The Emptiness of Asia

"This is a vigorous and captivating book with a mighty sting in its tail. Tom Harrison does what many have done before, he reads Aeschylus' 'Persai' alongside Herodotus' 'Histories'. But whereas others have compared texts in the search for what actually happened at the battle of Salamis, he compares them to reveal the commonplaces and assumptions about Persia that shaped not only the writing of the play but the reactions of the audiences. The powerful account of the play's political and ideological force that results overturns a century of modern scholarship, unmasking the projections of their own views that literary critics have wished upon the play and questioning our romantic assertion of the uniqueness of classical Athenian culture". - Robin Osborne