Authors: Steven Pressfield
Tides of War
Praise for the Novels of Steven Pressfield
TIDES OF WAR
“ON EVERY PAGE ARE COLOR, SPLENDOR, SORROW, THE UNFORGIVING DETAILS OF BATTLE, DAILY LIFE, AND OF THE FIGHTER’S LOT…. PRESSFIELD PRODUCES AN EVEN GREATER SPECTACLE—AND, IN ITS HONEST, INCREMENTAL WAY, AN EVEN GREATER HEART-TUGGER—THAN IN HIS ACCLAIMED TALE OF THE BATTLE OF THERMOPYLAE,
GATES OF FIRE.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
“[Pressfield] continues to excel in depth of research, humanization of antiquity, and power of description.”
—
Los Angeles Times
“While Pressfield excels at portraying battles and naval contests, the whole pivotal era leaps to life under his skilled and exciting pen.”
—
Booknews
“It’s a painful tale to read, but that very pain is testimony to Pressfield’s ability to make us feel and believe in his re-creation of the Greek world. Like all great historical fiction, he does not alter the facts, but merely illuminates them with enlightened speculation. Pressfield ends his story with a reminder that his story is fiction, not history. It’s a necessary reminder. After living in his world for 400 pages, it’s difficult to believe it’s not the real thing.”
—
The Herald-Sun
(North Carolina)
GATES OF FIRE
“Vivid and exciting … Pressfield gives the reader a perspective no ancient historian offers, a soldier’s-eye view … remarkable.”
—
The New York Times Book Review
“Impressive … vivid.”
—
USA Today
“Majestic … monumental … epic … once begun, almost impossible to put down.”
—
Daily News
(New York)
“
Gates of Fire
lives up to its billing as an epic novel…. His Greeks and Persians come across as the real thing.”
—
San Francisco Chronicle
“Steven Pressfield brings the battle of Thermopylae to brilliant life, and he does for that war what Charles Frazier did for the Civil War in
Cold Mountain
.”
—Pat Conroy
“An incredibly gripping, moving, and literate work of art. Rarely does an author manage to re-create a moment in history with such mastery, authority, and psychological insights.”
—Nelson DeMille
“A timeless epic of man and war … Pressfield has created a new classic deserving of a place beside the very best of the old.”
—Stephen Coonts
ALSO BY
STEVEN PRESSFIELD
GATES OF FIRE
THE LEGEND OF BAGGER VANCE
FOR CHRISTY
Contents
Chapter I - My Grandfather Jason
Chapter II - Murder in Melissa
Chapter III - In Polemides’ Cell
Chapter IV - Ordeal and Commission
Chapter V - The Indispensable Man
Chapter VI - A Young Man’s Sport
Chapter VII - A Significant Silence
Chapter VIII - Prognosis: Death
Chapter IX - A Calling Acquired
Book III - The Firs Modern War
Chapter X - The Joys of Soldiering
Chapter XII - A Companion of the Flee
Chapter XIII - Three Times The Victor’s Name
Chapter XIV - A Prospectus of Conques
Chapter XV - A Lecture from Nicias
Chapter XVI - A Soldier’s Dream
Chapter XVII - A Documen of the Admiralty
Chapter XVIII - A Dislocation of Recall
Chapter XIX - A Chronicler of Strife
Chapter XX - Schoolmasters of War
Chapter XXI - Disaster on Epipolae
Chapter XXII - The Averted Face of Heaven
Chapter XXIII - Upon The Wall of Ships
Chapter XXIV - The Issue of Defea
Chapter XXV - The Soldier in Winter
Chapter XXVI - Among the Sons of Leonidas
Chapter XXVII - On the Quay at Samos
Chapter XXVIII - The Hill of the Dolphins
Chapter XXIX - The Intersection of Necessity and Free Will
Chapter XXX - Beside the Tomb of Achilles
Chapter XXXI - The Intrepidity of the Gods
Chapter XXXII - On the Virtue of Cruelty
Book VII - Feeding the Monster
Chapter XXXIII - The Blessings of Peace
Chapter XXXIV - Strategos Autokrator
Chapter XXXV - Beyond the Reach of Envy
Chapter XXXVI - A Disrefracting Glass
Chapter XXXVII - A Hunt on Parnes
Chapter XXXVIII - The Gravity of Gold
Chapter XXXIX - Bawlers and Crawlers
Chapter XL - The Red Rag of Sparta
Chapter XLI - Fire from the Sea
Chapter XLII - The Chore of Pillage
Chapter XLIII - Between the Earth and the Sea
Chapter XLIV - A Witness to Homicide
Chapter XLV - An Advocate at the Gate
Chapter XLVI - Across the Iron Cour
Chapter XLVII - The Tale to Its End
Chapter LI - A Death on Deer Mountain
Chapter LII - A Magistracy of Mercy
Chapter LIII - The Holm Oak’s Bloom
By their epochal victories over the Persians in 490 and 480/479
B.C.
, Sparta and Athens established themselves as the preeminent powers in Greece and the Aegean—Sparta on land, Athens at sea.
For half a century the states maintained a tenuous equilibrium. At Athens these years inaugurated the Golden Age of Periclean democracy. The Parthenon was constructed, the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides commenced performance; Socrates began to teach.
By 431, however, Athens’ power had become too great for the free states of Greece to endure. War came—that struggle called by Thucydides “the greatest in history,” which lasted, as the oracle had foretold, thrice nine years and ended with the capitulation of Athens in 404.
One man set his stamp upon this conflict, for good or ill, beyond all others. This was Alcibiades of Athens.
Kinsman of Pericles, intimate of Socrates, he was, the ancient sources attest, the handsomest and most brilliant man of his era, as well as the most lawless. As a general he was never beaten.
| 490 | Athenians defeat Persians at Marathon |
| 480 | 300 Spartans stand at Thermopylae |
| | Athenians and allies defeat Persians in sea battle of Salamis |
| 479 | Spartans and allies defeat Persians in land battle at Plataea |
| 454 | Pericles establishes Athenian Empire |
| 431 | Peloponnesian War begins |
| 429 | Great Plague; death of Pericles |
| 415–413 | Sicilian Expedition |
| 410–407 | Alcibiades’ victories in the Hellespont |
| 405 | Lysander’s victory at Aegospotami |
| 404 | Surrender of Athens |
| 399 | Execution of Socrates |
… the worst enemies of Athens are not those who, like you, have only harmed her in war, but those who have forced her friends to turn against her. The Athens I love is not the one which is wronging me now, but that one in which I used to have secure enjoyment of my rights as a citizen. That country that I am attacking does not seem to be mine any longer; it is rather that I am trying to recover a country that has ceased to be mine. And the man who really loves his country is not the one who refuses to attack it when he has been unjustly driven from it, but the man whose desire for it is so strong that he will shrink from nothing in his efforts to get back there again.
—Alcibiades addressing the
Spartan Assembly, in Thucydides’
History of the Peloponnesian War
She [Athens] loves, and hates, and longs to have him back….
—Aristophanes,
on Alcibiades, in
The Frogs
AGAINST
POLEMIDES
