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After decades of war, mighty Athens has been ravaged-its navy destroyed, its city walls toppled, its army disbanded. The fierce military state of Sparta has triumphed, but passions and hate linger on. Thousands of battle-hardened veterans from both sides in the conflict remain scattered across the Greek islands, restless and dangerous-until Prince Cyrus issues a call to arms. The rogue exiled nobleman is raising an enormous mercenary army to conquer the most powerful empire in the world: Persia.
The young philosopher-warrior Xenophon, scion of a noble Athenian family and follower of Socrates, risks his father's wrath and embarks on the adventure with high hopes for glory. Joining his cousin Proxenus, the war-maddened Spartan general Clearchus, and a huge body of Cyrus' native troops, he and ten thousand Greek mercenaries depart on an astounding march of a thousand miles, across the searing desert. Their near-deadly journey culminates in a massive, bloody battle at the very threshold of Babylon-a battle that proves disastrous for them. Their leaders are betrayed and murdered, their supply lines cut, and their route home across the desert blocked by the furious Persian king, bent on revenge. The Fates call on Xenophon to lead the devastated Greek soldiers in their escape, though he has little experience in commanding men. As the army flees toward the snowy north, its situation appears desperate.
Months later, ten thousand battered, half-starved soldiers stagger out of the frozen mountains of Armenia into a small Greek trading post on the Black Sea. Their true tale of survival, and of the heroic expedition Xenophon led through the heart of an enemy empire, astonished the incredulous natives and has been the stuff of legend ever since.
Michael Ford combines his expertise on 5th-century BC Greek warfare with explosive page-turning action to give us one of the most spectacular Greek epics of the year. Not since Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire has the glory, the beauty, and the rampant bloodshed that was ancient Greece been so vividly captured. |
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Features
- Author: Michael Curtis Ford
- Format: Paperback
- Published: July 2001
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