Book description
At Marathon an army of Greek city states, including Sparta and
Athens, met the Persian army of Darius. This was the key battle of
Western civilisation for Athens were defending not only their
independence but their radical new political form, democracy. Alan
Lloyd details the course of Athenian democracy, its religion and
culture and the uneasy alliances with other city-states, such as
Sparta. Out of this historical background Lloyd brings the battle
alive with a story-teller's vitality, evoking the final run of
Philippides, the Athenian messenger, who brought the news of the Greek
victory back to Athens, a feat now commemorated in the modern marathon.
Alan Lloyd is a widely published historian, he has written numerous
popular and accessible histories and Souvenir Press have previously
published his Destroy Carthage and The Taras Report: Last Days of
Pompeii. 'The Observer' once said of an Alan Lloyd book: “There's not a
single boring page in his entire book.”
