Download or read book The Gates of Athens written by Conn Iggulden and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-01-05 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evoking two of the most famous battles of the Ancient World—the Battle of Marathon and the Last Stand at Thermopylae—The Gates of Athens is a bravura piece of storytelling by a well acclaimed master of the historical adventure novel. In the new epic historical novel by New York Times bestselling author Conn Iggulden, in ancient Greece an army of slaves gathers on the plains of Marathon . . . Under Darius the Great, King of Kings, the mighty Persian army—swollen by 10,000 warriors known as The Immortals—have come to subjugate the Greeks. In their path, vastly outnumbered, stands an army of freeborn Athenians. Among them is a clever, fearsome, and cunning soldier-statesman, Xanthippus. Against all odds, the Athenians emerge victorious. Yet people soon forget that freedom is bought with blood. Ten years later, Xanthippus watches helplessly as Athens succumbs to the bitter politics of factionalism. Traitors and exiles abound. Trust is at a low ebb when the Persians cross the Hellespont in ever greater numbers in their second attempt to raze Athens to the ground. Facing overwhelming forces by land and sea, the Athenians call on their Spartan allies for assistance—to delay the Persians at the treacherous pass of Thermopylae . . .
Download or read book The Fall of the Athenian Empire written by Donald Kagan and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-18 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The fourth volume in Kagan's history of ancient Athens, which has been called one of the major achievements of modern historical scholarship, begins with the ill-fated Sicilian expedition of 413 B.C. and ends with the surrender of Athens to Sparta in 404 B.C. Richly documented, precise in detail, it is also extremely well-written, linking it to a tradition of historical narrative that has become rare in our time." ― Virginia Quarterly Review In the fourth and final volume of his magisterial history of the Peloponnesian War, Donald Kagan examines the period from the destruction of Athens' Sicilian expedition in September of 413 B.C. to the Athenian surrender to Sparta in the spring of 404 B.C. Through his study of this last decade of the war, Kagan evaluates the performance of the Athenian democracy as it faced its most serious challenge. At the same time, Kagan assesses Thucydides' interpretation of the reasons for Athens’ defeat and the destruction of the Athenian Empire.
Download or read book Xenophon the Athenian written by William Edward Higgins and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1977-01-01 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a fresh study of the fourth century B.C. Greek adventurer, writer, and student of Socrates, Xenophon. An innovating author of many guises, an important source for the history of his time, a wit and a philosopher, he no longer enjoys the reputation he once did. Suggesting that such a radical de-valuation is more a reflection on nineteenth- and twentieth-century attitudes and scholarship than on the worth of Xenophon, the author in this book attempts to reassert Xenophon's rightful position by offering a close, literary-historical reading of all of Xenophon's writings and by focusing in this process on the alluring reticence and ironic subtlety many have often failed to appreciate before offering what turn out to be their too hasty criticisms. It is hoped that this study will help to bring about the realization that Xenophon, when properly read and read without preconceptions, may yet prove an invaluable guide to the development of Greek thought in general and the world of fourth-century Greece in particular. Xenophon emerges as one of the last great representatives of that civilization which reached its height in Athens, and it is in this context that he is best understood, not, as so often previously, against the Peloponnesian and especially Spartan background where he had friends and where he spent a long exile.
