The Persian Wars

First published in 1962 as Persia and the Greeks, this history follows the Achaemenid advance into the Aegean world from Cyrus's conquest of Lydia to the Greek counter-attacks that close about 478 BCE. Burn reconstructs Marathon, Thermopylae, Artemisium, Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale from Herodotus and other sources, and he treats Persian administration and Ionian politics as carefully as Athenian and Spartan decisions. The central problem is how a land empire failed to subdue the Greek cities. The book is a military and political narrative of one conflict, not a translation of Herodotus.

Bound in brown cloth, cover image blocked in black. Dark brown slipcase.