The End of Sparta A Novel Author:Victor Davis Hanson In this sweeping and deeply imagined historical novel, acclaimed classicist Victor Davis Hanson recreates the times and wars of one of the greatest generals of ancient Greece. — Though we hear little of him today, the Greeks and Romans acclaimed Epaminondas of Thebes as the greatest man their worlds produced. In the pivotal battle of Leuktra (371... more » BC), Epaminondas led an army of Boiotian Greeks that shattered a larger-and far more feared-force from Sparta, the mighty city-state that had dominated Greece and enslaved the people of Messenia for some two hundred years. The next year, the firebrand general led a coalition of Greeks that overran Sparta, brought the warrior state to its knees, and freed the serfs of Messenia. We follow these epic historical events through the eyes of Melon, a farmer who has left his fields to serve with Epaminondas-a reluctant hero who fights to uphold the honor of Thebes even as he yearns to return to his pastoral hillside.
With a novelist's gift of imagination and a scholar's intimate knowledge, Hanson recreates the distant ancient world down to its intimate details-from the weight of a spear in a soldier's hand to the drinking songs of Theban soldiers, to the peculiar cameraderie of a slave and master who go into battle side by side. The End of Sparta is a stirring drama and a rich, absorbing reading experience.« less
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