Download or read book The Rise of Athens written by Anthony Everitt and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 585 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A magisterial account of how a tiny city-state in ancient Greece became history’s most influential civilization, from the bestselling author of acclaimed biographies of Cicero, Augustus, and Hadrian Filled with tales of adventure and astounding reversals of fortune, The Rise of Athens celebrates the city-state that transformed the world—from the democratic revolution that marked its beginning, through the city’s political and cultural golden age, to its decline into the ancient equivalent of a modern-day university town. Anthony Everitt constructs his history with unforgettable portraits of the talented, tricky, ambitious, and unscrupulous Athenians who fueled the city’s rise: Themistocles, the brilliant naval strategist who led the Greeks to a decisive victory over their Persian enemies; Pericles, arguably the greatest Athenian statesman of them all; and the wily Alcibiades, who changed his political allegiance several times during the course of the Peloponnesian War—and died in a hail of assassins’ arrows. Here also are riveting you-are-there accounts of the milestone battles that defined the Hellenic world: Thermopylae, Marathon, and Salamis among them. An unparalleled storyteller, Everitt combines erudite, thoughtful historical analysis with stirring narrative set pieces that capture the colorful, dramatic, and exciting world of ancient Greece. Although the history of Athens is less well known than that of other world empires, the city-state’s allure would inspire Alexander the Great, the Romans, and even America’s own Founding Fathers. It’s fair to say that the Athenians made possible the world in which we live today. In this peerless new work, Anthony Everitt breathes vivid life into this most ancient story. Praise for The Rise of Athens “[An] invaluable history of a foundational civilization . . . combining impressive scholarship with involving narration.”—Booklist “Compelling . . . a comprehensive and entertaining account of one of the most transformative societies in Western history . . . Everitt recounts the high points of Greek history with flair and aplomb.”—Shelf Awareness “Highly readable . . . Everitt keeps the action moving.”—Kirkus Reviews Praise for Anthony Everitt’s The Rise of Rome “Rome’s history abounds with remarkable figures. . . . Everitt writes for the informed and the uninformed general reader alike, in a brisk, conversational style, with a modern attitude of skepticism and realism.”—The Dallas Morning News “[A] lively and readable account . . . Roman history has an uncanny ability to resonate with contemporary events.”—Maclean’s “Elegant, swift and faultless as an introduction to his subject.”—The Spectator “An engrossing history of a relentlessly pugnacious city’s 500-year rise to empire.”—Kirkus Reviews “Fascinating history and a great read.”—Chicago Sun-Times
Download or read book The Last Greek written by Christian Cameron and published by Orion. This book was released on 2020-04-16 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few writers are better at conjuring up a vision of Ancient Greece' THE TIMES * * * * * * * 210BCE. The most powerful empires in the world brawl over the spoils of a declawed Greece. Philopoemen has a vision to end the chaos and anarchy that consumes his homeland - to stop the endless wars and preserve the world he loves. He must resist the urge of the oligarchs to surrender to their oppressors and raise an army to defend his countrymen from the all-conquering powers of Sparta, Macedon and Rome. It is the last roll of the dice for the Achean League. The moment Philopoemen has been training for his whole life. The new Achilles is poised to restore the glory of the former empire. To herald a new era. To become the last great hero of Greece. * * * * * * * Praise for Christian Cameron: 'One of the finest writers of historical fiction in the world' BEN KANE 'The master of historical fiction' SUNDAY TIMES 'A storyteller at the height of his powers' HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY
Download or read book Phoenix written by David Stuttard and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vivid, novelistic history of the rise of Athens from relative obscurity to the edge of its golden age, told through the lives of Miltiades and Cimon, the father and son whose defiance of Persia vaulted Athens to a leading place in the Greek world. When we think of ancient Greece we think first of Athens: its power, prestige, and revolutionary impact on art, philosophy, and politics. But on the verge of the fifth century BCE, only fifty years before its zenith, Athens was just another Greek city-state in the shadow of Sparta. It would take a catastrophe, the Persian invasions, to push Athens to the fore. In Phoenix, David Stuttard traces Athens’s rise through the lives of two men who spearheaded resistance to Persia: Miltiades, hero of the Battle of Marathon, and his son Cimon, Athens’s dominant leader before Pericles. Miltiades’s career was checkered. An Athenian provincial overlord forced into Persian vassalage, he joined a rebellion against the Persians then fled Great King Darius’s retaliation. Miltiades would later die in prison. But before that, he led Athens to victory over the invading Persians at Marathon. Cimon entered history when the Persians returned; he responded by encouraging a tactical evacuation of Athens as a prelude to decisive victory at sea. Over the next decades, while Greek city-states squabbled, Athens revitalized under Cimon’s inspired leadership. The city vaulted to the head of a powerful empire and the threshold of a golden age. Cimon proved not only an able strategist and administrator but also a peacemaker, whose policies stabilized Athens’s relationship with Sparta. The period preceding Athens’s golden age is rarely described in detail. Stuttard tells the tale with narrative power and historical acumen, recreating vividly the turbulent world of the Eastern Mediterranean in one of its most decisive periods.
Download or read book Timon of Athens written by William Shakespeare and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 1888 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Timon of Athens" has struck many readers as rough and unpolished, perhaps even unfinished, though to others it has appeared as Shakespeare's most profound tragic allegory. The editors provide detailed annotation of the text and explore the wide range of critical and theatrical interpretations that the play has engendered. Tracing both its satirical and tragic strains, their introduction presents a perspective on the play's meanings that combines careful elucidation of historical context with analysis of its relevance to modern-day society. An extensive and well-illustrated account of the play's production history generates a rich sense of how the play can speak to different historical moments in specific and rewarding ways.
