Phoenix : a father, a son, and the rise of Athens / David Stuttard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stuttard, David, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Miltiades, approximately 550-489 B.C.

Miltiades.

Cimon, -approximately 450 B.C.

Cimon.

Salamis, Battle of, Greece, 480 B.C.

Marathon, Battle of, Greece, 490 B.C.

Greece--History--Athenian supremacy, 479-431 B.C.

Greece.

Greece--History--Persian Wars, 500-449 B.C.

Athens (Greece)--History.

Athens (Greece).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (400 p.)

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, [2021]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

A vivid, novelistic history of the rise of Athens from relative obscurity to the edge of its golden age, told through the lives of Miltiades and Cimon, the father and son whose defiance of Persia vaulted Athens to a leading place in the Greek world. When we think of ancient Greece we think first of Athens: its power, prestige, and revolutionary impact on art, philosophy, and politics. But on the verge of the fifth century BCE, only fifty years before its zenith, Athens was just another Greek city-state in the shadow of Sparta. It would take a catastrophe, the Persian invasions, to push Athens to the fore. In Phoenix, David Stuttard traces Athens’s rise through the lives of two men who spearheaded resistance to Persia: Miltiades, hero of the Battle of Marathon, and his son Cimon, Athens’s dominant leader before Pericles. Miltiades’s career was checkered. An Athenian provincial overlord forced into Persian vassalage, he joined a rebellion against the Persians then fled Great King Darius’s retaliation. Miltiades would later die in prison. But before that, he led Athens to victory over the invading Persians at Marathon. Cimon entered history when the Persians returned; he responded by encouraging a tactical evacuation of Athens as a prelude to decisive victory at sea. Over the next decades, while Greek city-states squabbled, Athens revitalized under Cimon’s inspired leadership. The city vaulted to the head of a powerful empire and the threshold of a golden age. Cimon proved not only an able strategist and administrator but also a peacemaker, whose policies stabilized Athens’s relationship with Sparta. The period preceding Athens’s golden age is rarely described in detail. Stuttard tells the tale with narrative power and historical acumen, recreating vividly the turbulent world of the Eastern Mediterranean in one of its most decisive periods.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

MAPS

The Philaid Family

Introduction: Out of the Ashes

I INHERITANCE

1 Ancestors

2 When the Persians Came

3 Trials of Strength

II ATHENA’S BRIDLE

4 Between Two Wars

5 Dedication

6 Firestorm

III STRENGTHS OF MEN

7 Hegemon

8 Securing Athens

9 ‘I Am Eurymedon’

IV PERIPATEIA

10 Earthquake

11 Aftershock

12 At the Right Hand of Zeus

Timeline

Glossary

Notes

Acknowledgements

Map and Illustration Credits

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780674259720

0674259726

9780674259744

0674259742

OCLC:

1243305426