Rise of an Empire

Stephen Dando-Collins

Description

The true story behind the events in 300: Rise of an Empire, the sequel to Zack Snyder's 300

The action-filled movie 300 focused on Ancient Greece's epic battle of Thermopylae, in which King Leonidas led 300 Spartans into battle against Xerxes and his million-strong Persian forces. In the sequel, 300: Rise of an Empire, the action moves to the sea, covering ten years starting with the Battle of Marathon and ending with naval engagement the Battle of Artemisium, which occurred the same day as Thermopylae.

Rise of an Empire tells the story of the real men and events depicted in the movie, focusing on the Athenian general Themistocles, one of the world's greatest warriors. He became warlord of Greece, built their navy and, by uniting Greece to defeat Xerxes' fleet, enabled what we call western civilization. Packed with vivid detail, clashes of arms and ships, blood and glory, Rise of an Empire tells a story even bigger than the big screen could contain.

• Both an essential read for fans of the 300 movies and the Frank Miller graphic novels they're based on
• An insightful exploration of the leaders who feature in the film, their backgrounds, motivations, command decisions, struggles, victories and defeats, from the Battle of Marathon through the Battles of Artemisium and Salamis: Xerxes, the Persian king determined to succeed where his father failed, and Themistocles, overcoming monumental hurdles to turn Athens into Ancient Greece's greatest sea power and leading city-state of the age
• A gripping narrative of the real-life naval battles of the first and second Persian invasions of Greece, with fascinating detail about the ships, the warriors and the tactics

1. – The Road to Marathon

2. – Young Themistocles

3. – To Fight, Or Not To Fight

4. – The Battle of Marathon

5. – Turning to the Sea

6.  – The Persians are Coming

7. – Preparing to face Xerxes

8. – The Greatest Army and Navy on Earth

9. – Athens’ Floating Wall of Wood

10. – The Battle of Thermopylae, and the 300 Spartans

11. – Cut and Thrust at Artemisium

12. – The Battle of Artemisium

13. – After Thermopylae

14. – Abandoning Athens

15. – The Salamis Trap

16. – The Battle of Salamis

17. – Pursuing the Persians

18. – The Battles of Plataea and Mycale

19. – The Bitter End

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

APPENDIX A – List of Athenian Tribal Regiments, 5th Century BC

APPENDIX B – The Olympias Project

INDEX

Sujets

• Histoire
• Xerxes (desambiguación)
• Persia
• The Settlers: Rise of an Empire
• Stephen Dando-Collins
• The 300 Spartans
• History of Greece
• Greco-Persian Wars
• Leonidas (disambiguation)
• Ancient Greece
• Xerxes
• Themistocles
• Ancient
• History
• Zack Snyder
• Athens
• Greece
• 300

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 09 juillet 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781118454787
• Langue: English

Extrait

PRAISE
for
STEPHEN DANDO-COLLINS
A very fine historian.
-Phillip Adams, ABC Late Night Live
A gifted storyteller.
- The Independent Weekly
Absorbing Military history is the muscle of this book, with enough political sinews to give it coherence.
- Washington Times, for Caesar s Legion
Unique and splendidly researched Many military historians consider Caesar s legions the world s most efficient infantry before the arrival of gunpowder. This book shows why. Written in readable, popular style, Caesar s Legion is a must for military buffs and anyone interested in Roman history at a critical point in European civilization.
-T. R. Fehrenbach, author of This Kind of War, Lone Star, and Commanches, for Caesar s Legion
Rise of an Empire

Wiley General Trade, an imprint of Turner Publishing Company 424 Church Street Suite 2240 Nashville, Tennessee 37219 445 Park Avenue 9th Floor New York, New York 10022
www.turnerpublishing.com
Rise of an Empire: How One Man United Greece to Defeat Xerxes s Persians
Copyright 2013 by Stephen Dando-Collins. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com .
Book design: Michael Rutkowski Interior design: Glen M. Edelstein Cover Photo: Tim Gainey (Spartan); Paul Moore (shield); North Wind Picture Archives (ship) / Alamy
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Dando-Collins, Stephen. Rise of an empire : how one man united Greece to defeat Xerxes s Persians / Stephen Dando-Collins.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-118-45479-4 (pbk. : alkaline paper)
1. Themistocles, approximately 524 B.C.-approximately 459 B.C. 2. Greece--History--Persian Wars, 500-449 B.C. 3. Generals--Greece--Biography. I. Title. DF226.T45D36 2014
938 .03--dc23
2013026550
Printed in the United States of America 14 15 16 17 18 19 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
For Louise, my fellow Thalamian. And with special thanks to Stephen the captain, and Richard the pilot.
CONTENTS
1. The Road to Marathon
2. Young Themistocles
3. To Fight, or Not to Fight
4. The Battle of Marathon
5. Turning to the Sea
6. The Persians Are Coming
7. Preparing to Face Xerxes
8. The Greatest Army and Navy on Earth
9. Athens s Floating Wall of Wood
10. The Battle of Thermopylae, and the 300 Spartans
11. Cut and Thrust at Artemisium
12. The Battle of Artemisium
13. After Thermopylae
14. Abandoning Athens
15. The Salamis Trap
16. The Battle of Salamis
17. Pursuing the Persians

