Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the WestIn 480 B.C., Xerxes, the King of Persia, led an invasion of mainland Greece. Its success should have been a formality. For seventy years, victory--rapid, spectacular victory--had seemed the birthright of the Persian Empire. In the space of a single generation, they had swept across the Near East, shattering ancient kingdoms, storming famous cities, putting together an empire which stretched from India to the shores of the Aegean. As a result of those conquests, Xerxes ruled as the most powerful man on the planet. Yet somehow, astonishingly, against the largest expeditionary force ever assembled, the Greeks of the mainland managed to hold out. The Persians were turned back. Greece remained free. Had the Greeks been defeated in the epochal naval battle at Salamis, not only would the West have lost its first struggle for independence and survival, but it is unlikely that there would ever have been such an entity as the West at all. Tom Holland's brilliant new book describes the very first "clash of Empires" between East and West. As he did in the critically praised "Rubicon," he has found extraordinary parallels between the ancient world and our own. There is no other popular history that takes in the entire sweep of the Persian Wars, and no other classical historian, academic or popular, who combines scholarly rigor with novelistic depth with a worldly irony in quite the fashion that Tom Holland does. |
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LibraryThing Review
Avis d'utilisateur - SChant - LibraryThingExcellent. Really enjoyable history of the early Persian Empire and it's conflicts with the various city-states of Greece around 500BC. I'm not usually a fan of MilHist but the accounts of the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis were as exciting as any thriller! Consulter l'avis complet
LibraryThing Review
Avis d'utilisateur - jcbrunner - LibraryThingA great read about the Persian Wars. Its best part are the finely written introduction chapters on Persia, Athens and Sparta. The battles themselves are actually not given as much space as I had ... Consulter l'avis complet
Table des matières
THE KHORASAN HIGHWAY | 1 |
BABYLON | 39 |
SPARTA | 63 |
Droits d'auteur | |
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Expressions et termes fréquents
Acropolis Aegean Ahura Mazda Alcmaeonids allies already amid ancient Apollo appeared Argives Aristagoras Aristeides army Artaphernes Artemisium Asia Astyages Athenians Athens Attica Babylon barbarians Bardiya battle began brought Cambyses campaign cavalry century bc certainly citizens city's claim clan Cleisthenes Cleomenes command Croesus Cyrus Darius Datis death defeat Demaratus democracy desperate duly East elite empire enemy Euboea Eupatrid exile fate fighting force gods Greece Greek fleet Hellespont helots Herodotus Hippias Histiaeus hoplites Hot Gates Ibid imperial invasion Ionian Isthmus King of Kings King's knew Lacedaemon land Leonidas Lycurgus Lydian Marathon Mardonius master Medes Media menacing Miletus Miltiades mountain never once pass Pausanias Peloponnese Peloponnesians perhaps Persepolis Persian Persian fleet Phoenicians Pisistratus plain Plataea Plutarch proved rival royal sacred Salamis Sardis satrap served shadow ships slaves Solon Spartans squadrons stood straits surely Susa temple Themistocles Thermopylae triremes tyrant victory Xerxes Zagros