THE PERSIAN WARS is unquestionably one of the world?s greatest works of literature. But what, precisely, is it? The Persian Wars is part history, part geography, part travelogue, part anthropology...and completely entertaining. It possesses a charm that is legendary. With Herodotus we experience the impact of that great intellectual, moral, and ethical force that set the Greeks apart from the rest of the Ancient World. Herodotus has succeeded for all time in brilliantly expressing the conflict between the ideal of the free man and that of the despot ? a magnificent epic of human triumph over the forces of tyranny, of the struggle over two diametrically opposed concepts of government...between which man must still choose today.