Book Description

Strife, now more than ever plagues her. She knows only one cure for her illness and that is through her strength of arms. But alas, her men are masters of war. In 404 BC, after twenty-seven years of civil war, Sparta defeats Athens and reigns supreme in the Greek world. However, her victory is not without consequence. Conflict forces King Agis of Sparta to lead his army north to war with the Eleans, while Lysander, a Spartan hero of the Peloponnesian War is left at home to contemplate his next military pursuit. Meanwhile in Athens, the Thirty Tyrants that Sparta instated to govern their inferiors are banished, which gives way to democracy. This leads Xenophon, an Athenian pupil of Socrates, to decide if he should march with the Ten Thousand, while Socrates continues to defy his growing number of political adversaries. Across the sea in Persia, King Darius is deathly ill, causing his sons Cyrus and Artaxerxes to vie for the throne. If Artaxerxes succeeds his father, Sparta will face the imminent threat of another Persian invasion. Thus, the fate of Greece and freedom depends once again on the Spartans. A narrative of honor and deceit, love and betrayal, kings and slaves, great minds and ordinary citizens, Sparta chronicles the intersecting lives of the ancients, as well as their extraordinary achievements while thriving under the rule of history’s most formidable military society.