Authors: Christian Cameron
Each year, since I was married in 2004, my wife and I have gone to Greece. It is from all these trips – and my oft-quoted brush with Greece and Troy and Smyrna and Ephesus from the back seat of an S-3 Viking in 1990 – that my love, even passion, for Greece, ancient and modern, was born. In this, the fifth book of my ‘Long War’ series, I tackle perhaps the best known battle in the whole of the Persian Wars – indeed, one of the best known battles of the ancient world. What I have written is heavily influenced by my trips to Greece; by days in Piraeus and by many views out the window of an airplane taking off from Athens or landing there. My wife Sarah is always kind enough to let me have the window seat if we’re passing over the Bay of Salamis. My daughter Beatrice is not always so forgiving!
Salamis
is a different book and I am perhaps a humbler man than when I wrote the first books of this series. First and foremost, I have to acknowledge the contribution of my friends and compatriots like Nicolas Cioran, who cheerfully discussed Plataea’s odd status, made kit, and continues to debate issues of leadership and character. My good friend Aurora Simmons, an expert martial artist and a superb craftsperson with almost any media (but a jeweler by profession) has quite possibly had more input on my understanding of Ancient Greece than any other person besides Giannis Kadoglou, whose nearly encyclopedic knowledge of the Ancient Greek world of hoplites and oarsmen continued to support me to the last page, with vase paintings of wedding scenes produced on short notice! My trainer and constant sparring partner John Beck deserves my thanks – both for a vastly improved physique, and for helping give me a sense of what real training for a life of violence might have been like in the ancient world; as does my massage therapist Susan Bessonette, because at age fifty-two, it is not always easy to pretend to be twenty-six in a fight. And while we’re talking about fighting – Chris Duffy, perhaps the best modern martial artist I know, deserves thanks for many sparring bouts whose more exciting bits find their way into these pages, while a number of instructors – Guy Windsor, Sean Hayes, Greg Mele, Jason Smith and Sensei Robert Zimmermann have helped shape my appreciation of the combat techniques, armed and unarmed, that were available in the ancient world.
Among professional historians, I was assisted by Paul McDonnell-Staff and Paul Bardunias, by the entire brother and sisterhood of ‘Roman Army talk’ and the web community there, and by the staff of the Royal Ontario Museum (who possess and cheerfully shared the only surviving helmet attributable to the Battle of Marathon) as well as the staff of the Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig who possess the best preserved ancient aspis and provided me with superb photos to use in recreating it. I also received help from the library staff of the University of Toronto, where, when I’m rich enough, I’m a student, and from Toronto’s superb Metro Reference Library. I must add to that the University of Rochester Library (my alma mater) and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Every novelist needs to live in a city where universal access to JSTOR is free and on his library card. Finally, the staff of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland – just across the street from my mother’s former apartment, conveniently – were cheerful and helpful, even when I came back to look at the same helmet for the sixth time. A helmet which I now own a faithful copy of, thanks to Manning Imperial!
Excellent as professional historians are – and my version of the Persian Wars owes a great deal to many of them, not least Hans Van Wees and Victor Davis Hanson and Josho Brouwers – my greatest praise and thanks have to go to the amateur historians we call reenactors. Giannis Kadoglou of Alexandroupolis has now spent many, many hours with me, tramping about Greece, visiting ruins from the Archaic to as recent as the Great War, from Plataea to Thrace, charming my daughter and my wife while translating everything in sight and being as delighted with the ancient town of Plataea as I was myself. I met him on ‘Roman Army talk’, and this would be a very different book without his passion for the subject and relentless desire to correct my errors, and that of his wife Smaro, whose interest in all these things and whose willingness to wear ancient Greek clothes and debate them in the New Acropolis Museum kept me focused on the details that make for good writing. We are all now fast friends and I suspect my views on much of the Greek world reflect theirs more than any other. Alongside Giannis go my other Greek friends, especially Giorgos Kafetsis and his partner Xsenia, who have theorized over wine, beer and ouzo, paced battlefields and shot bows.