Download or read book Demosthenes of Athens and the Fall of Classical Greece written by Ian Worthington and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first ever biography of Demosthenes written in English for a popular audience, set against the rich backdrop of late classical Greece and Macedonia
Download or read book THE LAST OF THE WINE written by MARY RENAULT and published by . This book was released on 1956 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nemesis written by David Stuttard and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-16 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alcibiades was one of the most dazzling figures of the Golden Age of Athens. A ward of Pericles and a friend of Socrates, he was spectacularly rich, bewitchingly handsome and charismatic, a skilled general, and a ruthless politician. He was also a serial traitor, infamous for his dizzying changes of loyalty in the Peloponnesian War. Nemesis tells the story of this extraordinary life and the turbulent world that Alcibiades set out to conquer. David Stuttard recreates ancient Athens at the height of its glory as he follows Alcibiades from childhood to political power. Outraged by Alcibiades’ celebrity lifestyle, his enemies sought every chance to undermine him. Eventually, facing a capital charge of impiety, Alcibiades escaped to the enemy, Sparta. There he traded military intelligence for safety until, suspected of seducing a Spartan queen, he was forced to flee again—this time to Greece’s long-term foes, the Persians. Miraculously, though, he engineered a recall to Athens as Supreme Commander, but—suffering a reversal—he took flight to Thrace, where he lived as a warlord. At last in Anatolia, tracked by his enemies, he died naked and alone in a hail of arrows. As he follows Alcibiades’ journeys crisscrossing the Mediterranean from mainland Greece to Syracuse, Sardis, and Byzantium, Stuttard weaves together the threads of Alcibiades’ adventures against a backdrop of cultural splendor and international chaos. Navigating often contradictory evidence, Nemesis provides a coherent and spellbinding account of a life that has gripped historians, storytellers, and artists for more than two thousand years.
Download or read book The School of History written by Mark H. Munn and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 543 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this substantial volume Munn examines Athens during the period between 510 and 395 BC, in which period the city rose and fell and the likes of Thucydides, Socrates, Herodotus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes lived.
Download or read book Oedipus at Thebes written by Bernard Knox and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the way in which Sophocles' play "Oedipus Tyrannus" and its hero, Oedipus, King of Thebes, were probably received in their own time and place, and relates this to twentieth-century receptions and interpretations, including those of Sigmund Freud.
Download or read book Last of the Amazons written by Steven Pressfield and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2003-07-01 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Steven Pressfield's The Profession. The author of the international bestsellers Gates of Fire and Tides of War delivers his most gripping and imaginative novel of the ancient world–a stunning epic of love and war that breathes life into the grand myth of the ferocious female warrior culture of the Amazons. Steven Pressfield has gained a passionate worldwide following for his magnificent novels of ancient Greece, Gates of Fire and Tides of War. In Last of the Amazons, Pressfield has surpassed himself, re-creating a vanished world in a brilliant novel that will delight his loyal readers and bring legions more to his singular and powerful restoration of the past. In the time before Homer, the legendary Theseus, King of Athens (an actual historical figure), set sail on a journey that brought him into the land of tal Kyrte, the “free people,” a nation of proud female warriors whom the Greeks called “Amazons.” The Amazons, bound to each other as lovers as well as fighters, distrusted the Greeks, with their boastful talk of “civilization.” So when the great war queen Antiope fell in love with Theseus and fled with the Greeks, the mighty Amazon nation rose up in rage. Last of the Amazons is not merely a masterful tale of war and revenge. Pressfield has created a cast of extraordinarily vivid characters, from the unforgettable Selene, whose surrender to the Greeks does nothing to tame her; to her lover, Damon, an Athenian warrior who grows to cherish the wild Amazon ways; to the narrator, Bones, a young girl from a noble family who was nursed by Selene from birth and secretly taught the Amazon way; to the great Theseus, the tragic king; and to Antiope, the noble queen who betrayed tal Kyrte for the love of Theseus. With astounding immediacy and extraordinary attention to military detail, Pressfield transports readers into the heat and terror of war. Equally impressive is his creation of the Amazon nation, its people, its rituals and myths, its greatness and savagery. Last of the Amazons is thrilling on every page, an epic tale of the clash between wildness and civilization, patriotism and love, man and woman.
