An Epic Novel of Alcibiades and the Peloponnesian War.
One man . . . Two armies . . . The fate of the ancient world in the balance . . .
His name was Alcibiades. Kinsman of Pericles, protege of Socrates and immortalised by Plutarch, Plato and Thucydides, he was an audacious soldier and charismatic leader without peer. Seemingly favoured by the gods, he became the pivotal figure in the devastating twenty-seven-year confrontation between Athens and Sparta that would bring Greece to its knees in the last quarter of the fifth century BC, the Peloponnesian War.
As a battlefield commander, Alcibiades was never defeated, but his popularity - and his aspirations - fuelled the resentment of his political rivals in Athens who secured his death warrant on a trumped-up charge of treason. Escaping to Sparta, he proved instrumental in guiding its legendary scarlet-cloaked ranks from one military triumph to the next. To the very end, however, it was Athens that claimed his fiercest loyalty. Man and city mirrored each other in boldness, ambition and vulnerability, their destinies inextricably intertwined.
From bloody confrontations on land and sea to the vicious politicking and betrayals in the city of Athena herself, Steven Pressfield once more breathes brilliant life into the bones of ancient history. In this epic novel, filled with triumph and tragedy, and ringing to the sound of battle, he paints a dazzling portrait of a remarkable leader of men whose fortunes were to mirror the ebb and flow of the tides of war.
