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Phoenix: A Father, a Son, and the Rise of Athens
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.
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.
408 pages, Hardcover
Published May 4, 2021
48 people want to read
About the author
David Stuttard
26 books17 followersDavid Stuttard is a British theatre director, classical scholar, translator, lecturer on classical literature and history, and author, primarily of historical works on the ancient world.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 6, 2022
I am normally leery of histories set in the classical age. First of all, there is a real paucity of reliable sources, which leads to a sketchy story. Second, many of the books on classical Greece and Rome are scholarly tomes that are dry as dust.
David Stuttard does a very good job of taking the reader through Greece in the first half of the fifth century BC in a readable and entertaining form. He freely admits in his introduction that where primary sources do not exist he will use some novelistic license and educated guesses to keep the story flowing. It is a methodology that works well.
The author’s portraits of the father-son duo of Miltiades IV and Cimon II, and their respective roles in putting Athens at the forefront of the Hellenic world, filled in a historical blank in my mind. He manages to tell his story in a fluent and entertaining way that is not at all dry.
This is well worth a read for anyone interested in a primer on the Golden Age of ancient Athens.
David Stuttard does a very good job of taking the reader through Greece in the first half of the fifth century BC in a readable and entertaining form. He freely admits in his introduction that where primary sources do not exist he will use some novelistic license and educated guesses to keep the story flowing. It is a methodology that works well.
The author’s portraits of the father-son duo of Miltiades IV and Cimon II, and their respective roles in putting Athens at the forefront of the Hellenic world, filled in a historical blank in my mind. He manages to tell his story in a fluent and entertaining way that is not at all dry.
This is well worth a read for anyone interested in a primer on the Golden Age of ancient Athens.
May 22, 2021
A true scientist who has done all the work, has talked with all the survivors of those events, he has probably seen even the security camera footage at the major events. Unlike the average writer of that era who just rehashes old data and glue the uneven blend of pragraphs from different centuries with fairy vomit.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews