Basic Books Tides Of War

ONE MAN. TWO ARMIES. THE FATE OF THE ANCIENT WORLD IN THE BALANCE. Alcibiades: Kinsman of Pericles, protégé of Socrates, immortalised by Plutarch, Plato and Thucydides. An audacious soldier and charismatic leader without equal who would come to dominate the Peloponnesian War, the devastating twenty-seven-year conflict between Athens and Sparta that brought Greece to its knees at the end of the fifth century BC. Undefeated on the battlefield, Alcibiades' popularity - and his political aspirations - fed the resentment of his rivals in Athens who secured his death warrant on a trumped-up charge of treason. Escaping to Sparta, he guided its legendary army from one military triumph to the next. Ultimately though, it was Athens that would claim his fiercest loyalty, their destinies inextricably intertwined.