Download or read book The Walls of Sparta written by Charles Lloyd and published by . This book was released on 2020-07 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eros between men fascinates the Spartan king, whose own lover put him on the throne. But the king finds himself tempted by the youths around the throne, from a striking Persian boy to a protégé who wages war nude versus awe-struck Thebans. Perhaps the walls of Sparta are not as high as the ones surrounding the king's heart.
Download or read book Walls written by David Frye and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2019-08-27 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A lively popular history of an oft-overlooked element in the development of human society” (Library Journal)—walls—and a haunting and eye-opening saga that reveals a startling link between what we build and how we live. With esteemed historian David Frye as our raconteur-guide in Walls, which Publishers Weekly praises as “informative, relevant, and thought-provoking,” we journey back to a time before barriers of brick and stone even existed—to an era in which nomadic tribes vied for scarce resources, and each man was bred to a life of struggle. Ultimately, those same men would create edifices of mud, brick, and stone, and with them effectively divide humanity: on one side were those the walls protected; on the other, those the walls kept out. The stars of this narrative are the walls themselves—rising up in places as ancient and exotic as Mesopotamia, Babylon, Greece, China, Rome, Mongolia, Afghanistan, the lower Mississippi, and even Central America. As we journey across time and place, we discover a hidden, thousand-mile-long wall in Asia's steppes; learn of bizarre Spartan rituals; watch Mongol chieftains lead their miles-long hordes; witness the epic siege of Constantinople; chill at the fate of French explorers; marvel at the folly of the Maginot Line; tense at the gathering crisis in Cold War Berlin; gape at Hollywood’s gated royalty; and contemplate the wall mania of our own era. Hailed by Kirkus Reviews as “provocative, well-written, and—with walls rising everywhere on the planet—timely,” Walls gradually reveals the startling ways that barriers have affected our psyches. The questions this book summons are both intriguing and profound: Did walls make civilization possible? And can we live without them? Find out in this masterpiece of historical recovery and preeminent storytelling.
Download or read book Walls of Sparta written by Lloyd Charles (author) and published by . This book was released on 1901 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book On Sparta written by Plutarch and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2005-05-26 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plutarch's vivid and engaging portraits of the Spartans and their customs are a major source of our knowledge about the rise and fall of this remarkable Greek city-state between the sixth and third centuries BC. Through his Lives of Sparta's leaders and his recording of memorable Spartan Sayings he depicts a people who lived frugally and mastered their emotions in all aspects of life, who also disposed of unhealthy babies in a deep chasm, introduced a gruelling regime of military training for boys, and treated their serfs brutally. Rich in anecdote and detail, Plutarch's writing brings to life the personalities and achievements of Sparta with unparalleled flair and humanity.
Download or read book Gates of Fire written by Steven Pressfield and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2007-01-30 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Steven Pressfield brings the battle of Thermopylae to brilliant life.”—Pat Conroy At Thermopylae, a rocky mountain pass in northern Greece, the feared and admired Spartan soldiers stood three hundred strong. Theirs was a suicide mission, to hold the pass against the invading millions of the mighty Persian army. Day after bloody day they withstood the terrible onslaught, buying time for the Greeks to rally their forces. Born into a cult of spiritual courage, physical endurance, and unmatched battle skill, the Spartans would be remembered for the greatest military stand in history—one that would not end until the rocks were awash with blood, leaving only one gravely injured Spartan squire to tell the tale. . . .
Download or read book Daughters of Sparta written by Claire Heywood and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For millennia, men have told the legend of the woman whose face launched a thousand ships—but now it's time to hear her side of the story. Daughters of Sparta is a tale of secrets, love, and tragedy from the women behind mythology's most devastating war, the infamous Helen and her sister Klytemnestra. As princesses of Sparta, Helen and Klytemnestra have known nothing but luxury and plenty. With their high birth and unrivaled beauty, they are the envy of all of Greece. But such privilege comes at a cost. While still only girls, the sisters are separated and married to foreign kings of their father's choosing— Helen remains in Sparta to be betrothed to Menelaos, and Klytemnestra is sent alone to an unfamiliar land to become the wife of the powerful Agamemnon. Yet even as Queens, each is only expected to do two things: birth an heir and embody the meek, demure nature that is expected of women. But when the weight of their husbands' neglect, cruelty, and ambition becomes too heavy to bear, Helen and Klytemnestra must push against the constraints of their society to carve new lives for themselves, and in doing so, make waves that will ripple throughout the next three thousand years. Daughters of Sparta is a vivid and illuminating reimagining of the Siege of Troy, told through the perspectives of two women whose voices have been ignored for far too long.
