Persian fire

After analyzing the fall of the Roman Republic at the Rubicon, Tom Holland goes even further back in time. Evoking classical settings and personalities, the author recounts the spectacular victory of the Greeks over the Persians and highlights the implications of this triumph for Western history in PERSIAN FIRE. 2,500 years ago, East and West went to war for the first time. In the early fifth century BC, a global superpower was determined to impose its truth and order on two states it considered terrorists. The superpower was Persia, whose kings had founded the first world empire, incomparably rich in ambition, gold, and men. The terrorist states were Athens and Sparta, exotic cities located in a poor, mountainous, distant land: Greece. The success of the Persian enterprise against the Greeks should have been just another formal chapter in history. Over the course of seventy years, victory—always swift and spectacular—seemed a natural attribute of the Persians. In the space of just a generation, they swept across the Middle East, razed ancient kingdoms, and seized illustrious cities with brutal violence, shaping an empire that stretched from India to the Aegean coast. In the face of these conquests, Xerxes, called the "King of Kings," held the title of most powerful man on the planet. But somehow, amazingly, even fighting the largest expeditionary force ever assembled, the Greeks managed to resist. The Persians were forced to retreat, and Greece remained free. Had they been defeated in the memorable naval battle of Salamis, not only would the West have lost its first war of independence, but it is quite likely that the very notion of the West would never have existed. Athens' charge at Marathon; Xerxes driving his chariot from Asia to Europe; the Spartans' final stand at Thermopylae: all are scenes illuminated by an unparalleled epic brilliance. PERSIAN FIRE dramatizes not only the great conflict itself, but also the extraordinary context surrounding it. From the temple priests of Babylon to the Spartan secret police; from the Persian love of ducks and gardens to the Athenian fixation on prostitutes; from Darius, assassin, usurper, and supreme political genius in Middle Eastern history, to Themistocles, the man who saved the West: all are brought to dazzling life in Tom Holland's narrative.