But Giorgos and Xsenia, Giannis and Smaro are hardly alone, and there is – literally – a phalanx of Greek re-enactors who continue to help me. (We are recreating the world around the Battle of Marathon with about 100 re-enactors this year in Marathon – that’s late October 2015, if you want to book tickets.) Here in my part of North America, we have a group called the Plataeans – this is, trust me, not a coincidence – and we work hard on recreating the very time period and city-state so prominent in these books, from weapons, armor, and combat to cooking, crafts, and dance. If the reader feels that these books put flesh and blood on the bare bones of history – in as much as I’ve succeeded in doing that – it is due to the efforts of the men and women who re-enact with me and show me every time we’re together all the things I haven’t thought of – who do their own research, their own kit-building, and their own training. Thanks to all of you, Plataeans. And to all the other Ancient Greek re-enactors who helped me find things, make things, or build things. I’d like to mention (especially) Craig and his partner Cherilyn at Manning Imperial in Australia, and Jeffrey Hildebrandt here in Ontario, who just made me a superb new thorax for Marathon 2015.
Thanks are also due to the people of Lesvos and Athens and Plataea and Marathonas – I can’t name all of you, but I was entertained, informed, and supported constantly in three trips to Greece, and the person who I can name is Aliki Hamosfakidou of Dolphin Hellas Travel for her care, interest, and support through many hundreds of e-mails and some meetings. Alexandros Somoglou of Marathonas deserves special thanks, and if you ever find yourself in Molyvos (Ancient Mythemna) on Lesvos, please visit the Sea Horse Hotel, where Dmitri and Stela run my favorite hotel in the world. Also in Greece I’ve received support and help from professional archaeologists and academics, and I wish particularly to thank Pauline Marneri and her son John Zervas for his translation support.
Bill Massey, my editor at Orion, has done his usual excellent job and it is a better book for his work. Oh, and he found a lot of other errors, too, but let’s not mention them. I have had a few editors. Working with Bill is wonderful. Come on, authors – how many of you get to say that?
My agent, Shelley Power, contributed more directly to this book than to any other – first, as an agent, in all the usual ways, and then later, coming to Greece and taking part in all of the excitement of seeing Lesvos and Athens and taking us to Archaeon Gefsis, a restaurant that attempts to take the customer back to the ancient world. And then helping to plan and run the 2500th Battle of Marathon, and continuing as a re-enactor of Ancient Greece. Thanks for everything, Shelley, and the agenting not the least!
Christine Szego and the staff and management of my local bookstore, Bakka-Phoenix of Toronto also deserve my thanks, as I tend to walk in a spout fifteen minutes’ worth of plot, character, dialogue, or just news – writing can be lonely work, and it is good to have people to talk to. And they throw a great book launch.
It is odd, isn’t it, that authors always save their families for last? Really, it’s the done thing. So I’ll do it, too, even though my wife should get mentioned at every stage – after all, she’s a re-enactor, too, she had useful observations on all kinds of things we both read (Athenian textiles is what really comes to mind, though) and in addition, more than even Ms. Szego, Sarah has to listen to the endless enthusiasms I develop about history while writing (the words ‘Did you know’ probably cause her more horror than anything else you can think of). My daughter, Beatrice, is also a re-enactor, and her ability to portray the life of a real child is amazing. My father, Kenneth Cameron, taught me most of what I know about writing, and continues to provide excellent advice – and to listen to my complaints about the process, which may be the greater service. Oh, and as we enter into a world where authors do their own marketing, my wife, who knows a thing or two, is my constant guide and sounding board there. And she is also a veteran re-enactor and a brilliant researcher and questioner, and the best partner a person could ask for.
Having said all that, it’s hard to say what exactly I can lay claim to, if you like this book. I had a great deal of help, and I appreciate it. Thanks. And when you find misspelled words, sailing directions reversed, and historical errors – why, then you’ll know that I, too, had something to add. Because all the errors are solely mine.
Toronto, March, 2015
Christian Cameron is a writer and military historian. He is a veteran of the United States Navy, where he served as both an aviator and an intelligence officer. He lives in Toronto where he is currently writing his next novel while working on a Masters in Classics.
THE TYRANT SERIES
Tyrant
Tyrant: Storm of Arrows
Tyrant: Funeral Games
Tyrant: King of the Bosporus
Tyrant: Destroyer of Cities
THE KILLER OF MEN SERIES
Killer of Men
Marathon
Poseidon’s Spear
The Great King
TOM SWAN AND THE HEAD OF ST GEORGE
Part One: Castillon
Part Two: Venice
Part Three: Constantinople
Part Four: Rome
Part Five: Rhodes
Part Six: Chios
OTHER NOVELS
Washington and Caesar
God of War
The Ill-Made Knight
The Long Sword
An Orion eBook
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Orion Books
This eBook first published in 2015 by Orion Books
Copyright © Christian Cameron 2015
The moral right of Christian Cameron to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 4091 1419 2
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