Download or read book Mothers of Sparta written by Dawn Davies and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Davies' collection of essays soars.... It's a memoir that locates the profound within the ordinary.” —Entertainment Weekly If you’re looking for a typical parenting book, this is not it. This is not a treatise on how to be a mother. This is a book about a young girl who moves to a new town every couple of years; a misfit teenager who finds solace in a local music scene; an adrift twenty-something who drops out of college to pursue her dream of making cheesecake on a stick a successful business franchise (ah, the ideals of youth). Alone in a new city, she summons her inner strength as she holds the hand of a dying stranger. Davies is a woman who finds humor in difficult pregnancies and post-partum depression (after reading “Pie” you might never eat Thanksgiving dessert the same way). She is a divorcee who unexpectedly finds second love. She is a happily married suburban wife who nevertheless makes a mental list of all the men she would have slept with. And she is a parent who finds herself tested in ways she could never imagine. In stories that cut to the quick, Davies explores passion, loss, illness, pain, and joy, told from her singular, gimlet-eyed, hilarious perspective. Mothers of Sparta is not a blow-by-blow of Davies’ life but rather an examination of the exquisite and often painful moments of a life, the moments we look back on and say, That one, that one mattered. Straddling the fence between humor and, well...not humor, Davies has written a book about what it’s like to try to carve a place for oneself in the world, no matter how unyielding the rock can be.
Download or read book Sparta s Second Attic War written by Paul Anthony Rahe and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a continuation of his multivolume series on ancient Sparta, Paul Rahe narrates the second stage in the six-decades-long, epic struggle between Sparta and Athens that first erupted some seventeen years after their joint victory in the Persian Wars. Rahe explores how and why open warfare between these two erstwhile allies broke out a second time, after they had negotiated an extended truce. He traces the course of the war that then took place, he examines and assesses the strategy each community pursued and the tactics adopted, and he explains how and why mutual exhaustion forced on these two powers yet another truce doomed to fail. At stake for each of the two peoples caught up in this enduring strategic rivalry, as Rahe shows, was nothing less than the survival of its political regime and of the peculiar way of life to which that regime gave rise.
Download or read book The Walls of Sparta written by Jerry Autieri and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2022-05-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The walls of Sparta loom over the heads of Centurion Marcus Varro and his companions, Curio and Falco. War once again rises in in the wake of Macedonia's defeat, and Rome demands a swift and decisive victory. Pulled from the infantry line for a special assignment, Varro and his companions dare to infiltrate Sparta. The blood-thirsty King Nabis rules through fear and murder. Spartans who would be free of his tyranny await them in the shadows of Sparta's alleys, ready to launch a revolt with Rome's aid. Yet disasters plague the three Roman infiltrators at the walls of the city. Chaos and torment hound them. Varro, Falco, and Curio are caught in a desperate bid to survive and still fulfill their mission. But their enemies are more resourceful -- and ruthless -- than ever expected. Enjoy another high-action, hard-fighting novel of ancient Rome from Jerry Autieri. Download your copy today!
Download or read book A War Like No Other written by Victor Davis Hanson and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2006-09-12 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of our most provocative military historians, Victor Davis Hanson has given us painstakingly researched and pathbreaking accounts of wars ranging from classical antiquity to the twenty-first century. Now he juxtaposes an ancient conflict with our most urgent modern concerns to create his most engrossing work to date, A War Like No Other. Over the course of a generation, the Hellenic city-states of Athens and Sparta fought a bloody conflict that resulted in the collapse of Athens and the end of its golden age. Thucydides wrote the standard history of the Peloponnesian War, which has given readers throughout the ages a vivid and authoritative narrative. But Hanson offers readers something new: a complete chronological account that reflects the political background of the time, the strategic thinking of the combatants, the misery of battle in multifaceted theaters, and important insight into how these events echo in the present. Hanson compellingly portrays the ways Athens and Sparta fought on land and sea, in city and countryside, and details their employment of the full scope of conventional and nonconventional tactics, from sieges to targeted assassinations, torture, and terrorism. He also assesses the crucial roles played by warriors such as Pericles and Lysander, artists, among them Aristophanes, and thinkers including Sophocles and Plato. Hanson’s perceptive analysis of events and personalities raises many thought-provoking questions: Were Athens and Sparta like America and Russia, two superpowers battling to the death? Is the Peloponnesian War echoed in the endless, frustrating conflicts of Vietnam, Northern Ireland, and the current Middle East? Or was it more like America’s own Civil War, a brutal rift that rent the fabric of a glorious society, or even this century’s “red state—blue state” schism between liberals and conservatives, a cultural war that manifestly controls military policies? Hanson daringly brings the facts to life and unearths the often surprising ways in which the past informs the present. Brilliantly researched, dynamically written, A War Like No Other is like no other history of this important war.
Download or read book Greek Warfare beyond the Polis written by David A. Blome and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-15 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Greek Warfare beyond the Polis assesses the nature and broader significance of warfare in the mountains of classical Greece. Based on detailed reconstructions of four unconventional military encounters, David A. Blome argues that the upland Greeks of the classical mainland developed defensive strategies to guard against external aggression. These strategies enabled wide-scale, sophisticated actions in response to invasions, but they did not require the direction of a central, federal government. Blome brings these strategies to the forefront by driving ancient Greek military history and ancient Greek scholarship "beyond the polis" into dialogue with each other. As he contends, beyond-the-polis scholarship has done much to expand and refine our understanding of the ancient Greek world, but it has overemphasized the importance of political institutions in emergent federal states and has yet to treat warfare involving upland Greeks systematically or in depth. In contrast, Greek Warfare beyond the Polis scrutinizes the sociopolitical roots of warfare from beyond the polis, which are often neglected in military histories of the Greek city-state. By focusing on the significance of warfare vis-à-vis the sociopolitical development of upland polities, Blome shows that although the more powerful states of the classical Greek world were dismissive or ignorant of the military capabilities of upland Greeks, the reverse was not the case. The Phocians, Aetolians, Acarnanians, and Arcadians in circa 490–362 BCE were well aware of the arrogant attitudes of their aggressive neighbors, and as highly efficient political entities, they exploited these attitudes to great effect.