18. The Battles of Plataea and Mycale
19. The Bitter End
APPENDIX A. List of Athenian Tribal Regiments, Fifth Century BC
APPENDIX B. The Olympias Project
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Rise of an Empire
1.
The Road to Marathon
In grim, disciplined silence, the Athenian army tramped along the mountain road at forced march pace. Somewhere in the forest ahead, a mounted advance party was staking out a campsite. Behind them, trailing all the way back to Athens, came wagons and slaves, bringing tents and supplies for all and furnishings for the officers. Not many miles ahead, a massive Persian army lay encamped on the Attic coast, threatening to attack Athens, just twenty-six miles to the south.
Under the blistering August sun, the men from Athens and throughout her territories in the Attica region marched in loose order, divided into ten regiments based on the voting tribe into which each man fell according to his place of birth. In the past, Athens had comprised just four tribes, but seventeen years before this the number of tribes had been enlarged to ten, all named for legendary Athenian heroes. This system had made the organization of elections for high office at Athens more manageable, and provided a structure for the city-state s citizen army when the call to arms was made-your peacetime voting tribe automatically became your regiment in time of war. Now, with roughly 900 men to a regiment, nine thousand fighters aged between eighteen and fifty followed their ten regimental commanders to war.
The general commanding the fourth regiment, the Leontis, was a solid thirty-three-year-old by the name of Themistocles. Of average height, he had a bull neck and a round, friendly face, although it was a face that did not shine with intelligence. His thick hair and beard were close-cropped, his low brow was already creased, his wide mouth topped by a thick moustache. Like all Athens s tribal groupings, the ranks of the Leontis were equally divided between city dwellers, mountain men, and plainsmen. Themistocles himself had originally come from an outlying coastal district, and looked more like a dullard of a fisherman than a fighter, let alone a general of genius. A few more years were to pass before he would be in a position to display that genius.
Themistocles s recent election as military commander of his tribe was his first taste of generalship, though not of high office. Three years prior to this, once he was legally entitled to stand for election on reaching the minimum age of thirty, he had been voted into office as one of Athens s nine archons, or magistrates, for the year 493-492 BC. Ambitious Themistocles, who came from humble stock and had married into the aristocracy as soon as he turned thirty, had arrived. For, even though he was in office as archon for just one year, reaching that post automatically garnered him a lifelong seat on Athens s governing council, the council of the Areopagus. Rather like the upper house in modern parliaments, this council sat on the Areopagus, the Hill of Ares, immediately to the west of the Acropolis, the 500-foot stone mount at the center of the city that housed many of Athens s religious sanctuaries. The son of Zeus, Ares was the Greek war god-equated by the Romans with Mars. A temple dedicated to Ares sat at the foot of the Areopagus.
Themistocles the commoner, unlike his fellow regimental commanders, who all came from aristocratic families, had neither previous military experience nor a battlefield reputation. For the moment, his opinions would carry no special weight when the generals sat to discuss war strategy. With time, that would change. The generals were dressed and equipped in the same manner as their men. For, in this democratic army, generals and privates served and fought side by side. All wore red tunics, and long woollen cloaks trailed down their backs. On their left shoulders each Athenian carried a massive round shield, while long spears in their right hands rested on the opposite shoulder. Bronze helmets sat back on the crown of their heads, off their faces. Sheathed short-swords swung at each man s left side. Body armor consisted of iron and bronze corselets for the torso, and greaves to cover the shins.
In these ranks marched citizens of Athens-merchants, tradesmen, farmers, fishermen, athletes, and aristocrats. But none was a full-time soldier. Unlike the martial Greek state of Sparta, which kept a standing army and whose sons trained as soldiers full time from childhood, Athens only called its men to arms in times of emergency, such as now.
One of the soldiers in the ranks of the eighth regiment, the Hippothontis, was thirty-five-year-old Aeschylus. Son of the aristocrat Euphorion, Aeschylus came from the coastal Attic city of Eleusis, fourteen miles west of Athens and long an Athenian territory. Because his family was wealthy, Aeschylus never had to work a day in his life. Instead, he had indulged his talent as a playwright, and had become famous as a winner of Athens s annual City of Dionysia drama contest just four years before this. The writers and philosophers of Athens deliberately let their beards grow full as an advertisement of their calling, and Aeschylus s long, bushy beard made him stand out among the men around him. Close-cropped beards were more practical for those who worked with their hands rather than their minds. Yet, despite his artistic fame, Aeschylus, like his bold brother Cynaegirus, who marched at his side, would fight, and die if necessary, to help defend Athens from the Persian foe.
When he was twenty-six, Aeschylus had entered Athens s prestigious City of Dionysia contest for the first time. Held each March before a crowd of thousands in Athens s open-to-the-sky, semicircular theater, this was an exacting contest, for each entrant was required to also perform his own work. Aeschylus had multiplied the pressure on himself by going against the tradition of using just one player plus a chorus. An innovator, he had added extra parts to his plays, which would have raised eyebrows and made certain he did not win in 499 BC. But five years later, his innovation was being copied by other writers, and Aeschylus had taken away the prize and joined the list of Athens s best dramatists. Even so, despite his skill with pen and voice, he was still expected to shoulder arms when the barbarians threatened his city.
Marching at the head of the fifth regiment, the Acamantis, was the best-known and most influential commander among the Athenians. With thick grey hair and beard, this was the sixty-four-year-old Miltiades. An Athenian with Thracian ancestry, Miltiades was born to an immensely wealthy aristocratic family. When he was about thirty-eight, he had inherited family territories in the Thracian Chersonese, today s Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey, which he had departed Athens to rule with an iron hand backed by a 500-man bodyguard. But the Persians under King Darius had subsumed Miltiades s little principality, and for a time Miltiades