I am not sure if the author get it right in this title.
On the other hand, the long paragraphs dealing with sea warfare are very well written and indispensable to understand the battle of Salamis.

The problem with giving to much contextual information, is that information get repeated in all the Ospreys treating the same overall subject: e.g. Platea, Thermopylae, etc.

As a main "minus", I would say that the author should have focused more on the battle itself.

There is already a very good review posted about this title and I tend to agree on the non-plausibility of the fighting force on each ships that is depicted in the book.
Indeed, the ships are very narrow as suggested by one of the pictures (although this shows the Olympia, a later version of a trireme and thus maybe not contemporary of the Greco-persian war), however, 10+4 men on the greek side on each ship seems very light to fight back the 40 persians fighting crew.

Being no military expert or historian, I was always told at school that the Persians had actually quinquereme (x5 ore) and not trireme and had large defensive structures (towers?) on the deck. I was explained that this was the main reason why the Persians lost. As far as I remember, I did not come across this in the book.

To summarise, I would recommend this book but bearing in mind that the book offers only a little on the battle itself. A shame as the author has talent for writing and presenting documents.
Finally, as usual for Ospreys, the coloured plate are of a very good quality.
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Brett1815
3.0 out of 5 stars A decent read, but no where enough detail about ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 30, 2017
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A decent read, but no where enough detail about the actual battle in my view, but that may well be because it took place so long ago.
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Will Staffs
3.0 out of 5 stars Lots of pictures
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 25, 2013
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The battle of Salamis is a fascinating subject for many reasons and Salamis 480 BC is an informative entry level book on the subject. However, it contained a little too many pictures and to little content for my liking.

Great as an entry level read.
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