The end of Sparta
Subtitle: a novel
By: Victor Davis Hanson
Edition: 1st U.S. ed.
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 445
ISBN-13: 9781608191642
Subjects: Fiction; Generals; History
Description: In this sweeping and deeply imagined historical novel, acclaimed classicist Victor Davis Hanson re-creates the battles of one of the greatest generals of ancient Greece, Epaminondas. At the Battle of Leuktra, his Thebans crushed the fearsome army of Sparta that had enslaved its neighbors for two centuries. We follow these epic historical events through the eyes of Mêlon, a farmer who has left his fields to serve with Epaminondas-swept up, against his better judgment, in the fever to spread democracy even as he yearns to return to his pastoral hillside. With a scholar's depth of knowledge and a novelist's vivid imagination, Hanson re-creates the ancient world down to its intimate details-from the weight of a spear in a soldier's hand to the peculiar camaraderie of a slave and master who go into battle side by side.