"I too was numbered among them on the day when the Amazons came, women the equal of men."
In or around 1250 BC, so Plutarch tells us, Theseus, king of Athens and slayer of the Minotaur, set sail on a journey that brought him to the land of tal Kyrte, the "Free People", a nation of fiercely proud and passionate warrior women whom the Greeks called "Amazons".
Bound to each other as lovers as well as fighters and owing allegiance to no man, the Amazons distrusted the Greeks with their boastful talk of cities and civilisation. And when their illustrious war queen Antiope fell in love with Theseus and fled to Athens with him, they were outraged.
Raising a vast army, the Amazons marched on Athens. History tells us they could not win, but for a brief and glorious moment the Amazons held the Attic world in thrall before vanishing into the immortal realms of myth and legend.
Echoing to the sound of brutal battles fought hand-to-hand and peopled with wonderfully realised flesh and blood characters, here is Steven Pressfield's most thrillingly imagined novel yet. In this moving tale of love and war, honour and revenge, he brings the ancient world to brilliant life to recount the extraordinary, near-forgotten story of the last of the Amazons . . .