Download or read book Callias A Tale of the Fall of Athens written by Alfred John Church and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is the second year of the ninety-third Olympiad and the Theatre at Athens is full, for the great dramatic season is at its height, and to-day there is to be performed a new play by Aristophanes, the special favorite of the Athenian public. It is a brilliant scene, but a keen observer, who happened to see the same gathering some five and twenty years ago, must now notice a certain falling off in its splendor. For these five and twenty years have been years of war, and latterly, years of disaster. Eleven years ago, the City wild with the pride of power and wealth, embarked on the mad scheme of conquering Sicily, and lost the finest fleet and army that it ever possessed. Since then it has been a struggle for life with it, and year by year it has been growing weaker and weaker. This has told sadly on the glories of its great festivals. The furnishing of the stage, indeed, is as perfect as ever, and the building itself has been pushed on several stages towards completion. However scarce money may be in the public treasury, the theatre must not be starved. But elsewhere there are manifest signs of falling off. The strangers’ gallery is almost empty. All the Greek world from Massilia in Gaul to Cyrene among the sands of Africa used to throng it in happier days. Now more than half that world is hostile, and the rest has little to hope or fear from the dispossessed mistress of the seas. Dionysius of Syracuse, has sent an embassy, and the democracy, which once would have treated with scant courtesy the representatives of a tyrant, is fain to flatter so powerful a prince. There are some Persian Envoys too, for the Persians are still following their old game of playing off one great state against another. A few Greeks from Sinope and from one of the Italian cities, persons of no importance, who would hardly have found a place in the gallery during the palmy times of Athens, make up the company of visitors. Look at the body of the theatre, where the citizens sit, and the spectacle is deplorable indeed. The flower of Athens’ sons has perished, and their successors are puny and degenerate. Examine too the crowd that throngs the benches, and you will see that the slaves, distinguished by their unsleeved tunics, fill up no small portion of space. And boys form an unusually large proportion of the audience. Altogether the theatre is a dispiriting sight to a patriotic Athenian.
Download or read book The Life of Alcibiades written by Jacqueline de Romilly and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This biography of Alcibiades, the charismatic Athenian statesman and general (c. 450–404 BC) who achieved both renown and infamy during the Peloponnesian War, is both an extraordinary adventure story and a cautionary tale that reveals the dangers that political opportunism and demagoguery pose to democracy. As Jacqueline de Romilly brilliantly documents, Alcibiades's life is one of wanderings and vicissitudes, promises and disappointments, brilliant successes and ruinous defeats. Born into a wealthy and powerful family in Athens, Alcibiades was a student of Socrates and disciple of Pericles, and he seemed destined to dominate the political life of his city—and his tumultuous age. Romilly shows, however, that he was too ambitious. Haunted by financial and sexual intrigues and political plots, Alcibiades was exiled from Athens, sentenced to death, recalled to his homeland, only to be exiled again. He defected from Athens to Sparta and from Sparta to Persia and then from Persia back to Athens, buffeted by scandal after scandal, most of them of his own making. A gifted demagogue and, according to his contemporaries, more handsome than the hero Achilles, Alcibiades is also a strikingly modern figure, whose seductive celebrity and dangerous ambition anticipated current crises of leadership.
Download or read book Assassins of Athens written by Jeffrey Siger and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2019-03-01 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover a gripping new mystery series with the extended excerpt of Assassins of Athens When the body of a boy from one of Greece's most prominent families turns up in a dumpster in one of Athens' worst neighborhoods, Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis of the Greek Police's Special Crimes Division is certain there's a message in the murder. But who sent it and why? Andreas' search for answers takes him deep into the sordid, criminal side of Athens nightlife and then to the glittering world of high society, where age-old frictions between old and new money breed jealousy, murder, revenge, revolutionaries, and some very dangerous truths. It is a journey amid ruthless, powerful adversaries that brings Andreas face-to-face with old grudges, new emotions, ancient Athenian practices, and modern political realities once thought unimaginable. Assassins of Athens brings readers deep into a world of crime set against the seductive backdrop of modern-day Greece in Jeffrey Siger's must-read series. "Jeffrey Siger's Assassins of Athens is a teasingly complex and suspenseful thriller....Siger and his protagonist, Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis, are getting sharper and surer with each case."—Thomas Perry, New York Times bestselling author
Download or read book Pericles of Athens written by Vincent Azoulay and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-31 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive biography of the legendary "first citizen of Athens" Pericles has the rare distinction of giving his name to an entire period of history, embodying what has often been taken as the golden age of the ancient Greek world. "Periclean" Athens witnessed tumultuous political and military events, and achievements of the highest order in philosophy, drama, poetry, oratory, and architecture. Pericles of Athens is the first book in decades to reassess the life and legacy of one of the greatest generals, orators, and statesmen of the classical world. In this compelling critical biography, Vincent Azoulay takes a fresh look at both the classical and modern reception of Pericles, recognizing his achievements as well as his failings. From Thucydides and Plutarch to Voltaire and Hegel, ancient and modern authors have questioned Pericles’s relationship with democracy and Athenian society. This is the enigma that Azoulay investigates in this groundbreaking book. Pericles of Athens offers a balanced look at the complex life and afterlife of the legendary "first citizen of Athens."
