Not the sausages or the battle in the Persian War, but a sea battle off Cyprus in the Successor Wars. Harry Turtledove originally published this under his H.N. Turtletaub pen name as part of a “Hellenic Traders” series; they’re now being republished the Harry Turtledove name. These are not alternate history or fantasy like the rest of Turtledove’s oeuvre, but straightforward historical fiction following the adventures of two cousins, Menedemos and Sostratos, who sail out of Rhodes on the trading vessel Aphrodite. Unfortunately I read the last novel first, because that’s how they showed up in the bookstore.

Turtledove’s history is meticulous and you really get a sense of the “look and feel” of Hellenistic times. Turtledove has always been notorious for bad sex scenes, but the ones in Salamis are a little different. Here we’re reminded that for most of history women were – well, I can’t write it. Turtledove’s protagonist Menedemos, otherwise portrayed as a decent chap, has repeated casual encounters with slave girls. He’s a little uneasy about it, mostly because the girls don’t seem to get much pleasure out of it; he always gives them a tip, and they acknowledge that at least he doesn’t beat them up like another master might, but it’s still clear that the encounter is a tedious duty that’s part of their station in life.

I don’t want to give the impression that these episodes are a major part of the novel; there’s plenty about the political situation at the beginning of the Successor Wars and the dynamics of how a trading voyage worked. But the reminder that ancient history was not a politically correct romance novel was telling for me.

For more on the time period, see Antigonas the One-eyed. ( )