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Title: A Victor of Salamis

Author: William Stearns Davis

Release Date: December 22, 2008 [Ebook #27587]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A VICTOR OF SALAMIS***

A VICTOR OF SALAMIS

The MM Co.

A VICTOR OF SALAMIS

_A TALE OF THE DAYS OF XERXES, LEONIDAS AND THEMISTOCLES_

BY

WILLIAM STEARNS DAVIS

AUTHOR OF "A FRIEND OF CAESAR," "GOD WILLS IT,"
"BELSHAZZAR," ETC.

"... On the AEgean shore a city stands,
Built nobly, pure the air and light the soil,
Athens, the eye of Greece."

*New York*
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1907
_All rights reserved_

COPYRIGHT, 1907,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

-------

Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1907.

*Norwood Press*
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The invasion of Greece by Xerxes, with its battles of Thermopylae, Salamis,
and Plataea, forms one of the most dramatic events in history. Had Athens
and Sparta succumbed to this attack of Oriental superstition and
despotism, the Parthenon, the Attic Theatre, the Dialogues of Plato, would
have been almost as impossible as if Phidias, Sophocles, and the
philosophers had never lived. Because this contest and its heroes--Leonidas
and Themistocles--cast their abiding shadows across our world of to-day, I
have attempted this piece of historical fiction.

Many of the scenes were conceived on the fields of action themselves
during a recent visit to Greece, and I have tried to give some glimpse of
the natural beauty of "The Land of the Hellene,"--a beauty tha