Download or read book Inside the Walls of Troy written by Clemence McLaren and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2004-09 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The events surrounding the famous battle between the Greeks and the Trojans are told from the points of view of two women, the beautiful Helen and the prophetic Cassandra.
Download or read book Spartans at the Gates written by Noble Smith and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-06-24 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Peloponnesian War has begun. An army of merciless Spartan invaders have arrived at the gates of Plataea, bent on obliterating the independent city-state and its inhabitants. Plataea's oldest allies, the Athenians, are spread too thin in their own campaigns to send help. Cut off and alone, the Plataeans have dug in behind their high walls for the coming attack, while the tyrannical Spartans prepare to lay siege. On a rugged mountain road, a young Plataean warrior named Nikias rides to Athens on an urgent quest. He carries with him a bag of ill-gotten gold, hoping to raise an army of mercenaries to help defend his citadel from the Spartan assault. But in the sprawling stronghold of Athens, Nikias encounters perils that prove to be more dangerous than those he has faced on the battlefield. Noble Smith's Spartans at the Gates transports us to the dawn of one of history's most famous wars--a fight that would tear apart the great powers of ancient Greece.
Download or read book The Spartans written by Paul Cartledge and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2003-05-26 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Remarkable . . . [The author’s] crystalline prose, his vivacious storytelling and his lucid historical insights combine here to provide a first-rate history.” —Publishers Weekly Sparta has often been described as the original Utopia—a remarkably evolved society whose warrior heroes were forbidden any other trade, profession, or business. As a people, the Spartans were the living exemplars of such core values as duty, discipline, the nobility of arms in a cause worth dying for, sacrificing the individual for the greater good of the community (illustrated by their role in the battle of Thermopylae), and the triumph over seemingly insuperable obstacles—qualities often believed today to signify the ultimate heroism. In this book, distinguished scholar and historian Paul Cartledge, long considered the leading international authority on ancient Sparta, traces the evolution of Spartan society—the culture and the people as well as the tremendous influence they had on their world and even ours. He details the lives of such illustrious and myth-making figures as Lycurgus, King Leonidas, Helen of Troy (and Sparta), and Lysander, and explains how the Spartans, while placing a high value on masculine ideals, nevertheless allowed women an unusually dominant and powerful role—unlike Athenian culture, with which the Spartans are so often compared. In resurrecting this culture and society, Cartledge delves into ancient texts and archeological sources and includes illustrations depicting original Spartan artifacts and drawings, as well as examples of representational paintings from the Renaissance onward—including J.L. David’s famously brooding Leonidas. “A pleasure for anyone interested in the ancient world.” —Kirkus Reviews “[An] engaging narrative . . . In his panorama of the real Sparta, Cartledge cloaks his erudition with an ease and enthusiasm that will excite readers from page one.” —Booklist “Our greatest living expert on Sparta.” —Tom Holland, prize-winning author of Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic
Download or read book Sparta the House of Agiad written by Iain Thompson and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-21 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 6th century BC, Greece has suffered generations of corruption, slavery and war. One city has adapted to this way of life, the city without walls, Sparta. King of Sparta, Anaxandridas II of the Agiad dynasty has suffered long term health. He silently struggles to battle the imminent threat of an Athenian invasion, despite a truce. The King is fully aware there is no room for error or weakness. However, he is unaware that the real threat is closer to home, in the house of Agiad. His children, Dorieus, Cleomenes and twins Leonidas and Cleombrotus all have their own ambitions and hidden agendas. When relationships and loyalties become strained, their spartan values of unity and brotherhood are tested. With royal bloodlines questioned, the reputation of Sparta is in tatters. To regain control, corruption, deceit and murder soon sweep through the dynasty. With the dynasty fractured, who can be trusted in the house of Agiad and who will be chosen to put Sparta back on top? This is a medium length novel. Specifically aimed at young adults +, it contains strong language and adult reference.
Download or read book Greek City Walls of the Archaic Period 900 480 BC written by Rune Frederiksen and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-04-07 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fully illustrated study, Rune Frederiksen assembles all sources for Archaic city walls in the ancient Greek world, and argues that widespread fortification of settlements and towns, usually considered to date from the Classical period, in fact took place much earlier.
Download or read book The Sacred Band written by James Romm and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thrilling look into the last decades of ancient Greek freedom leading up to Alexander the Great's destruction of Thebes--and the saga of the greatest military corps of the age, the Theban Sacred Band.
